The Secret Thread: Literature & Spiritual Life

No Backing Down

2012-01-08T07:14:00.002-05:00

An excerpt from Mutt Ploughmans' book Forever Voyaging: One Writer's Apprenticeship with Herman Melville.

For years I have nursed an idea for a specific writing project in some nether corner of my mind. The concept is to write an historical novel about Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk who became unexpectedly famous due to his remarkable spiritual memoir, The Seven Storey Mountain (1948), and who went on to have a long and distinguished career as a prose writer, poet, peace activist, and spiritual mentor.

This is an ambitious scheme, and nothing in my history suggests that I have either the skills or the stamina to bring it off. I would have to do a great deal of background research, for one, something I lack the resources and the time for. It would also be extremely taxing from a craft point of view, trying to get a handle on the nuances and the complexities of a figure so well known and even revered in many circles.

To write a novel like this is a pipe dream. But I hold on to such things. A writer should always dream big. If he can’t, he should find a job in an office somewhere (or keep the one he probably already has). When he gets a vague idea for a future project, he sometimes will try to plan for it in advance, anticipating the moment when he may feel bold or just insane enough to give it a try. He keeps one eye open all the time for anything that could help, while keeping the idea on low heat in his mind. Sometimes this lasts for years.

Not long ago, for example, my twin brother and I were in a used bookstore in Philadelphia, and I spotted an out-of-print paperback edition of a 1970 book called The Man in the Sycamore Tree: The Hard Life and Good Times of Thomas Merton, written by Ed Rice, a lifelong friend and close confidante. I knew about the book from having read biographies of Merton, but had never seen a paperback copy before. The book was musty and old. All the better. I bought it without hesitation. I do not know if I will ever have what it takes to give my novel about Merton a try. But if I ever do, that discovery in Philadelphia will surely be a tremendous help.

I bring this up in order to explain that when I read the following anecdotal tidbits about Melville, I related well to what he was doing. Most fiction writers probably would. In 1849, just before sailing for England to hand-deliver the manuscript of White-Jacket to his British publisher, Melville saw and promptly purchased at a downtown New York bookstall a pamphlet with the extraordinary title The Life and Remarkable Adventures of Israel R. Potter (A Native of Cranston, Rhode Island), Who Was a Soldier in the American Revolution. This tale chronicled the titular figure’s real-life journey from the battlefields of America to Europe, where he remained in “exile” for fifty years.

Both of Melville’s grandfathers served with distinction in the Revolutionary War, a source of pride for the writer throughout his life. Thomas Melvill, Herman’s paternal grandfather, had in his possession a glass vial filled with tea leaves from the actual Boston Tea Party that Melville could remember admiring as a boy. Clearly Melville bought the pamphlet to stow away for future use. This fact seems confirmed when, weeks later, he recorded in his journal that while in London he had picked up a map of the city dated 1766 “in case I serve up the Revolutionary narrative of a beggar.” These advance maneuvers eventually led to his 1855 novel Israel Potter: His Fifty Years of Exile.

After the debacle of Pierre, Melville seemed inclined to move forward on a number of different azimuths. Most immediately, in order to earn much-needed cash, he turned to writing short fiction for the literary magazine market. Some critics have characterized this period as Melville going “underground;” indeed, many of the stories he wrote were published anonymously. He was paid about $5 a page on average - surprisingly lucrative wages - and his work appeared primarily in two publications: Harper’s New Monthly Magazine; and the newer Putnam’s Monthly Magazine, published by George Palmer Putnam, whom Melville knew through his (dwindling) connections in the New York literary establishment.

Between these two journals, some of Melville’s most enduring fiction was first revealed to the world, including “Bartleby, the Scrivener” (Harper’s, 1853), “The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids” (Harper’s, 1855), and “Benito Cereno” (Putnam’s, 1855). In the following chapter, we will examine these and other short fiction works by Melville – which, when considered individually, effectively broaden a reader’s understanding of his marvelous skills and range of interests.

Some also regard this time as Melville’s period of “seclusion,” when he withdrew into himself, and was possibly even afraid to write another novel after the beating he’d taken for Pierre. Personally, I can’t find evidence in any of Melville’s writings up to Israel Potter that he was ever anywhere other than deeply within himself. Nonetheless, one may be tempted to conclude that he was cowed into writing thrifty or whimsical short fiction by the negative feedback he received all his life from critics. But when you look closely at Melville’s life and his working output during this time, it seems that nothing could be farther from the truth.

First of all, while some of the shorter stories he wrote could indeed be characterized as entertainments (one story called “Cock-a-Doodle-Doo!” is about a vain rooster with a glorious lineage), several of his shorter works still wrestle with weighty themes and betray a kind of progressive urgency. If you have read “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” you know that its meaning and its themes could be debated without end, but no one would describe that particular story as “whimsical.”

Though he changed direction frequently, and experimented in countless ways during these mid-career years, Melville did not tamper his pace. He did not like to allow too much idle time to pass between projects “for fear of facing that dreaded state,” Robertson-Lorant writes sympathetically, “in which a writer looks at blank paper and sees the existential void.”

In addition to writing almost all of his short stories in this decade, he also wrote another novel – apparently on the heels of Pierre – with the beguiling title Isle of the Cross. In a prime example of literary tragedy, however, the manuscript has been lost to the ages.

Only a handful of details are known regarding what this novel would have been about. Thanks to his father-in-law, Judge Lemuel Shaw, Melville had been introduced to an accomplished attorney named John Clifford. At some point during the course of their acquaintance, Clifford told Melville an intriguing story from his professional experience that rooted itself in the writer’s mind. The story had to do with a woman, the daughter of a lighthouse keeper on Nantucket, who saved a drowning soldier from a shipwreck, eventually marrying the man. They had a daughter; but later, apparently afflicted with wanderlust, the man went off to sea again. It was not until many years later, when their daughter was seventeen, that the man finally reconsidered and returned to the woman, full of penitence, expressing a desire to repair his broken relationship with his family.

It is fascinating to speculate on how this novel may have colored Melville’s overall legacy, or what place it may have taken in a meritorious hierarchy of his books. The novel would have been notable for the fact that its primary character was a land-locked woman, not a sailor or some other white, male misanthrope. For Melville to write an entire novel around a woman’s life demonstrates significant advances in his sensibility and in his skills as a storyteller. Yet, because of his damaged reputation as a result of Pierre, he was unable to convince a publisher to accept Isle of the Cross. The manuscript was tucked away somewhere and, eventually, swallowed up by time.

Sometimes when a writer is between projects, she simply flails around for a while, lobbing a bunch of darts at the big wheel of potential ideas in her imagination. She may write a story here, an essay there, an aborted beginning to a novel, perhaps a blog post. I experienced this kind of water-treading between March and June of 2010. It’s a drag. I couldn’t come up with any new ideas for stories or even a quick essay, so I spent time on my own blog, posting amateurish responses to Melville’s books. I also spent time editing the stories I had written previously, sending them out to small literary magazines, and waiting for weeks and months – only to receive rejection notices for every one. This was nothing new. Truthfully, it feels worse to lack a new story to tell than to hang on the fate of existing ones.

As I worked through this head-turning, somewhat jarring period in Melville’s own literary progress, I again felt as though I could relate to some of his experiences. He tried out a bunch of new things, seeming to grope for the one project that would command his full attention.

Since it seems evident, from our perspective, that Melville’s writing was changing into something else, the thought occurred to me that perhaps 2010 was a year in which I was turning into a different sort of writer myself. This may be the ultimate reason why I was so gripped by Melville in general, and for such a long period. He might be the ideal companion for any American writer undergoing a transformation.

In my case, this notion seemed welcome. After all, my first 20 years of writing had not led me into any bright, lush valley of success. But that didn’t make going through radical change any less painful. It’s hard to be unsure of exactly where you are going or how you might get there. When you consider Melville’s total body of work and the life he led, you see clearly that no matter how else he may have stumbled, or what sort of man he was in matters unrelated to art, he never allowed the indecision, the empty void of despair, to defeat him. Melville was a kind of Tom Petty of American letters, standing up before the gates of critical and commercial Hell. He wouldn’t back down.

*

In 1853 and into 1854, having already penned one story that would go down as a classic of the form (“Bartleby”), Melville re-read the pamphlet about the war veteran Israel Potter. Having had the impulse to snatch it up in the first place, in the faith that the right time to take on Potter’s story would make itself known, it must have been stimulating after the experimentation of 1852-1853 to re-discover this gem from his own library. This time, Israel Potter’s tale seized Herman Melville for good. In Andrew Delbanco’s words, “the story of a life that starts out gloriously but leads nowhere suited Melville’s mood.”

He got to work on what we would today call an historical novel, or maybe a work of speculative fiction, based on this broadly unknown tale of a soldier who helped bring about the birth of a nation, but was never given the recognition he deserved. He wrote it in a refined, comparatively direct prose style that bore the stamp of the work he had been doing in magazines. Like his earlier Redburn, Israel Potter was far more palatable to the common reader than his other novels. Melville was as aware of this fact as anyone. When we come across passages like this one, describing a naval battle, it seems he was consciously working to keep hold of the reader’s attention, in spite of the fact that it sounds a little like an early version of Yoda:

Elsewhere than here the reader must go who seeks an elaborate version of the fight, or indeed, much of any regular account of it whatever. The writer is but brought to mention the battle, because he must needs follow, in all events, the fortunes of the humble adventurer whose life he records.

It seems unlikely that the same man who penned Mardi or Pierre would write in this manner without first undertaking a fundamental overhaul to his craft.

Seeking to turn a profit from his effort, Melville sent off the first 60 pages of the novel to George Palmer Putnam, requesting that the story be serialized. He assured Putnam that his newest work continued “nothing of any sort to shock the fastidious” and “very little reflective writing. It is adventure.” The publisher evidently drank the Kool-Aid. Unlike most of the work of his great contemporary across the pond, Charles Dickens, Israel Potter was Melville’s only serialized novel.

The novel that eventually emerged from all of this is Melville’s shortest, clocking in at fewer than 200 pages; with a paltry 26 chapters (Mardi, by contrast, has 195). When all the pieces were assembled and published as one volume in 1855, it was priced at $0.75 apiece and it sold about 3,000 copies in its first six months. While this does not seem spectacular, it was more than twice what Pierre sold while Melville was alive. Although it seems to receive the least attention from modern Melville critics and aficionados, it has been described as one of the most accessible and entertaining of his books – though it does contain, to this reader anyway, a sizeable dollop of flat-out weirdness on top of its historical/fantastical mixture.

Israel Potter is a humble farmer from rural New England who dreams of one day owning a piece of land. Having fallen in love with the daughter of a more prominent neighbor, he leaves his parents’ nest at a very young age to formally request the girl’s hand. But his appeal is coldly denied, and Israel, destitute and broken-hearted, decides to volunteer for the nascent American militia. He acquits himself bravely at Bunker Hill and elsewhere, witnessing many horrors, but when he returns home to pursue his dream, he discovers that his money is worthless. Turned away again, Israel does what so many groundless, unfocused young men did during this historical era: he goes off to sea.

There his life takes another dramatic turn. The United States, now its own nation, still maintains a rather tempestuous relationship to its former motherland. Unfortunately for Potter, his ship is seized by the British navy, and he is transported in shackles to England. Setting foot on foreign soil as a still-young man, Potter has no idea that he will spend the next five decades in Europe, unable to scratch together the means to return to his own country.

Though he arrives as a prisoner, Potter isn’t about to take his incarceration lying down. Characterized by Melville as “bred among mountains,” and thus having a certain natural toughness and an aversion to being patronized, Potter escapes from bondage, aided by a sympathetic “knight” named Sir John Millet. Millet even goes so far as to use his contacts to help Potter find work, and eventually, by twists and turns of fate, secures the escaped prisoner a job as a “laborer” in the gardens of none other than King George III, the very personification of the enemy force Potter had shed his blood at Bunker Hill to rebuke.

From this point forward, the novel proceeds on an unlikely but engaging path, bringing Israel Potter into circumstantial contact with some of the most famous figures from the Revolutionary War period. In Andrew Delbanco’s helpful description, Israel Potter is presented as a kind of “18^th century Forrest Gump.” Like that character, Potter seems to have within him a healthy measure of simplicity or innocence, or both, but he acquits himself well physically when the situation demands, and he does not shy away from speaking the truth no matter who he is addressing. While tending to the King of England’s garden he one day, inevitably, finds himself in a dialogue with the monarch. When George III requests that Potter address him properly as his sovereign, the younger man’s reply is unambiguous: “Sir, I have no king.”

Finding himself in an unlikely position of proximity to the innermost mechanisms of the British monarchy, Potter encounters a man whose expertise is the acquisition of intelligence. Noting both Potter’s youth and his moxie, the man recruits him as a spy and sends him on an “errand” to France to glean information from the American statesman Benjamin Franklin. Subsequently, Potter is led into various other improbable adventures, including individual escapades with Ethan Allen and John Paul Jones.

Melville clearly had fun presenting caricature-like portrayals of these widely known personalities from the legend of America’s birth. Franklin is portrayed as a punning, hedonistic power broker who seems to thoroughly enjoy the exalted status he maintains in Paris. John Paul Jones, on the other hand, comes over as a trigger-happy warmonger, always itching for a fight. When he has the opportunity to take note of Potter’s disdain for the British, he enlists Potter to participate in his marauding naval expeditions: “You hate so well, I love ye. You shall be my confidential man.”

Thus, turned this way and that by kismet, Potter endures many colorful adventures on what he sees as the wrong side of the Atlantic, some more treacherous than others. One of the most striking aspects of this character’s story is that while he is called upon again and again to risk his own well being for one cause or another, by men who recognize his courage, he is never quite taken care of by any of them, and is repeatedly dismissed once the job is complete. Potter ends up homeless on the teeming streets of London, trying to scratch out a living as a furniture repairman. He walks around hollering the novel’s signature calling card: “Old chairs to mend!” When he finally gains the opportunity to sail back to America, most of his unique but unlucky life is behind him: “An octogenarian as he recrossed the brine, he shared locks besnowed as its foam. White-haired old ocean seemed as a brother.”

Returning to his home country after so many years gone, Potter has nothing left. He tries to locate his father’s old homestead, only to find it has long been burned to ashes. He files a legal injunction seeking recompense from the government of the United States for his role in the Revolution, but it is summarily dismissed “by caprices of law.” As Melville writes strikingly near the end of Potter’s story, “his scars are his only medals.” Lastly, as a final insult, when Potter makes his way to Boston to attend a Fourth of July parade celebrating the 50^th anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill, he is struck and nearly killed by a “patriotic triumphal car.”

Israel Potter is a fascinating entry into Melville’s canon for numerous reasons – its polished prose style; its historical perspective; its tall tale-like tone; its sense of play – but one of the most intriguing aspects of this novel and its history is the way it was received versus the way Melville intended it. Even though he wanted the novel to appeal to many readers – what fiction writer does not aspire to the same thing? – the book was clearly written as a critique of his own homeland. Melville felt that the story of the real Israel Potter stood as an example of how the United States of America, conceived with such noble intentions, had betrayed its own values, its own principles.

Yet the critics, for once, widely approved of Israel Potter, and turned a blind eye to the book’s implicit satire. One reviewer praised it for its “manly and direct” narrative style. They patted Melville on the back for finally cleaning up his act and delivering an entertaining story steeped in risk and adventure, and disregarded the apparent discomfort the author felt about the state of things in their young nation. As with Israel Potter himself in his day, the critics seemed to feel that if they just ignored Melville’s satirical broadsides, they might quietly sputter out on their own.

What Melville must have felt about all of this is hard to know. Surely he must have appreciated positive notices regarding his work as much as the next writer, and probably some of the good reviews were helpful in the book moving a respectable number of copies. But it also must have been a familiar frustration that the novel was not read closely enough by most critics to notice qualities that might have been considered controversial. There was often a dismissive or patronizing tone to the way the critics treated Melville’s books, especially as he grew older. Almost as if their reviewing his books at all should have been honor enough for him, and that he ought to have been grateful for their taking notice of what he brought forward.

Israel Potter doesn’t quite have that feeling of a great ambition winningly accomplished that one derives from novels like Moby-Dick or Mardi, or even Pierre. It is an odd bird even in Melville’s catalog. Yet I feel like it is distinguished in a number of ways. It confirmed Melville’s standing as a ceaseless innovator who challenged himself at all stages, throughout his writing career. It is one of the very few homegrown works I have seen in any art form – books, films, visual art – that is willing to take a critical view of the United States and its actions with regard to the American Revolution. One almost never finds anything about the birth of our country and the years immediately following that is not presented in glorious colors. In that sense, Israel Potter is a brave novel. It will make any American think.

Melville was patriotic enough, and was rightfully proud of his own family’s historical participation in the Revolution. Yet he also had a compassionate and progressive way of thinking about the common man, and was unwilling to gloss over actions by the government or society at large that he saw as socially unjust. He would brilliantly demonstrate this bedrock principle again, almost immediately after publishing Israel Potter, in his great novella “Benito Cereno,” focusing this time on slavery and racism.

Another distinction of Israel Potter is that it is still the only novel I’ve ever come across that is dedicated to an inanimate object, bizarre as that sounds. In some ways this book’s dedication page (actually almost two pages) is central to the entire concept; indeed, Melville said as much in a letter written decades later: “In what light the book … is to be regarded, may be clearly inferred from what is said in the dedication.”

If one flips back and reads these pages again after the devastating denouement to Israel Potter’s story, and notes that the book is presented “To His Highness the Bunker Hill Monument” (in Boston, Mass.), one begins to grasp Melville’s full intent. Israel Potter is, unfortunately, a prophetic book. At times it has the feel of a Vietnam-era anti-war novel, even though it preceded that conflict by over a century. When the reader reaches the last paragraph of the dedication, there can be no doubt of its sardonic tone:

Your Highness will pardon me, if, with the warmest ascriptions on this auspicious occasion, I take the liberty to mingle my hearty congratulations on the recurrence of the anniversary day we celebrate, wishing your Highness … many returns of the same, and that each of its summer’s suns may shine as brightly on your brow as winter snow shall lightly rest on the grave of Israel Potter.

The final aspect of the book I wish to reflect on is the very name of the character himself. Even though Melville did not invent the name of “Israel Potter,” he immediately seized upon its ironic possibilities, with its reference to the “potter’s field,” a term describing a mass graveyard for criminals and outcasts. This is the kind of detail that a writer jumps all over, and immediately begins to unpack in his mind. If they are very fortunate, it can trigger the spark that drives and sustains an entire novel.

It was an enlightening and enjoyable experience to read Israel Potter, a novel that seems unjustly forgotten. It is difficult to find a book that is both a colorful entertainment and an instructive case study of a great writer’s continual evolution. The book is well worth a modern reader’s time. Hell, I felt proud of myself merely for having discovered and enjoyed a novel about a character named “Potter” that had absolutely nothing to do with magic, wizards, or “muggles.” With due respect to J.K. Rowling and her success, that alone, in our time, feels like an achievement.

The Best Books I Read in 2011 (by Duke Altum)

2011-12-21T14:41:00.000-05:00

As is our annual tradition here at TST, here are my choices for the best 10 books I read during the year 2011.

NOTE: I don't usually put these in any order and this year is no exception... however, I feel like each year if I were pressed I could name a single book that was my favorite read, the one in the list that I would bring with me to the proverbial desert island if I could only choose one... so this time around I decided to designate my "Book of the Year." You'll see which one merited that honor below. This is something I may do for future lists; I haven't decided yet. -Ed.

1. (Book of the Year 2011) Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone, Eduardo Galeano - As with most of Galeano's books, this unique and fascinating blend of history and fiction, dreams and harsh realities is not only one of the most interesting and thought-provoking books I've read in many years, it's also an invaluable compendium of questions and speculations about human nature and the entire broad sweep of world history. Every single page - literally - stopped me short in wonder or fascination.

2. Tinkers, Paul Harding - A runner-up for this year's top honors, Harding's profound, poetic debut novel made fascinating connections between clockwork, the workings of the human brain, and the search for personal truth and meaning in the context of generational family dynamics. Somehow he also manages to make his story a moving examination of the complicated relationships between fathers and sons, AND an interesting meditation on vocation. That very rare novel that is both beautifully told, and remarkably insightful on matters of the heart and spirit.

3. Memoirs of World War II, Sir Winston Churchill - An 1100-page long abridgement (!) of Churchill's 6-volume magnum opus, this first-hand account of the build-up to and commencement of the Second World War offers a unique and richly detailed perspective from the eye of the storm. Churchill's personal accounts of such noted and notorious figures as FDR, Hitler and Stalin make this memoir particularly interesting, and his knowledgeable and opinionated assessments of the geopolitical landscape at the time provide perspectives on the conflict you didn't learn in your high school Social Studies class!

4. Earlier Poems, Franz Wright - Don't let the boring-sounding title fool you. These raw, personal, shattering poems of doubt and faith, depression and loneliness, guilt and the search for meaningful redemption by Franz Wright (collected over two decades) prove his uncommon talent and insight into man's instinctive grasp for something Greater than ourselves. These poems clearly came at a heavy cost for wright, but his courage and generosity to share them have, I hope, rewarded him in other ways.

5. Resistance, Rebellion and Death, Albert Camus - As I'm doing this list I realize that this year, for whatever reason, my choices are skewing towards non-fiction. Perhaps most indicative of this personal trend is this choice: I decided to read several of Camus' works this year, including two novels, but the one that made the list was this penetrating and challenging essay collection. I think it's because I admire Camus' unflinching commitment to his own philosophical positions and yet, his willingness to carefully (and critically) consider others. His long and passionately argued essay against the death penalty would alone make this collection well worth reading.

6. Nightmare Alley, Willian Lindsay Graham - This pitch-black, perfectly named psychological thriller is a rich, disturbing and highly original concoction of vintage American "carnie" culture, the occult, religious hucksterism, noir elements, and the art of the con. With its unique structure (each chapter is represented by a different Tarot card) and gothic sensibilities, it reads like an unholy mixture of Flannery O'Connor, Dashiell Hammett and H. P. Lovecraft. A wild and unsettling read, but absolutely unforgettable!

7. King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa, Adam Hochschild - This impeccably-researched account of the Belgian King Leopold's grab for land, riches and power in Africa (near the heyday of the British empire) chronicles in horrific detail one of the worst campaigns of genocide in human history. A troubling read for sure, but I had no idea at all of the almost incalculable loss of life among the tribes of the Congo rain forests - all due to the greed and conniving of one deluded tyrant. For that new awareness alone, I am glad I read it - but it also contains many vivid portraits of brave souls who campaigned for the basic human rights of these Africans, who would otherwise be completely lost to history.

8. Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs: Writings on the West, Wallace Stegner - I admit this choice is somewhat influenced by the fact that this year marked my first time on the "real" open frontier of the American West (Wyoming), and I wanted to acknowledge that. I also, around the time of my trip, did some reading about the West from both fictional and non-fictional sources... and this collection of essays from Stegner, who lived and wrote in mountain terrain his whole life, stands out in my mind as some of the best stuff. His ruminations on Western geography, politics, people, and literature were insightful to this Easterner, and highly entertaining to boot (pun intended).

9. Khufu's Wisdom, Naguib Mahfouz - This one just made it under the wire (I finished it very recently), but it belongs on the list because I read nothing like it this year - or in fact, in many years. This was Mahfouz's first novel (he went on to win the Nobel Prize in the 1990's), and in it he richly evokes the sounds, smells, customs and mythology of ancient Egpyt during the time of the building of the Great Pyramids. A fascinating debate between the great Pharoah Khufu and his son over whether or not to engage in a pre-emptive war gives this 1939 novel a surprisingly contemporary feel!?

10. You Are Not A Gadget: A Manifesto, Jaron Lanier - A generous - and forward-looking! - gift out of nowhere from my cohort Mutt, this wide-ranging, passionately argued plea for individuality and creative freedom in the digital age was widely discussed across the 'blogosphere.' While I can see how some of his arguments could be taken as alarmist, nearly every page of this articulate and thoughtful diatribe made me think in a more critical way about our gadgets, our unprecented (and often unfiltered) access to information, and our growing interconnectedness via the Internet. A bold and stimulating book.

Honorable Mentions for 2011: The First Man, Albert Camus; Lost City Radio, Daniel Alarcon; The View From Castle Rock, Alice Munro; Technopoly, Neil Postman; The Virginian, Owen Wister; The Pickwick Papers, Charles Dickens (Mutt Ploughman's 2011 Dickensfest selection); Shock Value: How a Few Eccentric Outsiders Gave Us Nightmares, Conquered Hollywood, and Invented Modern Horror, Jason Zinoman

Mutt Ploughman’s Best Books of 2011

2011-12-02T21:33:00.004-05:00

Returning since taking 2010 off to focus on Melville books, Mutt Ploughman brings you his ten favorites reads of the year 2011.

10. You Know When the Men Are Gone, Siobhan Fallon. Have to disclose that Siobhan Fallon was a classmate of mine in the Creative Writing program at The New School in NYC from 1998-2000, and while I am thrilled to learn of her good fortune, her debut story collection succeeds entirely on its own merit. A powerful grouping of tales set in the Iraq/Afghanistan wars, about not the soldiers themselves so much as their family members left behind at Fort Hood, Texas. This book is filled with beautiful prose and powerful moments while relating important stories about the tragic and far-reaching effects of armed conflict. In “Gold Star,” the brief closer, a busy, overwhelmed young mother driving around a crowded commissary parking lot finds a spot marked by said star – one that we learn she can occupy, because it is reserved for the relatives of those who paid the ultimate price. This terrific book is filled with such searing details.

9. The Nightmare of Reason: A Life of Franz Kafka, Ernst Pawel. Here is a rich and colorful biography of one of the great writers of the 20^th century, in spite of his having led such a short life (Franz Kafka died in his early 40s in 1924). There have been a number of biographies of Kafka, but none of them seem to fully “definitive.” This one, published in the 1980s and out of print now, was enjoyable to me for a number of reasons. It’s written in a forceful, sometimes opinionated style and not without a sense of drama and humor. It also provides enlightening analyses of Kafka’s Jewish identity and its influence on his work; the geopolitical situation in around his native Czech Republic before and during World War I; and his personal relationships with his parents, friends, and women. His sickly disposition and struggles with emotional intimacy seem to have made him a difficult person to know, let alone love, but his brilliant prose and insights into the human condition make him a fascinating subject, treated thoroughly and competently in this fine study.

8. Conquest of the Useless, Werner Herzog. One of the most unique nonfiction titles I’ve read in some time, which is only fitting considering the uniqueness of its author. Fearless, stubborn, and insightful filmmaker Herzog, who is responsible for some of the great documentary and fictional films of the last 30 years such as Grizzly Man, Aguirre: The Wrath of God and Nosferatu the Vampire, traveled to the Amazon jungle in 1979 to begin production on his film Fitzcarraldo. Destined to become another classic, this production faced a series of monumental obstacles, culminating in Herzog’s nearly insane attempt to film a scene in which a 300-ton riverboat is transported over a mountain without using any modern machinery. Conquest of the Useless is a journal of his three-year experience making this film; but it is not a production diary. Rather, it is a conceptual, philosophical dreamlog, a collection of thoughts and ideas that combine to present a fascinating and powerful portrait of a master artist in the throes of creation. The surprise is that Herzog can craft images in words as well as he can capture them on film.

7. Fairy Tale, Alice Thomas Ellis. A brief, hallucinatory, sometimes even nightmarish novel by the late Welsh writer Ellis, who was known for being a Catholic but also highly critical of the modern Church. Like her break0ut first novel from the 1960s called The Sin-Eater, this one, among her last works, contains a unique mixture of family dynamics, wicked satire, and Welsh mythology. A young English couple decides to eschew city life and move to the remote and harsh country of rural Wales, where the naïve wife desires to start a family as soon as possible. But the tale gets more complicated when an elderly relative and her friend decide to come stay for a while, around the same time a group of four “Watchers” – wandering spirits – decide to target the house and its occupants for their own brand of mayhem. In the right hands, this could make for a stark and creepy film adaptation.

6. Red Dust, Ma Jian. When I saw this title at a used book sale and read it described as “a Chinese On the Road,” that was more or less all I needed, since it is not hard to have a sense of fascination about China if you’re from this country, and Kerouac’s book is a personal favorite. The book itself did not disappoint, although it’s hard to compare this journey to Kerouac’s or anything American, for that matter. Published in China in the 80s at the height of the Cultural Revolution, it follows its author from his danger-courting Bohemian lifestyle as a painter and writer in Beijing into self-imposed exile, wandering aimlessly all across the entire expanse of China. I can recommend this book for numerous reasons – the prose, even in translation from the original Chinese, is lovely and poetic, which seems hard to believe; the innumerable descriptions of stunning archeological sites and religious temples all across that magnificent country; the fascinating window it offers into the lifestyles and customs of poor Chinese in rural areas; and, not unimportantly, the poingnant account of the Spiritual desolation that overtakes its author, a product of a Communist regime who nonethless seems to pine for the transcendent. This book is not easy to find, but well worth the search. The author, Ma Jian, remains a dissident to this day, living in London, with his books banned in China.

5. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K. Rowling. Call me a snob if you want, but I would not put any of the Harry Potter books on a list of great reads if it was only about the excellence of the writing. I’ve always found J.K. Rowling’s writing fairly pedestrian and cliched. But a great novel is also about storytelling, and with this entire series, all seven books, Rowling accomplished something extremely rare and special: a global phenomenon that stayed true to its origins and delivered on an unbelievable amount of expectations all the way to this final installment. Having hit a low point in her personal life in the 1990s, a single mother on public assistance, Rowling took an idea she had come up with on a commuter train and spun it into gold. But it’s not just that the books were spectacularly popular; they painstakingly and lovingly constructed an entire world of their own, and blew open the imaginations of millions of children around the world. This final book ties together a dizzying amount of storylines in an exciting but graceful manner and still manages to amaze us with a final showdown that everyone could see coming from the first. A fairly perfunctory Epilogue showing the main characters well into the future can be forgiven of a novelist that made us care for three young people who grew up casting magic spells and supporting each other through all kinds of trials, right before our inner eyes.

4. Onitsha, J.M.G. LeClézio. I had wanted to read the French novelist LeClézio since he won the 2008 Nobel Prize in Literature, and I was lucky that the co-founder of this blog found a copy of this novel for me while on a business trip in California. (Mad props, Duke Altum!) This is a beautiful and thoughtful novel, especially to any American reader who has an interest in, well, the rest of the world. What I really enjoyed about is that it is a story seen through the eyes of its 12-year-old protagonist, a boy named Fintan, whose Italian mother brings him to a remote outpost along the Niger River in Africa to meet his English father for the first time. In inhabiting his youthful character so seamlessly, LeClézio gives us both the spacious beauty and the harshness of the African landscape with a heart full of wonder, and shows us how absurd the brutality of colonialsm appears when viewed through the eyes of innocence. Based on this one performance, it is easy to see why this writer was honored for his contributions to world literature.

3. Skippy Dies, Paul Murray. The biggest surprise of the year for me, here is a hefty, rollicking, big-hearted comic novel set in a Dublin boarding school that seemed to represent better than any single novel I’ve seen in a long time all the great things about Irish culture. In the darkly funny opening set-piece, Skippy, a nerdy, 14-year-old boy with a hopeless crush on a girl from a sister institution, dies choking on a doughnut, an episode of zaniness that for me recalled David Foster Wallace. From there the novel goes back and catalogues how this event came to occur, following a gaggle of misfits and outcasts through a madcap school year. The crazed antics of the pre-pubescent boys made for many utterly hilarious scenes to this reader; meanwhile, the adults, including a stern priest and a politician headmaster, often behave even worse. Yet Murray judges no one, be they priests, teachers, or students. This novel inevitably buckles at times from too much weight, as it dabbles into string theory, the poetry of Robert Frost, the history of World War I, hip-hop, and the Irish drug culture. But the ambition here is winning and harnessed mostly with aplomb; the laughs are more like howls; and the emotions swing back and forth widely, making for a hugely satisfying read.

2. A Visit from the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan. To say that this Pulitzer Prize-winning novel is about time itself sounds pretentious as hell. Yet it is; and thank God we have brave writers like Egan to take such themes and run with them. It makes this bold, fresh, but mysterious novel a bit of a head-scratcher – but Egan (whose Look at Me was my Best Book of 2009), is a daring writer who pays close attention to culture, literature, technology, and spirituality in our era and she has the intellectual and artistic muscle to turn it into something haunting and elegant. Goon Squad is a series of interlocking stories whose characters wander in and out of one another’s lives across about 40 years of time, including a stretch into the future. Really, it’s hard to say more than that. The punk culture of the 1970s in California is one setting, as is the music scene of our time, but this book is really about the way people relate and communicate with one another as time grinds every single one of us, to a man or woman, down. Sounds depressing, and at times it is; but because Egan dares to question what it means to live in these times, around these people we know but don’t know – and writes about it all beautifully and insightfully – it makes for a novel that feels something like a literary submarine. It runs silent, and it runs deep.

1. The City & The City, China Miéville. I must say here that the top three books on this list all ran very, very closely alongside one another to the end of this year. So maybe on another day this novel by China Miéville, a sometime science-fiction writer who with every new book ventures further beyond description, would not be placed on the top spot. But I love a bold and fearless imagination, and this writer has one that seems bristling to explode out of whatever box you put it in. The sheer originality and convincing execution of this noirish, genre-bending spellbinder was utterly impressive to me, and was the sort of read that reminds me that your only limitations in fiction are self-imposed. A dystopian crime thriller set in a vaguely central-European country, it imagines two cities, Beszel and Ul Qoma, posited right up against one another, with a nebulous, danger-ridden border territory in between known only as “Breach.” The book opens with inspector Tyador Borlu of the “Extreme Crime Squad” of Beszel called to the scene of a young woman’s murder, which at first appears routine. But investigating the case leads Borlu across the border into Ul Qoma, a far different and more sinister city, where he is is forced to work with a shady detective named Qussim Dhatt. But a series of unpredictable events leads Borlu to stumble into Breach – which is controlled by an unnamed police squad, and from which few ever return. The City & The City is so imaginative and so cleanly executed that it reads like a Chandler novel processed through George Orwell’s 1984 and sprinkled with a healthy dose of Philip K. Dick. It’s not perfect, and at times it almost seems too confusing for any storyteller to handle no matter how smart they are. But those feelings come rarely, because for most of the book you are hurtling around on tracks you can’t see and at great speed, in this dark but exhiliarting literary carnival.

The Visionary

2011-10-18T06:44:00.003-04:00

In Celebration of My Wife’s 40th Birthday

visionary. n. 3. one having unusual foresight and imagination. (Merriam-Webster.com)

HERE ARE A FEW THINGS MY BRIDE, born forty years ago today, has loved her entire life:

Photographs. Maps. Graph paper. Floor plans. Watercolors. Natural light. Autumn colors. Beaches and coastlines. And Christ, the Name she tends to use when referring to the Son of God.

All of these things, save one, are linked by a common thread: they are visual. You encounter them directly through the eye. Except for Christ, whom none of us have seen with our eyes, who tells us in the Gospel that we are blessed by virtue of the very fact. Yet it is through her love of Him that she sees Him in all of these other things – in the beauty of nature; in the play of light and shadow; in smiles and facial expressions caught by cameras; in the ingenuity of human designs, our humble attempts to create order from chaos.

Kelly Elizabeth Lovell often describes herself as a “visual” person. She has an indisputable gift for seeing. It’s easy to overlook, yet few do it well. Those with the blessing of eyesight look at things easily enough, but not everyone sees them clearly. I am an example. I’m not very good at seeing things the way they are sometimes – from the most complex conceptual problem down to the smallest gaggle of objects.

Take clothing, or what others call “style.” Kelly and I are blessed with two beautiful daughters, as well as a son. A blind man can see that my girls are pretty, but their own father can’t select clothes for them to save his life. This won’t be much of a problem very soon, because these bright girls, though still quite young, are already learning that it is best to factor Dad completely out of this equation.

But up until now, I would try to choose outfits for them, often disastrously. I can look at them in an ensemble I chose a hundred times in a row and not see that the clothes do not match. But Kelly looks at them once, in a half-second, and declares whether the outfit works or not. It may not be very uncommon in a mother, but I still find this quality amazing because I do not have it.

Another example is home décor. I have no idea whatsoever how to design or decorate a room to make it appealing. But Kelly spends only a little time in a contained space that may need some help, and although she has no formal training, she quickly forms a vision in her mind of how wonderful the room could look.

If you watch her closely, you can literally see this vision develop. It’s fascinating. Her eyes narrow; she gets uncharacteristically silent, almost contemplative. The wheels start turning. She puts one finger on her bottom lip. Her eyes float across a surface or a plane. You give it about five minutes, maybe ten. Then she says something like, “I think that television cabinet would look better in the corner. Having it there is bothering me. The walls need a blue color, maybe a pale blue; I need to look at samples. I definitely want to put some shelves on this wall over here for framed pictures….”

I can stare at the same surfaces, and not only do I not understand what they ought to be “wearing,” but I can hardly see what she is even then meticulously describing. No matter. She can see it, quite vividly, as if it’s already there.

But the most striking example of Kelly’s visual acuity by far can be found in her photographs. Taking pictures is one of my wife’s most authentic forms of self-expression. She has a great passion for this simple activity, also surprisingly difficult to do well. It is hard to perfect because you must have an innate sense of what you want to capture.

I don’t mean that in terms of specifics: you don’t take your camera on a nature hike in the woods knowing ahead of time that you want to shoot this particular bird’s nest against that corner of the sky at exactly 4:00 p.m. I mean that you have to know a great visual arrangement when it comes together. You have to be able to see it. When you do, it is a matter of getting the camera ready and shooting. Over and over, if you are a perfectionist, like Kelly. This is not something you can learn or acquire; at least not with ease. It’s a gift.

One of my favorite examples of her gift is in a photograph Kelly took in November 2001, while we were visiting Ireland, a country to which both of us can trace some common ancestry. We had been in country for about five days, and our tour group had stopped in rural County Cavan, to spend the night at a place known as Cabra Castle. We reached the castle in the late afternoon and were given a little free time before reconvening for dinner. Everyone went off in their own direction.

I told Kelly that I needed to take a walk. She could tell that I was feeling restless, almost irritable, but she gave me some space. What she did not know was that I had been carrying around an engagement ring for five agonizing days and had found, up until that evening, no appropriate opportunity to propose. I was having trouble containing my nerves.

Anyway, while I was brooding and trying to orchestrate the correct moment, Kelly decided to take her camera around the castle grounds, to see if anything would stand out as a potential subject. She took numerous pictures of the castle and the natural beauty surrounding it. At one point, coming back towards the manor itself down the long entrance roadway, she spotted a little grove of tailored shrubbery with a flagstone path in front of one side of the castle. There were a few birdbaths and a large topiary archway, under which had been positioned a whitewashed, cast-iron bench. One could assume there would be many flowers in the summertime, but we were there on an overcast, cold day out of season.

When Kelly saw this bucolic little oasis, she promptly stopped and took a photo of the white bench from behind, capturing the arch, the flagstones, the rest of the garden, and the stately castle looming in the background. To her it must have simply felt like one of those images she would want to hold on to. But it seems to me that there was more to her snapping that picture at that moment. My theory is that she not only saw the beauty of what was there before her, but that she also had a kind of subconscious, preemptive vision of what could be at that particular place.

What Kelly could not know when she took the picture is that later that evening I would bring her to that exact spot, unaware that she had been there, and ask her to marry me on the same white bench. But I thank God for her vision, because to this day we have her wonderful image framed on a wall in our home. There is no way to prove to others that Kelly took the picture before we became engaged. But she and I know what happened, and I love that aspect of the story most of all – at least, up until the instant when she said “Yes,” the sort of moment that has a way of obscuring all others.

This story illustrates something fundamental about my wife, the way she expresses herself, and the way she understands and connects to the world and its Creator. It has to do with her gift for seeing, the one I have been attempting to describe. She has an innate ability not only to see things as they are, but also how they might become. She can see beauty as clearly as the rest of us, but she can also see promise.

Once she has done so, she has a desire, maybe even a need, to communicate it. She can take a few scattered photographs and arrange them in a scrapbook with colored paper to create the beautiful family heirloom that, to her, the pictures were always meant to become. She can assess an uninspiring, closed space and envision a haven, one you’d draw comfort and solace from when you walk in the door at night. To her that place is there from the start. It only needs to be coaxed from behind a veil that stands between it and the rest of us who are unable to see it.

She does this with people, too. If only we could see ourselves, I tell myself, the way Kelly sees us. For I have known very few people who can hone right in on a person’s inherent goodness, the light of God that shines out from all of us, the way my wife can. If you achieve something or some good fortune falls upon you, you may be inclined to cheer about it; maybe tell a few friends; post it on Facebook. My wife will celebrate it, take genuine joy from it, as if the achievement or blessing was her own. In one sense, it is: if someone she knows or loves finds their way to grace, then in a way I find profound and beautiful, so does she.

One of the things I admire the most about Kelly, to be sure, is the trust she has in her own vision. She knows things when she sees them. This has helped her overcome some painful tribulations at earlier points in her life, en route to uncovering a deep sense of Christian faith. Though she has had strong models to follow, Kelly largely found her own way to Christ, in large part because of her capacity to recognize Him. She saw Him; she knew Him upon sight; and she ran to Him, as an innocent daughter runs to her father’s arms.

And, Heaven knows, she has also trusted her vision when it comes to your scribe. Sometimes I wonder what she saw, almost ten years ago now, when she said “Yes” to me on that bench in Ireland. In weaker moments, I admit, I wonder if she is seeing it still.

At these times, I must remember what I have learned about Kelly. She knows what she sees, and she loves what she loves. Once she does, there is no turning it away. As one of her favorite songwriters once put it, she has “a love you can’t defeat.”

As someone who carries inside a flame to create against overpowering odds, I am aware that her vision of me is indispensable if I hope to achieve success. It is a gift I cannot repay, no matter how hard I try.

There is only one thing my wife sometimes has trouble seeing, ironically enough, and that is herself. But not too worry. I don’t always see everything around me with clarity; I don’t easily perceive the logic of arrangements; I can’t find my way sometimes through all the obscurities to love God or His children in the mother-hearted way that Kelly Lovell can.

But I can see Kelly Lovell – clear as a blazing fire miles ahead of a caravan winding its solitary way through the desert night. I’m the one who stood across from her and devoted myself to her. I can articulate what I saw then, and what I see and celebrate now. She is beautiful, precious, intelligent, and special; the mother of my babies; the bride of my dreams. She is forty years old today. And she is mine.

Jude Joseph Lovell
October 18, 2011

Working the Quill

2011-09-16T15:04:00.001-04:00

A Report from Phase II of What Was Formerly Known as the Melville, PA Project

I have been at sea, metaphorically, working on a first draft of my book on Herman Melville for almost eleven months now. At the time of my last missive here concerning the project, Returning to Port, I had drafted an Introduction and not a whole lot else. I feel the time has come to provide another update on the project to the legions of readers who, no doubt, are waiting impatiently for the end result, so they can launch on their own adventures with “Uncle Herm,” as I like to call him.

I have said before, and will repeat in the Intro to my book, that my goal is nothing less than single-handedly sparking off the “second Melville revival.” However ambitious that is, the pressure falls on me to produce the book that will achieve it! No one ever got anywhere by thinking small.

What a massive task writing a book is! I have tried to do it before. And have succeeded at least in completing a couple drafts, but of books that up until now have remained unpublished. But I know, at least, how much work it takes to write something at an extended length and to put in the effort to bring it to some kind of close. For the current book, I have been writing since late October 2010, and while it has not been easy to find the time or to organize my thoughts and words, I can report happily that the discipline has been there, for the most part, to work steadily for most of these eleven months.

Andrew Delanco, author of the great biography Melville: His World and Work, which I draw on pretty heavily in my own manuscript, has observed elsewhere that when you write a book specifically about another person, you feel like you are living with them. To some extent I can now vouch for that statement’s accuracy. While I don’t feel so much like I have been a roommate of Herman Melville’s that man certainly has been in my head for quite some time now. And I hope that has led to some growth and development of my understanding of writing, literature, and the world around me. Maybe even of things beyond the world, such as God.

Here is what I have produced so far: the aforementioned Introduction, which I would describe as “unsalvageable” at this point, meaning that it has to be re-written, but it served as a starting point at the time I inscribed it. After that, since I conducted my reading experiment with his work over the course of one year, I decided to organize the main body of my book into twelve chapters, each named after the corresponding month of the year. Hence, the first chapter is simply called “January,” etc. A small note informs the reader of the works I focused on during that month, and some of them, certainly, overlap from one month to another.

In each chapter I provide my own individual and non-scholarly reactions to the works I read that month. In some places I draw connections to my own experiences; in others I draw bridges between Melville’s stories and recent offerings from popular culture, usually movies, that have occurred to me – at different points I have referenced such diverse works as the writings of Stephen King, Charles Dickens, and Edgar Allan Poe; the films The Untouchables, Dead Poets Society, and Star Trek III: The Search for Spock; and musicians like Bob Dylan and heavy metal gurus Mastodon, who based an entire album on Melville’s Moby-Dick.

To date I have completed “January” through “June,” and at this writing I hope to wrap up “July” in the next two weeks, which means the book is over halfway finished. That’s not within the one year that I said all along I’d allow myself, but that goal was highly ambitious to begin with, and I knew it to be so. Being over the halfway point is still pretty good – I will take it. I feel like I am within sight of the end, which is when the real work actually begins…..

An interesting literary challenge for me in the next few months will be how to push the book through these last five chapters. This is because it took me only until July 2010 to finish reading all of Melville’s novels, and the short stories I could find. From that point on I read two biographies, one contemporary novel that was clearly written in the tradition of Melville’s work, and then re-read Mardi, Melville’s third novel, a second time. Whereas the entire book so far has been driven by reflections on his books, now I have to write a compelling story about Melville’s life and the way my own life has informed my study of his, in a way that continues to engage readers’ attention.

What sort of book is it? It’s a little hard to say, which I hope means that it’s a unique take on a time-worn subject. I know of at least three major biographies of Melville, as well as a number of smaller-scale ones; there are almost endless titles that approach his work critically, which have come in a fairly steady stream from the early 20th century on. What can I possibly add to what’s already been said? The answer, in a nutshell, is my own story. Since many, many people have tried to become writers, but no one else has shared my own personal path, only I can connect my own experience to Melville’s. The question is, can I make that combination interesting to any other reader?

The title of my book has undergone many transformations so far, and may continue to, but the one I am going with at the moment is Forever Voyaging: One Writer’s Apprenticeship With Herman Melville. Hopefully that title can generate some interest in the book’s contents. It’s really about two things: it’s about Melville and his work, from the point of view of someone who is trying to do the same job. In that sense, the book is a kind of apprenticeship; hence the current subtitle. I can’t do a real apprenticeship with Melville, and I am not accomplished enough to be invited to one of those high-end writing communities like Yaddo or Bread Loaf. So I have undertaken my own personal course of study, with the man who wrote what I believe is America’s finest novel as instructor.

The other thing that the book is is a kind of literary memoir, a chronicle of my own writing journey – with its numerous failures and few successes – and an attempt to examine closely what this craft of fiction writing is really all about. I explore my own writings, unpublished though the great majority of them, how I wrote them, what worked and what did not and the lessons I learned. And I examine the potent idea of failure, in writing and in other aspects of life. I dig into how learning to write stories with value and meaning is one way to power through failures and teach oneself how to heal from self-inflicted wounds and achieve success – or die, someday, still making the attempt. As singer-songwriter Bill Mallonee put it in his brilliant song about baseball-as-metaphor for the creative arts, called “You Give it All Your Heart:” “We may not make it out of the bush leagues/But that’s not why we’re here.”

When I reach the end of my book, I have a plan for an Epilogue, in which I will attempt to sum up the whole project and take a last look at how I can move forward. The last segment will be called “From Hell’s Heart I Stab at Thee: On Melville and Overcoming Failure.” I plan to explain how I take heart and strength from Melville’s example, a man who experienced failure and despair again and again, who tragically outlived both of his two young sons, and who died largely forgotten – but whose great writings later vindicated his life’s work a hundred fold.

That title refers to the astounding moment in Moby-Dick, the famous third day of the hunt for the white whale, when Ahab bestraddles the small boat he is on, grasps his own harpoon, and sails straight into the white whale’s grill. “I spit my last breath at thee,” he howls, “from hell’s heart I stab at thee!!!” I hope not to be in hell when I do it, but this is the way I want to attack everything that stands in the way of delivering a return on God’s investment of talent, however large or small, in me.

10 Spot: Albums

2011-05-26T14:41:00.002-04:00

Duke, co-founder of The Secret Thread and "other half" of your humble scribe, has challenged me to make my maiden voyage into this series he calls "10 Spot." I hereby accept the challenge. Below you will find the Top 10 albums that I would have absolutely no issue with listening to exclusively for the rest of my days: As for the next challenge, Duke, bring it.

1. Tunnel of Love, Bruce Springsteen
2. The Joshua Tree, U2
3. Between Five and Seven, John Gorka
4. Moving Pictures, Rush
5. Clutching at Straws, Marillion
6. Master of Puppets, Metallica
7. Little Earthquakes, Tori Amos
8. Audible Sigh, Vigilantes of Love
9. The Soul Cages, Sting
10. Umbrella, The Innocence Mission

Love and Prayers: Aunt Kath

2011-05-13T20:19:00.005-04:00

A Birthday Tribute
by Mutt Ploughman

TO SAY THAT KATHLEEN WALSH has been a “presence” in my life is a little like saying the ocean is a presence in the life of a sperm whale. Technically, of course, it is not untrue. It’s just a wee bit understated. “Aunt Kathy,” or simply “Aunt Kath,” as she is known to me and numerous others, is a woman whose love, if you are lucky enough to have it, is something you feel everywhere you go. You don’t have to be with her physically, for I see her only on certain occasions. It’s just there.

I write this now while outside of my window a glorious Spring day is dawning over eastern Pennsylvania. Here I have landed, after living in Chicago, where I first came to know Aunt Kath; then New Jersey; then Cincinnati; then Georgia, Philadelphia, New Jersey again, and finally the Lehigh Valley, back in Pennsylvania. During that time, Aunt Kath has lived in the Chicago area; then Lansing, Michigan; then Lubbock, Texas; then in the Raleigh-Durham region of North Carolina, where she has remained for the last 23 years. I am merely one of her thirty-four nieces and nephews, not to mention an entire brood of grand-nieces and grand-nephews, too voluminous to name even if I was able to.

I list these varying places and phases of life because I want you, reader, to consider the first paragraph, above, in light of the second. It’s not as though I have seen a great deal of Aunt Kath in my time on earth so far. And it’s not even close to true that I am the only locus of her love and attention. Yet I still feel her “presence” all the time. One might think this tells you all you need to know about the wonder and witness that is my Aunt Kath.

In one sense, it does; but it also doesn’t.

AUNT KATH, WHO IS celebrating her seventieth birthday this month, does not have her own children. Yet she is to me the very essence of what “family” means and implies. I have in my possession a tiny, very old spiral notebook that was kept by her father, Joseph A. Walsh, containing notes from a spiritual retreat he made in 1940, before Aunt Kath was even born. The very first words he wrote in that notebook are, “Get the family spirit.” Aunt Kath caught that bug from both of her extraordinary parents, and has not been able to shake it for seventy years.

She is the fourth of nine children, all of whom are vivacious, unselfish, gifted people today (one is my mother, who landed about the same distance from the tree). With a couple of elderly relatives in the mix, she grew up in a household of thirteen, with four other sisters alone. How a young woman coming up in an environment such as this learns to distinguish herself, I can’t begin to guess. But what I know of her as an adult suggests that she understood early on that to make her “mark,” so to speak, she should embrace her workaday role in a family unit that was greater than its individual parts.

Thrust into this situation, you could either wander off into a thicket of bitterness and obscurity over the years; or, to put it succinctly, you could learn to pay attention to, and even to serve, the needs of others. If you consider the career my aunt ended up in, as we will do shortly here, you will understand the choice she made.

This is a woman who has embodied “the family spirit” her entire life, and how proud she must make her late father! By the time I came around, I was lucky enough to be just one of many beneficiaries in an extended family that included Kathleen Walsh. Here are merely a few examples of this experience:

• From the time I was very small in Chicago, Illinois, Aunt Kath used to take us (I have five siblings) on road trips in her car. She had a favorite brand of mints called “Velamints.” Every single time we left to go somewhere, she would produce a roll of them and declare in an enthusiastic voice, “Let’s start things off with a Velamint!” To this day we joke with her about that, and I cannot see any kind of mint, especially in a car, without remembering it. It made us feel included; it made us happy – no matter what mood we started out in. Did I mention Aunt Kath is smart, too?

• Every single year, about a month before Christmas, for as long as I can remember, Aunt Kath has sent an Advent calendar to my address. It didn’t matter if I was 5, 25, or 39 – an Advent calendar has always arrived in time. I know she has done the same for my other siblings, all of whom, like me, now have their own families. And she probably does it for my twenty-eight other cousins on her side, too. If I find myself feeling too harried and distracted as the Christmas season approaches, I know that at least one person will always help me remember what it’s really about.

• When I was a young man serving in the U.S. Army in Georgia, I visited her once at her North Carolina home over a weekend. There we were, an odd couple: a single military officer in his twenties and his aunt, hanging around her town. But it’s part of Aunt Kath’s nature to come to you no matter where you are in life, or in the world (see next bullet point). We have a mutual love for coffee, and I remember I was assigned at the time to an infantry unit nicknamed “the Sledgehammer Brigade.” So she brought me to a little drive-through coffee stand one morning that served a super-strong blend they called “the Sledgehammer,” and we spent that morning swapping stories over buckets of hot brew.

• In 2005, I took a vacation with my family (a wife and two daughters by then), plus two of my brothers and their families, to a beach house in the Outer Banks, North Carolina. When Aunt Kath got wind of this, she decided to come see us. But she didn’t merely visit. She drove clear across the state, after work, embroiled in a huge traffic jam of beachgoers. And she did it with a carload of food: a spectacular, homemade, family-style meal, including dessert, all prepared by her in her “spare” time. She then had to turn around and drive all the way back home when the meal was through.

• To this day, every note, card, or gift I have ever received from her signs off in the same way: “Love and prayers, Aunt Kath.” Love and prayers. Do we really need anything else? I tell you sincerely: those two words do not just make me think of her. In my mind, they’re more like synonyms for the words “Aunt” and “Kath.”

JESUS CHRIST ONCE SAID to his disciples, according to the Gospel of Luke, “the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few.” This observation always calls to mind my Aunt Kath’s career. From where I sit, it would be extraordinary enough if my tribute to her ended with the last point above. Yet there is her remarkable record of service to consider.

Aunt Kath has been a social worker for more than four decades and for the last 20+ years has served as the Executive Director of Catholic Charities for the Diocese of Raleigh, North Carolina. What this means is that it is no exaggeration to say her entire career has been occupied with and driven by serving others – namely the poor.

Now, with this stalwart longevity to her name and her reputation, Aunt Kath is beginning to receive honors, commensurate with such lengthy and vital stewardship. She is the recipient, in recent years, of The Order of the Long Leaf Pine, a distinction shared by such luminaries as the Reverend Billy Graham, Maya Angelou, and Michael Jordan – the highest civilian award bestowed by the State of North Carolina. She has also been presented with the Cross Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice from the Vatican, on behalf of Pope Benedict XVI. Translated into English as “For Church and Pope,” this award is also known as “The Cross of Honor,” and it is the highest award given by the Vatican to the Laity.

When Aunt Kath received this award, she was asked to give remarks. Rising to the occasion, she declared by way of opening, “I greet you this evening with a joyful Alleluia to our God…..” Notice she did not say “to God” or “to my God;” she said “to our God.” He’s our Father, she reminded us. Get the family spirit.

I know Aunt Kath would not want me to carry on at too much length about these distinctions, which are, needless to say, richly deserved. But my familial pride in her is so great that in marking her milestone birthday, I feel I must express it in writing.

So let me put it this way: if I were among the needy of this world, I would want Aunt Kath looking out for me. And of course, at 40 years old, I know enough now to comprehend that in some ways, I am; and in every way, she is.

WHAT IF SOMEONE was to live each day as though everyone they encountered was part of their family? Kathleen Walsh’s first seventy years form a living answer to this question. May she live on for another seventy, filling the dining rooms, conference rooms, and vestibules of a lost world with her “joyful Alleluias.” For those of us wandering around that same world can always use her faithful love and prayers.

Black Sky Screaming

2011-05-02T06:02:00.003-04:00

A fiction inspired by Genesis 1:2 (KJV)
by Mutt Ploughman

IN THE BLACKNESS before dawn in a time when there is no dawn, here I coil, awaiting the Voice. If I were to trip into a crevasse in a firmament yet to materialize and tumble down through the flume of centuries, entering an age where there is a language to appropriate, I might describe myself as a presence, a formless entity, an ether.

No one will ever see me, but everyone shall know me, feel me, some will burn with me, even if they do not recognize me. Women will cry out with the knowledge of my pain; artists female and male will ache to impel me from within. But now, in this moment, I am alone.

When, only an instant ago, I learned there are Three of us, I tried to hold on to the feeling that knowledge stirred, so I can use it as a motivator for what I will soon be called to do, but too much time has passed. I cannot form a picture of the First, and the Second’s divine destiny is to lay in wait for a long time, until the moment is right. The First determines that. Although there are Three of us, and we are One, there is still a hierarchy. I do not dictate to the Voice when to speak. Instead I wait.

Though it does not yet exist, time has gotten away from me. I was sent out, or up, or down, to here, where I am to stand ready until further notice.

HERE I CROUCH, a dream of tomorrow, set just after yesterday. I am the great inhalation that immediately precedes the Voice.

I AM AWARE of two things only. One is darkness. The other is water. The face of the deep stares into mine; its gaze penetrates the black surrounding me.

I have no structure, I have no body, I have no walls, I have no lineaments. If I had veins, they would run not with blood, but with anticipation, in pure liquid form. I am undiluted potential; a gigantic amoeba of inclination; inertia at a standstill; the pregnant cloud before the Flood. I suspend just above the surface, so close I can feel the spray.

When I hear the Voice, I can imagine vividly what I will do! For I possess an imagination, or there would be no me. I do not only have an imagination, I am imagination—the Imagination. If I was not, these words would not be someday read and pondered, for I imagined a reader, all readers, long before the First will form the earliest of them out of the dirt. I had a vision that someday someone will have vision. Nothing will ever be realized without me, without what I am very soon to do. That is what I bring to the Three.

I become aware of a third entity, beyond myself and the waters. That is a noise: a continuous swell of noise, like a long cry, like a sustained scream. The noise rises from the throat of the dark. It climbs; it grows; increasing always, but never cresting, like a sky endlessly echoing its own limitlessness. I know what the scream is. It is rage: the rage of an immensity that understands that, in the end, a black sky is nothing more than a void, and a void is nothing. But I am a Spirit, not a void. A spirit becomes its proper self only when it rises.

I understand the rage; I sympathize with the dark. But to save it I must sabotage it. I will penetrate it; twist up in and then back down through it—down, down to the water. I have no heart, but I have love, and love can transform a void.

THAT LOVE THROBS.

I will plunge into that water. In so doing I will fling into perpetual revolution the wheel of an enormous mill, one that will churn through all the ages, that will siphon the waters into a long canal of time, pushing them downhill, onward, ever-forward. I will dive, arrowing blindly into the black depths, burrowing into the silence that the drowning of the sky’s scream leaves behind, knowing I am setting the precedent for all those beings, who will only come to exist in the first place because of what I am initiating, to one day follow.

Blessed am I that the First sees fit to deploy me in such a way as to spark an everlasting succession of quickfires, whose accumulating blaze will clarify his generous genius forever and ever!

The First knows, as much as he knows all, that I exist for the call of his Voice, that I have always anticipated it, that I will open the ears of the creatures he will create to answer it. For even though many will not know or acknowledge it, they too will exist for the same thing. Thus will he pour himself into me at the very moment he speaks with the Voice; he will plunge into me just as I plunge into that water, and down we both shall go.

But at some point, when we have submerged ourselves deeply enough into that soundlessness, he will redirect me, and I will shoot upwards again. I will rise. I will streak towards the surface with an urgency that is as incorrigible as it is inexpressible, that routs all other hungers.

This will be my bequest to every one of his creations who feels compelled to follow my wake. It will curl every potter’s fingers around lumps of clay; it will set every dancer’s feet into rhythmic step; it will promote every singer’s breath into song; it will lower every scribe’s hand to the white page.

We will rise to the surface together, all of us; rushing upward, where the screaming sky begs us to slice it, like the waters, wide open.

HERE I COIL, primed for the moment, any day now but here already, when the Voice issues its ecstatic command, Go.

Introducing "10 Spot": All That You Can't Leave Behind

2011-04-27T12:44:00.000-04:00

Duke Altum here once again, and this time I'm laying down the gauntlet for Mutt with a fun challenge... readers, you can play along at home!

Everyone loves lists. Even moreso, everyone loves the proverbial "desert island" lists - in which you are forced to make hard choices and choose, to steal from U2, "all that you can't leave behind" in a certain category. Well we've never really made those lists here, and I thought it might be fun to try it.

I'm calling this series "10 Spot." Each one will highlight a different category. The object is simple: pretend you're going off to a desert island forever. You are allowed to bring 10 _____, and that's all you're ever going to have. What would they be? What are the absolute essential works you couldn't live without?? We'll cover novels, short story collections, non-fiction books, films and albums.

I'm going to post my entry, and I fully expect Mutt to follow up with his. (That's right Mutt. I'm calling you out - publicly!) Not a lot of commentary on these lists, because we do plenty of that as it is and actually, we've probably commented in these pages on most of these selections in one way or another already.

So, since no further introduction is needed, we begin with our first 10 Spot: Albums.

Here's my list of 10 records I would be happy to listen to over and over in perpetuity (in no particular order):

1. Chase the Buffalo, Pierce Pettis

2. Tunnel of Love, Bruce Springsteen

3. Darkness on the Edge of Town, Bruce Springsteen

4. Wrecking Ball, Emmylou Harris

5. Blister Soul, Vigilantes of Love

6. The Joshua Tree, U2

7. Oh Mercy, Bob Dylan

8. Clutching at Straws, Marillion

9. The Very Best of, The Pogues

10. Symphony #9, Beethoven

Sold Down the River

2011-03-05T06:27:00.003-05:00

Excerpt from the "May" chapter of my book in progress, Forever Voyaging: A Writer's Year-Long Adventure with Herman Melville.

THE NEXT BOOK I READ was the last full novel Herman Melville ever wrote, entitled The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade (1857). [Biographer] Laurie Robertson-Lorant described this novel as a “funhouse whose mirrors reveal human character as inconsistent, unscrupulous, and unreliable,” but also called it “a tour-de-force of topical satire and teleological razzle-dazzle.” If you’re not really sure what the hell that even means, welcome to this portion of Forever Voyaging. You will feel right at home.

It seems fitting that this novel had to do with hucksterism, shady dealings, deception, and disillusionment. I can assure the reader that my grasp of the book floated on the same route as the fortunes of all the suckers in this novel, literally sold down the river. Of the two Melville works of fiction that I struggled with mightily during my experiment – this book and his final novella, Billy Budd, Sailor – The Confidence-Man is the one I found the most baffling. I admit here and now that from the point of view of astute literary criticism, I am not the man for the job. But then I am fairly sure I will have long lost those readers who were seeking as much in the first place.

No, I probably will raise far more questions than provide answers about this unique and erratic novel. Indeed, one could argue that The Confidence-Man can hardly be called a novel at all. Our old friend Professor Bill Spengemann, featured in the last chapter, took this idea further and made the case that Melville didn’t really write any novels – Typee and Omoo were travelogues, Redburn was a memoir in hiding, Moby-Dick more of a biological treatise. I don’t know if I agree with the professor, but I can accept that The Confidence-Man seems to lack some of the ingredients that normally flavor a novel’s broth.

It has no discernable “plot,” for one. It has neither an easily identifiable narrator, nor a single protagonist the reader can get behind. It contains very little exposition, but is, rather, related mostly through dialogue. One reviewer described the book in this way: “a novel it is not, unless a novel means forty-five conversations held on board a steamer, conducted by passengers who might pass for the errata of creation.” I am not sure if I can articulate what “the errata of creation” refers to, but the fact that the reviewer steered so far from using the word “characters” in his description is telling enough.

The Confidence-Man seems to hearken back to an experience Melville had had twenty years earlier, when he travelled west for a time with a friend of his named Eli Fly. They had made their way out as far as the Rocky Mountains, but at one point they took a trek in a steamboat heading south down the Mississippi. Melville later published an account of this journey in Putnam’s Monthly Magazine. One gets the impression that Melville and Fly had the opportunity to meet and/or observe a lot of colorful characters on that one ride – people that stuck in the former’s mind, at least, long enough to be memorialized in his final novel. Not all of those characters would have been reputable. Indeed, there was a well-known book in this period of history called The Flash Times of Alabama and Mississippi by a man named Joseph Baldwin, containing the general observation of the times that “swindling was raised to the dignity of the fine arts.”

At the outset of the story, a “lamb-like man” in “cream colors” and “unaccompanied by friends” boards a riverboat, soon to head south down the Mississippi River, ironically named the Fidèle. (Interestingly enough, Melville at one point employs the phrase “great white bulk” to describe the boat; the reader cannot help but wonder if this was intended as a “wink-wink” reference to his own masterpiece, Moby-Dick.) We are never given much information on who this unnamed man is, but when he steps on board, he passes underneath a placard hung on the wall offering a reward for the capture of “a mysterious imposter, supposed to have recently arrived from the East.” This is enough to at least suggest less-than-honorable intentions on the part of the stranger without saying as much directly. Meanwhile, nearby, as the new passenger climbs on, the boat’s barber, William Cream (!), is just in the act of hanging up a sign of his own outside the door of his shop. The sign reads NO TRUST.

When I came across these opening lines, it led me to make an interesting association that may owe its existence to nothing more than coincidence. But the description of the man’s clothing as being in “cream colors” for me brought immediately to mind a passing stranger without a backstory in a very different novel that was written and published almost exactly one century later. A key incident near the conclusion of the great American novelist Flannery O’Connor’s 1960 novel The Violent Bear It Away (also her last) concerns the arrival from out of nowhere of a drifter, a passing stranger who picks up the story’s young protagonist, Francis Marion Tarwater, on a country road and ends up taking reprehensible advantage of him. I remembered from reading the novel a few times that O’Connor described this man as driving a “cream-colored car.” Both of these men appear outfitted, in a sense, in these “cream” tones – close to an ironic white – and neither has honorable intentions.

It may seem a tenuous connection at best, and yet it is a somewhat peculiar color with which to describe either a suit or a car. I also knew that O’Connor was steeped enough in Melville’s work to make mention of him in her letters on occasion and in lectures she made to college students during the 1950s and 60s. It’s interesting to consider the possibility of whether O’Connor had any thought of Melville or of The Confidence-Man while she wrote her own final novel.

Regardless, once this nefarious wanderer, who may or may not be wanted on criminal charges, steps aboard the Fidèle, he joins a stream of salesmen and charlatans who seem to have no other purpose for being there, or for traveling anywhere, other than to try to hawk things off on others. Gaining people’s confidence only to double-cross them was, in Robertson-Lorant’s analysis, “Amerca’s national pastime.” Throughout the length of the boat’s journey down the river, everyone is selling something: shares in “World Charity;” stock in the “Black Rapids Coal Company;” real estate in a development called “New Jerusalem;” quick medicines such as “Omni-Balsamic Reinvigorator” or my personal favorite, “Samaritan Pain Dissuader;” even a fantastical invention called “the Protean easy chair.” There is even one man on board the vessel who claims to be an “agent” of the rather dubious but wonderfully-named outfit called the “Philosophical Intelligence Office.”

In setting his tale on board a boat traveling its meandering way downriver towards an unknown destination – perhaps “destiny” is a better word – Melville joined himself to a storytelling tradition that was not new, but it was in the process of inserting itself into the American literary heritage. It will be hard to read Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885) again, for example – not to mention his Life on the Mississippi – without thinking of The Confidence-Man, even though the storylines are dissimilar. William Faulkner wrote his own tale centered around a motley crew gathered together on a boat in his second novel, Mosquitoes (1927). Although not written by an American, there are times when Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1902) resembles Melville’s earlier book, especially near the end. Even today some adventurous novelists are still recalling the dead-and-gone era of steamboats, in overlooked novels such as Tim Gautreaux’s The Missing (2009), and the great and essentially Melvillean writer Stephen Wright’s dazzling Civil War novel The Amalgamation Polka (2006), which will receive separate attention later in this book.

With regard to the title of the The Confidence-Man, when I went into the novel I was prepared to believe that Melville was the first guy to use the term “confidence man,” and thus could be given credit for just about every story that came after with “con man” or “con artists” in it. But the truth is that he did not come up with it, as I learned through Melville’s esteemed biographers. In 1855, there were many stories appearing in American newspapers nationwide about a man named “William Thomson,” who traveled around the country swindling people every which way he could, and referred to himself using more than a dozen aliases. Melville had long taken an interest in hucksters and hucksterism; another fascination of his was P.T. Barnum, whose career Melville paid attention to throughout his lifetime. One resourceful New York journalist referred to the ubiquitous Mr. Thomson in an article as a “confidence-man,” and for whatever unknown reason, the term arrowed itself into the American lexicon.

Certainly around the time The Confidence-Man was written, there was a kind of bum-rush in America towards every kind of “get rich” scheme imaginable. It is a craze that has never really waned ever since; anyone suffering from insomnia, or who has had an infant under their care, and has surfed the television channels after midnight can attest to this. Of course, many conservative-types of Melville’s day – people like his rigidly straitlaced mother, for example – saw this as indisputable evidence of the start of a monumental moral decline in the United States. One could certainly advance an argument for this, but the decline would have to be characterized as a long and slow one that does not seem to be getting close to the bottom even today.

If none of this seems all that intriguing or even very original, I would point out to the reader that while The Confidence-Man is hard to characterize as a riveting read, it does seems to be more than just a “this place is going to hell in a handcart” kind of rant. Melville was too powerful of a thinker and too curious an explorer to simply wring his hands over the course of a 300-page novel about how he saw his country going to seed. It seems clear that his motives and intentions ran deeper, but articulating why this is so or how I know is a more complicated enterprise. I can explain it by saying it is a sense one gets while reading the novel, which is true, but it’s probably not sufficient for me to leave it there.

Even though most of the novel is related in other people’s voices – and where there is narration, the tone is like a documentary voice-over, from the point of view of an observer – one does not get an impression of particular detachment on the part of the author. Melville does not write this story in the journalistic or even diagnostic tone that he had written books like Israel Potter in, with anything related to himself far removed. The Confidence-Man feels like a novel written by a man who is deeply embroiled in the world he is creating. I don’t mean that literally, of course. Melville didn’t actually write the book from the cabin of a riverboat, recording all the sights and sounds. Yet one can almost hear the writer’s unanswered questions rattling off in an unknown voice behind every page of the book.

Even though Israel Potter had sold decently – not briskly, as none of Melville’s books had been literal best-sellers, with Typee coming the closest – it had not brought Melville the esteem he felt he had earned by this stage in his career, and it certainly did not help him to transcend his mounting financial challenges. When you read about his life, in what is clear to us now as the twilight of his career as a fiction writer (with the final exception of Billy Budd), you realize that it was around this time when Meville began to lose heart. At least in terms of writing stories, his spirit and his confidence seemed to be on the cusp of a precipitous slide.

This may be one reason why the novel fails to compel the way earlier books like Mardi and Moby-Dick, and Typee as well, were able to. If you were stuck outside on a winter’s night with insufficient protection from the elements, but carrying with you a copy of Mardi or Moby-Dick by some random happenstance, you could lay these books on the turf in front of you and warm your hands by the fire continuously engulfing them. If you only had The Confidence-Man with you and no gloves, you would need to keep hunting for shelter.

It’s not easy to tell why Melville’s mood shifted so much between his writing of Israel Potter and The Confidence-Man, which were, after all, only a couple of years apart. But I feel like I can understand it on some level. There’s only so long a writer can continue to write new and interesting stories if she feels as though none of her writings are being appreciated or even read. She may become overwhelmed by a sense that, no matter how much she challenges herself or changes direction, if no one reads her work, all of that effort has amounted to nothing. And each story she writes takes something out of her; each requires its own pound of flesh. There is a limit to how much flesh a writer can pony up without expecting something in return, and if that never comes, something will have to give.

I get this. I had been writing fiction for twenty years, and had come up with many stories, a few pretty good ones, but since no one had ever agreed to publish one up through 2010, I was feeling a lot like this myself. At some point, no matter how much the writer believes in himself, doubt creeps in. Will anyone, ever, give a shit about what I have to say? Do I even have anything to say? Perhaps I have spent twenty years saying what has already been said a billion times before. Do I have a voice, or not? This is a question that no one this side of heaven can definitively answer.

I believe that this profound quandary was what another esteemed but troubled American novelist, Ernest Hemingway, was talking about when he wrote in his brief acceptance of the 1954 Nobel Prize for Literature that “if he’s a good enough writer, he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.” I think Melville certainly felt the weight of this challenge the more that he wrote. In my reading, The Confidence-Man reflects his increasing frustration, after all the work he had done hunting the leviathan of ultimate truth and understanding, at being no closer to finding answers.

(c) 2011 by Jude Joseph Lovell

"The Fields of Memory"

2011-02-13T08:47:00.004-05:00

There are several passages within the slim 200 pages comprising Paul Harding’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Tinkers that describe the inner workings of old clocks. Harding’s beautifully spare prose reveals these elegant machines to be intricate, precise constructions that, though clearly made by human hands, are able to contain and convey to us a great mystery – the passage of time.

One could apply the very same description to this extraordinary debut novel. A work of art that is obviously the product of meticulous and careful thinking, multi-layered and complex, every little word and phrase (like the tiny brass springs and screws inside the aforementioned clocks) the exactly right choice for its job… and yet, somehow, the whole transcends the sum of its parts to convey profound truths and fearful mysteries. Nothing less than death, the fragile bonds between fathers and sons (and how these complicated relationships echo and ripple across multiple generations), and yes, the passage of time are among those mysteries that readers of Tinkers will confront in original and profoundly satisfying ways.

Before I go any further, I want to emphasize that this is not my “review” of Harding’s novel. On many levels, I do not feel either worthy or qualified to criticize this book (or any other for that matter), but the most relevant reason for now is that, having only just finished my first reading of it, I honestly feel I have barely dipped my toe into the virtual lake of mysteries the novel has opened up within my mind. Tinkers invites and compels you to dive headlong into deep waters indeed. Undoubtedly, the fact that I am both a father and a son, and more specifically, the son of an octogenarian man who is ailing and near the end of his life, all contribute to the deep emotional resonance this novel had for me. But even if that were not the case, I find it hard to fathom that anyone who appreciates meditative and humanistic fiction would not be at the very least impressed, if not profoundly moved, by what Harding has accomplished here.

One of the most interesting and, for a total book nerd like me, exciting aspects of Tinkers is its unusual and intricate structure. I know from interviews I have heard with Harding that he was steeped in the work of the American transcendentalists (particularly Emerson and Thoreau) as well as theologians like Barth and Tillich while writing the book, but I have to wonder if he isn’t also deeply familiar with the great Confessions of St. Augustine as well. I am no expert on the latter classic, but I can’t forget its fascinating, extended meditations on time and memory – and this entire novel feels like it almost belongs if not on the same shelf, at least in the same library as those profound chapters.

The novel’s conceit is to give us the final hours of a man’s life – but we experience them both from the inside (that is, from inside his mind, we “hear” the man’s thoughts as he has them) and from the outside (we are with his family as they hold vigil over him and care for his needs as his life slowly expires). But the dying man’s thoughts are almost exclusively of his own father and his life, and so Harding gives us as a kind of parallel narrative the life story of the dying man’s father, in a different time and place. So we experience the bond between a father and son in a unique and, at times, almost painfully intimate way. For theirs was a relationship that never got to be completed, and the father’s absence throughout the majority of the dying man’s life has obviously made an impact he will carry literally to the grave (and maybe beyond?).

So there’s a kind of “wheels within wheels” structure at work here that is interesting and, because the “wheels” are made of the stuff of time and memory and family and heartache, poignant as well. There is plenty of emotionally complex material already to create an interesting novel. But Harding doesn’t leave it there. In the sections of the book in which we learning about the dying man’s father, we become vividly aware of the issues he had with HIS own father, an eccentric but loving Methodist minister. We see how the ripples emanate outward from one man’s life into another’s, and into another’s… the Bible says something about “the sins of the fathers” being passed down to their sons across multiple generations, but Harding makes sure that we understand that there are graces to be inherited as well through this tenuous but vital connection.

As if all of that weren’t thought-provoking enough, Harding also gives us lengthy passages (and this is an amazing feat of the imagination in itself) from a wholly fictitious treatise by a 19^th-century horologist and minister about the inner workings of clocks. The central character (the dying man) repaired clocks as part of his life’s work, and we can assume that these passages are from a book he once owned. What particularly impressed me about this device is that by making this imagined author a minister, it gives Harding – who is clearly fascinated by the great philosophical and theological conundrums – a chance to speculate about the similarities between the mechanics of clock machinery and the inherent order of the universe, and muse about what the human inclination to measure time might tell us about our inner yearning for the Divine.

I don’t want to reveal too many more details, because if someone reading this post hasn’t yet discovered Harding’s exquisite book, I will be doing them a disservice if I do. I would truly hate to rob anyone of the memorable experience of reading Tinkers, and reveal the strange wonders they will encounter on nearly every page. I haven’t even gotten into the stark, poetic descriptions of New England’s fearsome beauty during the frozen winter months; the nightmarish clarity of Harding’s accounts of one character’s epileptic seizures (sometimes described by the epileptic himself, sometimes from those observing him!?!); the moving passages about married love and the compassion of those who serve the bedside needs of the dying. There is even a cameo appearance (of sorts) from a very famous American writer, during an amusing and dream-like diversion involving one of the main characters and a wizened old hermit living in mysterious seclusion, deep in the woods.

Tinkers is a book I won't be getting over any time soon. It has been lingering powerfully in my mind (and in deeper places, the heart perhaps) since I read the last line. I don’t think I’ve fully processed its impact on me, and I know I can’t say I fully grasp its meaning. I doubt very much, actually, that there is one “meaning.” The book is going to mean something very different for everyone who reads it – as I suppose is true of any book worth the sheets it’s printed on. But a book like this one, which attempts to plumb the depths of those mysteries we all grapple with every day as human beings, and which confront us with increasing urgency as we get closer to our own day of reckoning – a book like this becomes a very personal, subjective experience. It will no doubt reward, and even demand, subsequent readings. I can say this for sure: it is going to get a few from me. And I am grateful to Mr. Harding for using his abundant gifts of thought and expression to provide us all with such rich and thought-provoking material to “take and read.”

A Battle to the Death

2011-01-27T07:46:00.003-05:00

This excerpt from the draft of Forever Voyaging, my book on Herman Melville, takes on the three-day epic battle that concludes the classic novel Moby-Dick. There's a lot of work yet to do on it, but here's an example of what I'm trying to do. I hope it is enjoyed.....

IT IS A DISSERVICE to those among us who many not have read Moby-Dick to lay out everything that occurs in those three days of combat. Although I do find it hard to imagine that someone would read the current book, the one you hold, without having experienced the wonder of the novel in question. However, I must allow for the possibility that this unorthodox reader exists, and thus proceed without revealing too much. After all, Melville has already told the story better than I can.

Nonetheless, in each of the three days that conclude Moby-Dick, something astonishing happens that must be experienced to be fully understood. And Melville, to his eternal credit, draws the reader into those experiences as skillfully as anyone ever has.

The first day begins the hunt without a trace of caution or hesitation. As soon as Moby Dick is seen spouting above the surface, an epic contest ensues.

Suddenly as he peered down and down into its depths, he profoundly saw a white living spot no bigger than a white weasel, with wonderful celerity uprising, and magnifying as it rose, till it turned, and then were plainly revealed two long crooked rows of white, glistening teeth, floating up from the undiscoverable bottom. It was Moby Dick’s open mouth and scrolled jaw … the glittering mouth yawned beneath the boat like an open-doored marble tomb.

With this amazing but terrifying image, Melville quickly establishes the tone for the entire hunt. It is unquestionably a fight to the death – someone will not survive the contest. Right from Day One, Ahab leads from the front, we notice, since he is himself standing in the small boat that Moby Dick is coming up under as depicted above. As soon as the White Whale was sighted, Ahab ordered the boats dropped, and assumed his place in the lead vessel, taking the fight straight to his enemy.

The second time I read Moby-Dick, I tried to picture myself in what amounts to little more than a rowboat alongside Captain Ahab, peering over the side, and seeing that huge white leviathan’s open jaws ascending straight out of the dark waters to drag me to my fate. I don’t know what I would have done, but it almost certainly would not have been what Ahab does in the novel by way of response. From this first direct encounter until the end of the third day, Ahab provides indisputable evidence of both his outright insanity and his extraordinary courage.

When Moby Dick finally emerges from below with his jaws gaping, he immediately brings them down across the middle of the skiff and cleaves the entire thing into two separate parts in one massive bite. But even while he is doing so, Ahab physically apprehends the whale’s lower jaw with his bare hands and attempts in vain to prevent the whale from cutting the vessel in two. Needless to say his efforts to protect the boat fail, and in the process Ahab loses the wooden leg that replaced the original limb he had lost to Moby Dick in the first place.

Ahab has proven his mettle right away, and the crew witnesses his fearlessness. But they also take note of his obsession, which, it is becoming increasingly clear, will certainly lead to their own violent deaths. Once again Starbuck – who may have thought of himself as the voice of the other men, or the voice of basic reason, or both – attempts to get Ahab to recognize the grave danger he is carelessly courting in his quest to defeat Moby Dick by identifying the cloven boat as an “omen.” Ahab dismisses this notion right away with disdain, and even a kind of machismo:

Omen? Omen? … if the gods think to speak outright to man, they will honorably speak outright; not shake their heads, and give an old wives’ darkling hint …. Ahab stands alone among the millions of the peopled earth; nor gods nor men his neighbors.

Starbuck must certainly understand with these words that his own battle, to expose to Ahab the fatal folly of his obsession, has been lost. Ahab forges on without any thought of reversal. Before the next morning dawns he has ordered the ship’s carpenter to fashion for him another wooden leg from the very planks of the boat Moby Dick has destroyed.

Moby Dick vanishes as the sun sets on the first day, but Ahab is sure the whale will not go far, and so the crew follows after him with the remaining boats. Sure enough, on the morning of the second day, he is seen breaking the surface in the near distance. Ahab immediately renews the fight, declaring, “Breach your last to the sun, Moby Dick. Thy hour and thy harpoon are at hand!” One has their doubts that Ahab has gotten a whole lot of sleep in the intervening night, but he seems to be drawing his maniacal strength from some nether, unfathomable source.

Then, on the second day but before they actually fall into combat again, Melville depicts a phenomenon that sailed right past me the first time I read the novel – or at least I had little memory of it. But the second time it struck me with full force how unbelievable this action alone must have been to observe. What happens is that Moby Dick, presumably in a show of force, draws near the Pequod and its boats while beneath the surface, and then he “breaches.”

Breaching, as described in the novel, is when the whale leaps “salmon-like to heaven” out of the water. Melville’s choice of language here is helpful, because most of us have probably seen still or moving images (if not in person) of that particular fish jumping up out of a river as the rapids rush downhill over rocks. The whole fish comes up out of the foam, and for a moment we are graced by the beauty and wonder of its muscular, shimmering form thrashing through the air in a manner that almost has the feel of a performance rather than of a raw display of nature. Then, in the next instant, the fish has dived back into the rapids and is gone on the rest of its journey.

The same leap is executed by Moby Dick on day two of this great hunt, right next to the Pequod and all of its men. What is so amazing and terrifying about this war-dance? The reader need only remember this: a male sperm whale averages about sixty feet in length and weighs between forty and sixty tons. Again, when you place yourself inside one of these small boats chasing after the whale, or standing on the deck of the Pequod, the full impact of this demonstration begins to dawn on you.

This is one of those cases where a classic work of literature, or work of art in general, pays a significant return to the reader (or consumer) who is willing to make an investment of imagination in the work. When people say that a great novel gives back to the reader what they put into it, the comment refers to moments like this one. You have to apply yourself in order to visualize the sheer astonishment of a massive white sperm whale, with its brow wrinkled and its form pincushioned with steel harpoons trailing blood-slickened hemp threads, leaping with unbridled force out of the great blue sea. But after you have done so, the image is seared into your mind forevermore.

If there was any need of a kind of turning point in my second reading of Moby-Dick’s final drama, this moment, and the onscreen visual it generated in my mind’s eye, was that occasion for me. Although I was all in with Moby-Dick before, for numerous reasons that I have been seeking to put into words in the last two chapters, from this point on I was utterly swept away by the sheer momentum of the duel being played out between Captain Ahab and the white whale. Before the second day has seen the red curtain descend upon it, Moby Dick has launched another offensive, again dashing its “broad forehead” against Ahab’s small boat, sending it “turning over and over” through the open air.

In a contest with these stakes, the crazed and God-bothered Captain Ahab (“Is it I, God, or who that lifts this arm?” he asks of no one in Chapter 132, “The Symphony”) understands clearly the critical nature of the third day. Indeed, on the evening of the second day of the hunt, Ahab prophesies with terrifying assuredness, “Two days he has floated – tomorrow will be the third. Aye, men, he’ll rise once more, – but only to spout his last.”

Here the reader may well congratulate himself or herself – after all this build-up, here they finally are, about to pay witness to this final end. And I can only say further that this last day of battle seems to play out exactly in the way that it must. Indeed, Melville crafts this ultimate clash in such a way that the reader coming into it for the first time – finally arriving at the actual moment on day three that decides once and for all who wins this duel, man or whale – understands and fully accepts, as soon as that moment is reached, that it was, is, and even always shall be, the only possible way for such a contest to conclude.

One gets the feeling from these chapters that Melville was a conduit for some greater, far more comprehensive human story, being inscribed through his calloused hands. This intangible sense one encounters while reading the novel is what really elevates Moby-Dick. To agree that this occurs in the novel, or to even stipulate its possibility, is to grasp that an artist in the correct moment can harness powers far beyond normal human capability. In my understanding, this is achieved only through the Grace of God. But I also believe a writer cannot arrive at a moment like this by accident, or with any ease whatsoever. He must labor towards it his entire life, from infancy. Thus, he who accomplishes such a thing earns it.

Again: here does Moby Dick himself, expressed in the stunning power of a gift with language manfully harnessed and directed, thrust himself into battle one last time, against Ahab, the Pequod, and its entire crew:

Retribution, swift vengeance, eternal malice were in his whole aspect, and spite of all that mortal man could do, the solid white buttress of his forehead smote the ship’s starboard bow, till men and timbers reeled.

Here, finally – following that crushing blow against himself, his men, and his ship – does Ahab rise up in his small boat with harpoon poised, stare straight into the very eye of his enemy, and give Moby Dick everything he can muster:

“Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee. Sink all coffins and curses to one common pool! and since neither can be mine, let me then tow to pieces, while still chasing thee, though tied to thee, thou damned whale! Thus, I give up the spear!”

I plan to return to these stirring final words of Melville’s legendary creation once more before this book is complete. But for now I hope I have made myself plain about the power of Moby-Dick – simply by providing samples of Melville’s astonishing words. This epic stand-off is a battle like no other inside a uniquely American masterpiece that can never be replicated or imitated.

Moby-Dick leaves a reader to breathlessly inquire of him or herself: when the real contest arrives for me, when my life reaches its most critical crucible, will I have the courage to stand up and greet it the way Captain Ahab does, come what might? Will I have the strength to “give up the spear?”

(c) 2011 by Jude Joseph Lovell

Duke Altum's Best Films of the Year - 2010 (with one cheat)

2011-01-11T10:28:00.003-05:00

Here are the best movies I saw this past year, along with one cheat (a TV show) because it truly deserves to be listed among any accounting of my favorite viewing experiences of 2010. In fact, if I had to choose the single most valuable viewing experience that I had this year, it would definitely be watching through the entire series of The Wire. Hands down.

But now, on to the list, which is written out here in no particular order:

*******

Mother, directed by Bong-Joon Ho (2009)

What it’s about: A mother who lives alone with her mentally disabled adult son goes to great extreme lengths to defend his innocence when he is charged with the murder of a local teenage girl. The police take the path of least resistance by pinning the crime on him, as he was witnessed with the girl earlier in the evening – but his mother, whose relationship with her boy is complicated (to put it mildly), is fanatically determined to take justice into her own hands.

Why it made the list: Bong Joon-Ho (The Host, Memories of Murder) makes films of impeccable artistry and is a master of mixing moods – in most of his movies you will be horrified or tense in one scene, and then laughing at the slapstick-style comedy in the next. All of that applies here, but what really makes this one memorable is its portrayal of fierce, bordering on unhealthy, maternal love and loyalty, brought to life with gut-wrenching power in the superb and unsettling lead performance by the popular Korean TV actress Hye-Ja Kim. She owns every frame of this movie, including the brilliant and unforgettable bookend scenes. It’s probably my performance of the year (for the ones I’ve seen).

What surprised/stayed with me: The aforementioned ‘bookend’ – first and last – scenes of this movie, which I shouldn’t describe for anyone who hasn’t seen it, but are baffling, beautiful and boldly enigmatic all at the same time. Wide open to interpretation, but presented with Bong Joon-Ho’s inimitable technical skills and visual inventiveness.

Winter’s Bone, directed by Debra Granik (2010)

What it’s about: A harsh, gripping thriller set in the rural Ozarks, in which a teenage girl is determined to find her missing father (deeply in debt and involved in dealing and cooking meth) and bring him to court in order to keep her family’s home from being confiscated. She must contend with both the local law, looking for her runaway Dad, and her even more menacing and insular family who will stop at nothing to keep his activities secret – even from a blood relative.

Why it made the list: For a relatively young and obscure director, it’s amazing how well made, atmospheric and tense this movie is from start to finish. Filmed on location using many local residents without formal acting training, this movie reeks of authenticity and sustains a slow-boiling sense of danger throughout. It also boasts superb acting, especially from relative unknown Jennifer Lawrence in the lead role and the magnificent character actor John Hawkes, who embodies intimidation and menace as her strung-out, dangerously volatile (and yet weirdly empathetic) uncle Teardrop.

What surprised/stayed with me: The dark beauty of the setting, combined with the unshakable sense of bad, bad things lurking just underneath the surface in every shot of this film. We’re not talking light comedy here, but if you appreciate natural cinematography and sustained atmosphere in a movie, and enjoy noir-type thrillers, add Winter’s Bone to your list as soon as you can.

Monsters, directed by Gareth Edwards (2010)

What it’s about: A satellite that was sent out by the U.S. to investigate possible life forms in a distant corner of space has crashed back to Earth, “infecting” a huge portion of Central America with large, tentacled aliens that no one knows quite how to handle. But that’s just the backdrop to a surprisingly intimate and realistic (given the sci-fi trappings, and marketing, of the film!?) love story between a young woman stranded in the infected zone, and the freelance photographer who has been hired by her wealthy father to find and bring her back home.

Why it made the list: It ain’t for the title, which is spectacularly misleading – although there are some impressive digital effects on display here and there, and a stunning climactic sequence involving two of the alien creatures communicating on some level with one another. What I admire most about this movie is its originality and the boldness of its (first-time!) director to flout convention and make what is in essence a quiet, meditative relationship movie with inventive science fiction elements thrown into the mix. It’s an unusual combination that some would find off-putting, but that I found fresh and interesting.

What surprised/stayed with me: The ending is beautiful to look at but incredibly enigmatic and open to various interpretations – the kind of ending you’re thinking and debating about for a long time afterwards, which I always find impressive in a film. Also, you have to give Gareth Edwards a lot of credit for not only directing, but also writing the story and creating all of the special effects on his own laptop – none of which he had ever done before. It’s a hugely impressive achievement for this DIY filmmaker.

Inglourious Basterds, directed by Quentin Tarantino (2009)

What it’s about: Basically, the assassination of Adolf Hitler as imagined by the sui generis, film-saturated mind of Quentin Tarantino. A group of Jewish-American soldiers, using Apache warrior techniques and led by a blood-crazed Tennessee redneck, go “hunting Nazis” in Germany, while Hitler’s personally assigned “Jew Hunter” SS officer pursues his own grisly mandate. Meanwhile, a young woman whose family was murdered by said SS officer concocts an ingenious revenge plot of her own, involving the movie theater she owns and operates.

Why it made the list: There’s a TON to admire about this film, not the least of which are its stunning cinematic flair, totally original combination of genres and plot elements (which could only come from one human being alive right now) and a superb performance from Christoph Waltz as the “Jew Hunter” Hans Landa (believe the hype – this guy is incredible from the moment he steps on screen). But what I love most about it is the uninhibited imaginative brio and love of cinema that permeates every single frame of this wild, exuberant, overstuffed film. Tarantino ain’t subtle (though his dialog and camera movements can be surprisingly sophisticated – the first scene is a graduate course in slowly building tension to an almost unbearable level), but his films are full of raucous energy and spilling over with invention – and in that regard, I found myself tipping my hat despite myself at his hilariously cheeky last line: “This might just be my masterpiece.” Sounds ridiculously arrogant, but when you see it in context, you can’t help but laugh… and, I have to say, marvel.

What surprised/stayed with me: The incredibly skillful filmmaking throughout (especially in key scenes, such as the justly famous beginning in the farmhouse or the “bar scene”) and the emotion of the girl Shosanna’s subplot, both of which can be easily overshadowed by the wild gunplay, cinematic verve and towering figure of Hans Landa. Also, Brad Pitt’s purposely cartoonish performance as Lt. Aldo Rayne, which drew fire from some critics but I found to be pitch-perfect in its absurd comedy and exaggeration.

The Good, The Bad, The Weird, directed by Kim Ji-woon (2008)

What it’s about: Take the plot of Sergio Leone’s classic The Good, The Bad and The Ugly and transplant it to Manchuria somewhere around the 1930’s (vaguely), and you’ve got Kim Ji-Woon’s rip-roaring take on spaghetti westerns. Involves Koreans, Chinese and Japanese goons all in a chase to find a lost treasure and eliminate those who might aspire to find it first.

Why it made the list: It seemed impossible for any movie I saw this year to be even more over-the-top, ambitious and visually insane than Tarantino’s, but this one might just be the one! Some of the action sequences in this movie are among the craziest (in a good way) I have ever seen, and how people and/or animals weren’t seriously maimed in the making I really have no idea. The camera literally swoops (at times) through scenes in this movie like a panicked bird, trying to find a way to safety amidst the utter and explosive chaos. In short, this is the movie to show to the most seasoned action movie fan you can think of, and exclaim, “See if you can find anything that tops this!!”

What surprised/stayed with me: Besides the jaw-dropping, “I can’t believe I just saw that” quality of virtually every action sequence in this film, what surprises is that many of the actors, especially those playing “The Bad” and “The Weird,” deliver memorable and hilariously over-the-top performances that really add to the movie. They look like they are having a blast, which is just another layer of fun heaped on to this thoroughly enjoyable, immensely entertaining “kimchee Western.”

Hunger, directed by Steve McQueen (2008)

What it’s about: The final days of the imprisonment of Bobby Sands and his fellow Irish patriots, including their infamous hunger strike, are depicted in this totally uncompromising, brutal and yet beautifully shot film made by the British visual artist Steve McQueen.

Why it made the list: I’ll say right off that this one is a really tough watch. It does not flinch – ever – in its depiction of human violence and cruelty, whether it be that of the British prison guards towards the Irish rebels they see as no better than vermin, or that of an Irish terrorist gunning down a British official in the middle of a flowered parlor in a nursing home. But if you can make it through the beatings and feces smearing of the first third, you should – because the second act, a long scene of dialog between Sands (a stunning Michael Fassbender) and his priest (Liam Cunningham, holding his own) shot all in one take, is an amazing tour de force of acting. And the last third, in which Sands slowly starves to death, is the visual equivalent of a dream-like trance, filmed with great beauty and almost no dialog at all. If you appreciate the craft of moviemaking, you will find plenty to admire in Hunger.

What surprised/stayed with me: Everyone who’s seen this comments on it, but it’s that second act – the long scene of dialog back and forth that feels like you’re watching a stage play. It’s a fascinating verbal sparring match between Sands and his priest about the morality of dying for a cause, and whether it will ultimately mean anything. It sounds boring when written about on paper but you are glued to the screen when it plays out. It’s a brilliant one-act play sandwiched between a searing prison drama and a visual poem about dying. Bring the popcorn!!

A Serious Man, directed by Joel & Ethan Coen (2009)

What it’s about: A modern retelling of the Job story (in a way), in which a mild-mannered Jewish physics professor and family man in 1960’s suburban Minnesota searches for meaning and significance in his life, while various personal calamities (his wife leaving him for another, more “Able man”; a student trying to bribe him; his brother living out of his family room) tempt him to despair and hopelessness.

Why it made the list: One of two Coen Brothers films that made the list, actually… I suppose it goes without saying that their films are always flawlessly made. Now whether you like the stories they tell is something else, but technically and artistically their movies are always fabulous. No exception here. For me this movie is a fascinating, and in some ways surprisingly personal, expression of some very deep and poignant philosophical theme… what makes a life valuable? What is the point of suffering? Is there any meaning to anything that happens to us, or are we just supposed to simply do our best with whatever comes our way? Yes, the main character suffers a lot and the ending is furiously enigmatic. But it’s also hilarious throughout – and you didn’t expect pat answers or tidy endings from the Coens, did you?

What surprised/stayed with me: This one’s easy for anyone who’s seen the movie – how about that opening scene? The way the Jewish folk tale (incredibly, one born of their own imaginations and not simply lifted from Yiddish lore!) perfectly presents and mirrors the themes of the film that follows it, and yet exists in a completely different time and context, is pure genius. Gives the entire film a metaphysical layer that you’re reminded of again in the final, baffling shot… these bookend scenes left me scratching my head for days.

House (Hausu), directed by Nobuhiko Obayashi (1977)

What it’s about: Wow… how to describe this one. A gaggle of schoolgirls go to visit one of their aunts, who lives alone in the country in a strange, old house. To say that the house is possessed, and that weird things ensue, would be an understatement of staggering proportions.

Why it made the list: Easy – it’s in a class entirely by itself. There is no way to describe or prepare anyone for what this movie throws at you, which is everything (and it goes without saying that none of it makes a shred of sense). A surreal experimental horror-comedy with splashes of Italian giallo, Sam Raimi-style effects and pure Japanese weirdness thrown into the stew, this movie is probably for die-hard genre film fans only… but if you enjoy crazy, slap-sticky horror and relish the challenge to watch something totally indescribable, you will get a real kick out of house. Pianos that eat their players and disembodied heads flying around on their own (oh, and biting characters on the arse) are just some of whacked-out visuals you will be treated to in the delightful family film House!

What surprised/stayed with me: The visual style, which is totally wild and a hell of a lot of fun. You’re not watching a movie like this to be intellectually challenged or deeply moved – you want to see what kind of weird imagery Obayashi is able to stir up. And on that score, trust me, the director of TV commercials delivers in truckloads. You’re not going to forget a lot of the images in this film, and it all looks glorious in saturated color and bizarre animation. Criterion restored it for a reason – has to be seen to be appreciated!

True Grit, directed by Joel & Ethan Coen (2010)

What it’s about: A 13-year-old girl hires a crusty, drink-sodden U.S. Marshall rumored to have “true grit” to help her hunt down the man who shot and killed her father in 19th-century Arkansas. Along the way they enlist the help of a young, brash “Texas Ranger” who has been tracking the same varmint (“ineffectually,” as our heroine points out) and get entangled with a ruthless band of thieves.

Why it made the list: The last film I saw on this list (chronologically) is also one of the best. The Coen Brothers bring their usual sure and detail-oriented directorial acumen to this faithful, pitch-perfect adaptation of the underappreciated Western thriller (with a deeply moral heart) by Charles Portis. The screenplay beautifully preserves the strange, entertaining mix of austerity and humor in Portis’ original language, and also manages to add moments of wit and physical comedy that make it feel like a Coens film. Part adventure, part revenge story and part coming of age tale, this exciting and heartfelt paean to the great Westerns of the past feels both nostalgic and wholly original at the same time. (It’s also superbly acted across the board, from large parts to small – but one can’t help but single out newcomer Hailee Steinfeld for more than holding her own among the likes of Bridges, Damon and Brolin.)

What surprised/stayed with me: One could say, as many critics unfairly have, that what surprises about this movie is that it has heart… but I’ve seen Fargo and O Brother Where Art Thou, and I already know they can bring a lot of feeling to their films (though when I see their occasional misfire like Burn After Reading, I can certainly appreciate the charge). What really surprised me in this movie was Matt Damon’s funny, refreshingly against-type performance. He brings a LOT of humor, and some poignant humanity, into a film that could have been pretty grim without it. Many people, myself included, wondered about how he would play in a movie like this, but I am happy to report that he elevates the film with his charm and ability to find the nuances of a character.

The Wire (entire series), created by David Simon (2002-2008)

What it’s about: The drug trade in the city of Baltimore, and how it affects every layer and substrata of the once-proud city’s broken and bedraggled institutions… from the street, to the ports, the schools, law enforcement, and the hallowed halls (and shady dealings) of City Hall.

Why it made the list: Man, I literally do not know how to praise this magnificent, superbly-written TV series. To start, I’ll just say it’s easily the best show and best writing I’ve ever seen on TV, by about a hundred miles. It’s got a HUGE ensemble cast and – I KNOW I’ve never been able to say this before – there is literally not one weak link in it, no matter how small the part. It’s no accident this series has spawned full-length courses at universities like Tufts and Harvard and been compared not to other TV shows, but to the novels of Dickens and Zola. It is intellectually stimulating, emotionally devastating and morally challenging. It will stay with you long after you’ve finished the final episode.

What surprised/stayed with me: What truly surprised me about The Wire is how far its characters, from so many diverse professions and backgrounds, got under my skin. Whether they’re “freelance” thieves and drug-lord killers or cops compromised by politics and the crushing demands of their low-paying jobs on their family lives, you really live with these characters and want to see them better themselves somehow… though the rock they are trying to move is of truly Sysiphusian proportions. Last word: FIND A WAY TO WATCH THIS SERIES NOW, if you haven’t!!

Honorable Mentions:

Guillermo del Toro’s Cronos; Roman Polanski’s The Ghost Writer; Simon Pegg/Jessica Hynes/Edgar Wright’s Spaced (TV series); Oren Peli’s Paranormal Activity; Kinji Fukasaku’s Battle Royale; Chan-wook Park’s Thirst; Apitchatpong Weerasethakul’s Syndromes and a Century; Lee Unkrich (Pixar)’s Toy Story 3; Christopher Nolan’s Inception

Don't Cross the Streams

2010-12-30T08:20:00.006-05:00

An excerpt from Forever Voyaging: A Literary Sabbatical with Herman Melville, my nonfiction book-in-progress.

I challenged myself about a decade ago to read one book by Charles Dickens every year for the rest of my life. This last year (2010) is the one time since that I have not lived up to this challenge. I thought for a while about suspending the Melville project in order to squeeze in another installment of what I nerdily describe as “Dickensfest”, i.e., my annual reading of his work. But I didn’t want to violate the integrity of the experiment. And there was simply no way I was going to read both Dickens and Melville simultaneously. I don’t know how many people today still read both of these writers’ books, but I’m sure they’re out there; these folks know that you can read one or the other, but not both at once.

The suggestion brings to my mind that memorable scene from Ghostbusters where Harold Ramis warns Bill Murray and Dan Ackroyd not to “cross the streams” of their zap guns, telling them in a most understated manner that the consequences would be “bad.” If you’re wondering how we were able to travel from Melville to Dickens to Ghostbusters in so short a space, my advice is not to attempt to understand, but to merely hang on for your own “nautical sleigh-ride.” This book will take other unexpected and possibly jarring turns, but consider the bright side. There are many, many books out there about Herman Melville, but only this one offers the kind of head-turning digression you have just experienced.

I bring Charles Dickens into the mix because in some respects I felt as though I had almost read a Dickens book when I finished Redburn, for to me it is easily the most Dickensian of Melville’s works. It is an interesting point of consideration: the affinity or lack thereof between Herman Melville and Charles Dickens, in terms of both their writings and the men themselves. They were contemporaries. Dickens, obviously, had a longer and far more celebrated career as a novelist, but they both were writing in the same literary era (Dickens got a decade’s jump on Melville), and it’s certainly possible to argue that they were at the height of their literary powers at the same time, in the early 1850s.

The two writers never met. In fact, from Melville’s side of things, there’s not a lot of evidence to suggest that he gave Charles Dickens a whole lot of thought either way. Certainly he must have been well aware of his novels as they followed one on top of the other. Dickens was something like the Beatles of his day, all the way up to the triumphant arrival on American shores during his first visit to the United States in 1842. His name for his moment in time was much like J.K. Rowling’s for our own; you may not have read his novels, but you certainly knew who the man was. Melville, for his part, was closer to his predecessor Edgar Allen Poe, in that he accomplished a great deal of brilliant work that no one much appreciated, of course, until well after he was dead.

Did Dickens’ work have any influence over Melville? If at all, it seems to have been only to a limited extent. I have read at least one biographical anecdote indicating that Melville and his wife, Elizabeth (“Lizzie”), occasionally would read Dickens’ books aloud to one another. There’s one story, documented by biographer Laurie Robertson-Lorant and others, that recounts a coincidental occasion in which Melville, visiting London in 1849 in order to deliver the manuscript of White-Jacket to his English publisher, attended a public hanging that Dickens personally witnessed and later reported on. Dickens also visited the Manhattan’s infamous House of Detention prison complex, commonly known as “The Tombs,” in 1842 and subsequently wrote about it in a travel narrative called American Notes – the same prison that factors into the conclusion of Melville’s novel Pierre as well as his classic short story “Bartleby, the Scrivener.” Although each of these make interesting side-notes, the fact remains that Dickens’ and Melville’s circles rarely intersected, and given the flash-in-the-pan reputation that Melville was saddled with for most of his lifetime, this seems reasonable.

Dickens, obviously, was famous for going in to places and recounting the circumstances and conditions he experienced while there. He did this in his novels and in his exhaustive catalog of journalistic pieces, and he did the same in American Notes. He was famously and justifiably horrified by the sights he had come across in New York City’s Five Points region during his visit; the resulting account of this place and others in his book were regarded as something of a betrayal to many well-intended Americans who had welcomed the great novelist like he was some kind of royal figure or head of state. Melville, to a lesser extent, delivers the same sort of reportage in the Liverpool section of Redburn, although he experienced none of the backlash, since he lacked anything resembling Dickens’ readership.

Melville stages this portion of his novel interestingly, in that the titular character has come to Liverpool because it is the place where the business that was the Highlander’s primary purpose in the first place is to be transacted. But Redburn has also come to Liverpool for a personal reason: his own father, during his youth, had “several times crossed the Atlantic on business affairs,” and had visited Liverpool well ahead of his son. Redburn even brings along with him an old guidebook, published in 1803, called “The Picture of Liverpool” which his father had used on his own journey years before and had jotted down notes of his experiences in the margins. This book is a treasure to the young traveler, who is determined to disembark as soon as he is allowed in order to literally follow in his father’s footsteps on his own exploration of that coastal city, using the same guidebook to plan his route. The reader feels Redburn’s inner conflict here rather acutely. He left home to outrun his father’s misfortunes and his shadow in the first place. Yet he also longs to share in the man’s experiences and even to possibly redeem him.

When as a young man you visit a place where your father has gone before you – no matter how significant or insignificant his experiences there – you are haunted by a kind of invisible apparition of that man. It doesn’t matter if your father is alive or deceased at the time of your journey: it is the specter of his younger self that follows you, nipping at your heels, all but whispering the same questions into your ears that you are already asking yourself. It is a bit of a psychological minefield that countless young men, for mysterious reasons, wander into quite willingly.

I’ve had this experience, too, in more places than one, but nowhere more so than when I attended Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio, in the late 1980s and early 90s. My father had gone to undergraduate and graduate school at Xavier four decades before. In my first year I lived in a dormitory on the same side of the same street where my father once lived – except when he resided there, there was no dormitory. Instead there were literally military barracks where he was jammed in with hundreds of other young men. Indeed, I spent my whole time in college walking around a campus where he had lived and studied and struggled.

This sort of thing is both a blessing and a curse. Most young men experience a certain unique pride simply to walk where their fathers once walked. You feel inspired to make your own name while doing right by his. Even Jesus Christ longed to do the same. You want to cross through the same battleground or spiritual wasteland or what have you that your old man did. But at the same time you feel an obligation to live up to his example – and of course, when he set that example, he inevitably had it much tougher than you. Every time I had a feeling that I couldn’t overcome a challenge in college, there was my father’s youthful ghost, saying: Remember, boy, you live in a dormitory; I lived in army barracks. You had a refrigerator humming pleasantly in your room; I set perishable food out on a windowsill in the dead of winter to keep it safe to eat. You had a scholarship and a stipend; I waited tables and swept floors for tuition money. All this was no less unpleasant for being accurate.

Thus does Redburn set out to see what his old man had seen. And he gets more than an eyeful for his efforts. Melville brings the sights and sounds of Liverpool vividly to life, including the hustle and bustle of the “granite-rimmed” stone docks, where the merchant ships are executing their transactions; a “floating chapel,” and “old sloop-of-war, which had been converted into a mariner’s church” wherein the clergy had the unenviable task of inducing “the seamen visiting Liverpool to turn their thoughts towards serious things”; and finally, what may be described as the poorer side of town. The young man wanders into depraved and foul conditions unlike anything he has been exposed to before.

It is at this moment in the novel, when Redburn finds himself in a narrow alley called “Launcelott's-Hey,” that Melville stages his most Dickensian scene, and it is one of the most powerfully written passages on urban conditions during that century that I have encountered from any writer. Ambling along by himself, Redburn hears a “feeble wail, which seemed to come out of the earth,” whereupon he investigates as follows:

At last I advanced to an opening which communicated downward with deep tiers of cellars beneath a tumbling old warehouse; and there some fifteen feet below the walk, crouching in nameless squalor, was the figure of what had been a woman. Her blue arms folded to her livid bosom two shrunken things like children, that leaned toward her, one on each side. At first, I knew not whether they were alive or dead. They made no sign; they did not move or stir; but from the vault came that soul-sickening wail.

Redburn is so horror-stricken upon making this discovery that he decides to act. But when he returns to the street to seek assistance, he is repeatedly rebuked. In one case, when he asks a woman where this unfortunate family, notably lacking a father figure, might be taken, she coldly replies, “To the churchyard.” Moments later, a second woman, described as a “hag,” renders an even harsher judgment: “She deserves it.” In this manner the young man is introduced to the way societies often try, convict, and condemn the poor and the disadvantaged in one fell swoop.

The sight of such misery and its implied social injustice is profoundly convicting to Redburn, who feels charged enough to ask, “What right had anybody in the wide world to smile and be glad, when sights like this were to be seen?” After failing numerous times to secure help or to come up with a viable plan, Redburn realizes he must return to his ship. Before he does, however, he makes one last visit to the alley, where he finds that “in place of the woman and children, a heap of quick-lime was glistening.”

This scene for me brought to mind the more famous encounter of a Dickens protagonist with victims of poverty and neglect: namely that of one Ebenezer Scrooge, during his visitation by the Ghost of Christmas Present in Charles Dickens’ classic story “A Christmas Carol.” Many readers will recall the moment when, just before that towering “spirit” leaves Scrooge to pursue his fitful Christmas Eve sleep again, he opens the bottom of his long robe to reveal two small children clinging to his legs, who appear “wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable.” When Scrooge smugly inquires of the spirit whose children they are, the ghost responds with the same answer that Redburn has inferred from his own permanently scarring experience: “They are Man’s.”

(c) 2010 by Jude Joseph Lovell

Returning to Port

2010-12-23T12:32:00.004-05:00

Year-End Review and Future Plans Concerning the Melville, PA Project

Now, after nearly twelve months straight at “sea,” metaphorically speaking anyway, I am finally able to see land. The reading portion of the Melville, Pennsylvania project is finally coming to a close as I finish Mardi for the second time this year. It has been a long haul, and in some ways I am glad to see it end, but also, as I hope to get across in this post, pleased about the overall experience and optimistic that it may yet yield greater results than just my personal satisfaction.

Ever since I logged this post explaining what I was trying to do, I have had questions in my mind about whether it was really worth the time and effort. I’m used to reading 40-50 books a year, and just thinking of all the writers I wasn’t going to read in 2010 - including my annual Dickensfest – was bad enough. At this stage of the project, I am ultra-chuffed to dive in to the infinite seas of all the literature I’ve been missing. I’ve felt a bit like a soldier on a long deployment, missing all the comforts of home.

My standard rule up until this year was never to read even two books by the same writer in a row, with the extremely rare exception here and there. But reading the same writer for an entire year was absolutely insane by my customary way of thinking. Indeed, I can’t think of anyone I know who has ever done it, unless you count those who read the Bible in a year’s time. (For the record, I never have.) And I certainly don’t know anyone who would consider it a good idea, or how I might convince anyone else that it is. All I know is that it seemed like an interesting challenge to me, and the more I considered it the more I felt that way.

Before moving ahead, let’s clarify a few things. I did not read everything Melville ever wrote. I focused primarily on his fiction, but what most people don’t realize is that Herman Melville produced his novels and stories primarily over a period of only 11 years, from 1846-1857 (Billy Budd, Sailor, his final prose work, excepted, as he was still tinkering with this when he died in 1891); whereas he spent more than 30 years, from 1858 until his death, writing poetry almost exclusively. He also wrote a few short stories I never was able to find.

I’m not quite as interested in poetry in general as I am in fiction, and even if I was trying to read all of Melville’s poetry, much of it is hard to find, such as his last four collections: Battle Pieces and Aspects of the War (1866), John Marr and Other Sailors (188); Timoleon (1891); and Weeds and Wildings, and a Rose or Two (posthumous, 1924). There’s also Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land (1876), a book-length epic in verse about a love affair between a Jewish woman and an American theological student. Each of these poetic works I was only able to read samples from, collected into one volume published by the Modern Library called Tales, Poems, and Other Writings.

I also did read the occasional title from another author this year, including Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games and Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice (look for a future installment of our Literary Discussions feature here soon), but whenever I did so, which was rarely, I also read whatever Melville book I was working on simultaneously. So at no time this year was I ever not knee-deep in a book by Herman Melville. Not that this is crucial, but one of my primary goals was to read his work steadily for one entire 12-month cycle, which plays into my concept for the book I have started to write (more on that shortly).

I tried to document the project by maintaining a journal, therein to record my impressions of whatever books I was reading at the time, and to jot down thoughts about what was going on with me or my family. I thought this might help me recall the experience of reading the books one by one, especially as I understood that the longer I worked on writing a book myself, the further I would distance myself from that experience. Finally, as readers of this blog would know, if there are any, I also wrote brief, informal “essays” on each of the books as I completed them and posted them to The Secret Thread.

So all along I have had plans to do more than just read Melville for a year. Which speaks to the heart of the matter: what is this project really all about, in the end? It’s about two things.

One: it gave me first-hand familiarity with all of the novels and most of the stories of one of my own country’s greatest literary masters, an honor that I thought Melville’s work richly deserved based on the life-changing impact Moby-Dick had on me back in 2000.

Two: it provided me with an idea for writing a book about Melville that I hoped would be unique and interesting even in spite of the deluge of books already in existence on the subject.

To parry off that last point, I hereby announce that the Melville, Pennsylvania project is now officially extended to two years, not one, and that January 1, 2011 marks the technical starting point for Phase II, in which I pledge to write about Melville after spending one year reading his work and previously published biographical material about him. But in point of fact, the second phase is already underway. In late November I began writing the introduction to the book, which has a tentative title of Forever Voyaging: A Literary Sabbatical with Herman Melville.

A word about my tentative title: it does not come from Melville’s pen. Rather I came across a couplet of lines written by the poet William Wordsworth in Laurie Robertson-Lorant’s excellent biography, Melville. She informs us that Melville had read and underscored in a book the following lines describing a statue of Sir Isaac Newton in a lengthy poem called “The Prelude, or Growth of a Poet’s Mind”:

The marble index of a mind forever
Voyaging through strange seas of thought alone

In Robertson-Lorant’s telling it seems clear that Melville connected to these lines, and to anyone who knows even a little about him it is a rather apt characterization of Melville himself, or at least of his intellect and/or his inner life. Just read Mardi alone and you’ll see.

I started out calling my manuscript A Mind Forever Voyaging, but have recently decided to clip it to simply Forever Voyaging; that way, it might refer to more than just one individual. The title could be describing the subject of the book, but it could, if it’s not too disingenuous to say, be describing its author as well. For that matter, it could even describe anyone else who may be inspired by the book, in theory anyway, to explore Melville’s work, because they will be taking on their own voyage through those same “strange” seas.

Now that I have started writing the book, I feel some relief, and the headrush of creation to some extent, but also some trepidation about where it will go and how substantial the final product will be. I do have a good jump on the writing, however, considering I planned to work on it in 2011. I am on the third section of the book, called “February” since I am dividing the book in twelve sections to chronicle the entire year. Thus I am currently writing about Redburn and will do some reflection on White-Jacket as well, although I didn’t finish the latter until March.

The concept is to reflect on my experience of reading the book; offer a bit of “shithouse criticism,” to play off a phrase I used to hear a lot in the Army, which basically means low-octane literary analysis; and reflect on the progress of my own life as well, specifically with regard to literary matters. It’s kind of a risky scheme. I am writing about my own fiction and nonfiction, which has a basically nonexistent readership. It’s not as though I can reflect on my own books; there are none in print. But I see myself, even at 40 years old, as a writer still in gestation, and I want the book to be reflective of the great effort and struggles that it is requiring of me to get anywhere in the world of literature.

It’s very frustrating to be at something for 20 years and have almost nothing to show for it, especially if you feel you have grown and advanced considerably over those two decades. But at the same time, Melville has unquestionably inspired me to keep at it, and I take consolation from the fact that he wrote on despite circumstances that were far beyond what I have had to endure: terrible drubbing from literary critics; stressful financial difficulties; domestic strain; some periods of alcoholism; and even the premature death of both of his two sons.

Melville wrote both because he wanted to and he needed to, and he stayed true to his own literary principles. He didn’t compromise. He’s the sort of writer I want to be, disregarding whether it’s smart to be one from any commercial, popular, or critical standpoint. And the work he left behind has been supremely undervalued on the whole. It’s very much worth reading and contemplating, and I would like to inspire as many readers as I can to reconsider all of his fiction, including critical and commercial disasters like Pierre or even Moby-Dick.

That’s where the project stands. I am going to work hard on this book throughout 2011. I hope I can make it something special and unique. I don’t know if anyone will get to see it even if I can accomplish that, but I do know that it’s worth doing. It’s a good idea, and I know have some momentum going on it, so we’ll see where it all leads.

Melville once famously and presciently put down on paper in a letter to his friend Nathaniel Hawthorne, “Though I wrote the gospels in this century, I should die in the gutter.” Melville doesn’t belong in the gutter, and I will do what I have the power to do to keep him out of it. Herman Melville’s books ought to be on display at eye-level, to at least compete with all the other distractions and twaddle filling our eyes and ears today at every turn.

We interrupt this blog for a little genre movie madness: A casual John Carpenter retrospective

2010-12-03T17:10:00.000-05:00

Technically it’s not really an “interruption” per se, since as you can see from the date on the last posting, it has been a good long while. What can we say, the Fall is always a hectic time and now the mad rush of the holiday season is upon us (whether we like it or not). Mutt and I are hoping to get our third literary chat session up here before the end of the year, actually... but before that, I thought I would share a few thoughts about some movies I’ve been watching. Specifically, the films of a legendary genre filmmaker best known for his work in the 70’s and 80’s – John Carpenter.

Recently I decided I would conduct my own little marathon of John Carpenter movies, because it dawned on me one day that so many of the films he is known and revered for in genre movie circles – Assault on Precinct 13, Escape from New York, Starman, Big Trouble in Little China – I had never seen. These are titles that are referenced constantly in movie discussions and by the “fanboys” (a term that almost seems to work regardless of the actual gender of the movie geek) and it kind of surprised me that so many of them had gotten past me.

Carpenter has an almost-mythic, god-like reputation in genre circles, but my impressions of his work from what I remembered was a pretty mixed bag. Of course there are the two horror films he is best known for – Halloween and The Thing – and I among those who consider both of these to be bonafide classics of their time. But I also had seen back in the 80’s movies like They Live and Prince of Darkness, which some people love but I think are pretty silly, badly written and horrendously acted offerings. It had been a long time since I had seen either of those, and I was interested to see how they held up. So there was a lot I wanted to either see for the first time, or revisit after many years. It seemed like a Carpenter festival would be fun way to spend some of my movie-watching time.

Here’s the lineup of films I decided on for my marathon. I’ll put an asterisk next to the movies I was seeing only now for the first time. I tried to watch them in chronological order (of when they were made) to get a sense of the direction and/or development of his filmmaking over time.

Assault on Precinct 13*
The Fog*
Escape From New York*
The Thing
Starman*
Big Trouble in Little China*
Prince of Darkness
In the Mouth of Madness*

There are titles of his I decided to skip, because of over-familiarity (Halloween), lack of interest (Vampires; his made-for-TV biopic Elvis) or just plain gad-awful reputation (Ghosts of Mars). I should also note that as of this writing, I have not quite finished this project… I still need to catch up with the final film, In the Mouth of Madness, which I am actually looking forward to because it sounds mildly interesting and I know some people consider it to be an underappreciated horror tale. We’ll see if I concur with that assessment… I know some people say the same about Prince of Darkness, which you will soon see is a view I definitely don’t share!

Of course with all that buildup now behind us, there’s no way I will have the time or the space here (no one wants a post that scrolls on for half a mile) to really get into all that I think of each of these movies. And I’d be shocked if anyone really wanted to sit here and read a film-by-film analysis of each. Instead, I’ll just touch on some highlights, and try to arrange my impressions into categories that might make for a little more interesting reading.

Best overall John Carpenter film: For my money, it’s The Thing, even though Halloween is the film that made his reputation and pretty much started off its own very successful (and ridiculously lucrative) genre – the slasher flick. Halloween is a very effective, well-made movie all the more impressive for its tiny budget and relatively unknown cast. But with The Thing, Carpenter had more money and resources to work with, and he delivered a truly frightening, claustrophobic science fiction thriller whose unforgettable setting (a convincingly bone-chilling Antarctica) and uncompromisingly grim ending leave a powerful impression on the viewer to this day, no matter how many times you’ve seen it. And the legendary special effects work, though slightly over-the-top in my opinion, has lost none of its power to both revolt and entertain.

Worst overall John Carpenter film: Of the ones in this list, it’s no contest – Prince of Darkness. Now I remember my friends and I renting this with glee from the local video store as teenagers, and we must have watched it more than once because I still recalled certain scenes from it as if I’d seen them several times over. So I thought going back to watch this would be pretty fun at least from a nostalgia point of view. Well, I knew it wasn’t Citizen Kane or anything, but I was surprised at how utterly lame and absurd this movie was. It’s not scary, it’s not original – hell it’s not even coherent. And it features some of the worst dialogue and most egregious overacting (in one case from a respected actor too – Donald Pleasance!) I’ve seen in a long, long time. I don’t know if Carpenter lost his abilities or got too jaded and just stopped caring in the late 80’s, but whatever the case he really fell hard after at least a decade of energetic and inventive filmmaking.

Biggest surprise: I’m going to go with Starman, because my expectations for this one were pretty low. All I knew about it was that it was a love story involving an alien (!), starred Jeff Bridges and was supposed to be Carpenter’s attempt at something at least resembling “family fare.” Well, it’s not perfect by any stretch and it wallows in some pretty ridiculous sentimentality at the end, but this movie has its interesting and unexpected aspects. As a kid in the early 80’s I remember being captivated by hype surrounding the Voyager spacecraft launchings, and so I was intrigued to discover that Carpenter chose to make them an important element of the plot (never knew that). I also like how in the first half of this movie you’re never really sure of the alien/man’s intentions, whether they’re hostile or not – makes for some nice tension. And there are a few surprisingly unsettling moments in this thing early on that make an impression.

Hardest to classify (and therefore, kind of admirable): If you’ve seen it, you know the answer: Big Trouble in Little China, without a doubt. How the idea for this movie was ever pitched, accepted and then funded by a big studio is totally beyond me (though it’s worth noting that it was such a commercial failure that it remains, to this day, the last major studio film Carpenter ever made). “Hey, let’s have Kurt Russell star as a buffed-up truck driver, who thinks he’s Indiana Jones but is really an idiot, who gets involved in an attempt to rescue a Chinese man’s green-eyed fiancee from rival gangs of the Chinatown underworld in San Francisco. The reason she needs rescuing is that a 2000-year-old man named Lo Pan wants to marry her, and then sacrifice her, so that he can get an immortal curse lifted from his head, and by the way watch out for those three supernatural spirit-warriors, Thunder, Lightning and Rain, who appear randomly to kick everyone’s ass without scruple.” Part action movie, part spoof of kung-fu cinema, part romance and part comedy… no wonder this one has gained a considerable cult following. It’s an utter train wreck - but the looney-tunes plot, cheesy effects and especially Kurt Russell’s goofily likable performance make it a lot of fun.

John Carpenter MVP: Kurt Russell, easily. Without his central performances in China, The Thing, and Escape (probably the LA version too, though I haven’t seen it) these would all be much lesser movies. I’ve heard he gives a solid performance in the titular role in Elvis, too. Maybe he could have salvaged something from the wreckage that is Prince of Darkness…

Recurring themes and Carpenter hallmarks: It’s worth pointing out that Carpenter had a habit of shooting everything in anamorphic widescreen, regardless of what type of movie or story it was. I say this because just about every Carpenter film is really nice to look at, and if you’re into truly ‘cinematic’ filmmaking this will make a difference in your experience. For example, as bad as Prince of Darkness is, it’s still pretty cool to look at with its wide-angle shots looking up at a church steeple superimposed over an ominous moon, or an altar lit up only by flickering candles and shadows. Just about every one of these movies have scenes that look amazing – Carpenter is great when it comes to creating an atmosphere. (The scenes of the creeping, titular Fog slowly invading over a seaside town are a good example of what I mean.)

Also, Carpenter’s got a thing for people being holed up inside an area, usually a building, with enemies storming the gates. He’s said many times that Romero’s Night of the Living Dead and Hawks’ Rio Bravo were both key influences for him, and that certainly comes out in films like Assault on Precinct 13, The Fog, Escape from New York, The Thing and even Prince of Darkness. It’s actually kind of surprising that Carpenter, as far as I know, never made an all-out Western considering how important they were to him as a young film fan.

Other notable Carpenter movies I haven’t covered: They Live, Dark Star (his feature debut), Christine, Vampires, Ghosts of Mars, and actually there is a new one out this year, The Ward – though as with just about all of his post-80’s movies, sadly, it’s getting terrible reviews and looks unoriginal and half-baked.

So that’s one man’s brief, bird’s-eye view of the films of John Carpenter… if you’re a fan of genre movies and movies that don’t quite fit into cookie-cutter bins and patterns, you’re probably already a fan of Carpenter. Overall I would have to conclude that Carpenter is an interesting, fun, but probably overrated and overpraised filmmaker. However, his best films like Halloween and The Thing certainly shouldn’t be missed by any genre film buff. The Thing sets the gold standard, so far anyway, for horror movies set in cold places. There’s one Carpenter film that I think is going to be watched and enjoyed for a long time to come… maybe even as long as we’re watching movies.

LITERARY DISCUSSIONS #2: "Car Crash While Hitchhiking" by Denis Johnson

2010-10-13T08:36:00.001-04:00

Being the second in an occasional series of online chat sessions conducted by TST founders Duke Altum and Mutt Ploughman, in which we discuss literary works and post the transcripts up to these pages to further bore our readers...

*******

DUKE: Well all right, welcome to our second literary chat session... Duke Altum here, and joining me as always is my partner in this endeavor, Mutt Ploughman... how things going up there Mutt?

MUTT: Going well. Looking forward to this exchange tonight.

DUKE: Likewise. Tonight I've picked what I think is a great story for discussion... it's the first story in Denis Johnson's highly-praised 1992 collection, Jesus' Son. The story is called "Car Crash While Hitchhiking." Could you give us a quick synopsis Mutt?

MUTT: I can attempt it!

DUKE: The floor is yours. Once you do, I will follow with a first volley....

MUTT: It's a brief vignette almost, concerning an unnamed hitchhiker that the reader assumes is a young man, who is basically out on the highway thumbing for a ride. He ends up in a car with a family of a man, woman, and infant, which subsequently wrecks on the highway. He gets taken to the hospital after what is described at one point as a "gory" wreck, and is treated. That's the bare bones. But Johnson transforms this framework into a kind of hallucinatory, near-religious fable, nearly.

DUKE: OK, great... good summary. By the way as always, there seems to be a delay here, but we'll work with it best we can.

MUTT: That works for me.

DUKE: OK you've already sort of anticipated my first question, which is this: upon your first read, or maybe even first few reads, of this story, you're struck most of all by the horror of the violence and the nightmarish quality of the episode in general. What, if anything, makes Johnson's story more than just a vivid and "gory" tale? Is there a deeper meaning here beyond the grisly violence, which Johnson certainly intends to hold at least some shock value for the reader?

Let me know if any of my questions are too vague...

MUTT: Well I think there is. I think there is in just about everything I've read from Denis Johnson. He seems to be the kind of writer who probes the mysteries in life, the unknowable things. These stories are very much like that. I think what separates this from just a short, bloody slice of reality are the frequent hints at a kind of omniscience or, dare I say, "divinity" to the character's voice. He seems to know things a "normal" victim of an event like this wouldn't know.

DUKE: Yeah, you immediately touch on one aspect of this story which I find fascinating and curious - that is, the narrator indicates at least twice early on, a kind of foreknowledge of the events told in the story. He says "I sensed everything before it happened... I knew a certain Oldsmobile was going to stop for me." And then when he gets picked up and sees the family he thinks, "You are the ones." What do you make of that?

MUTT: It's hard to know what to make of it. Because at certain points it seems clear the narrator is some kind of divine spirit. He tells the man his wife is not dead before he could possibly know it. At one other point he speaks of how he looks down onto "the great pity of a person's life on this earth." But at other times he admits he doesn't know things. So you aren't sure of the narrator's origins or his role in the event.

[fierce t-storm here]

DUKE: Right... yet there are certainly enough hints to make the reader think of it or at least question it. And then from there I think of the title of the entire collection, which also at least hints at some kind of connection to the divine... and yet, also I suppose allows the possibility of just being human too, since if Jesus could have a son, maybe he wouldn't be Divine at all... probably reading too much there, but it is interesting. Nevertheless I think the spiritual subtext is pretty blatant throughout this story. Even the cotton balls at the end in the hospital, which is darkly hilarious by the way!!, cry out "Oh God, it hurts." But the last line, which I want to come back to, also could be read from a divine perspective... "And you, you ridiculous people, you expect me to help you."

Storm seems appropriate, BTW, as we are dealing with Divine mysteries here...!?! Hope you don't lose power or anything...

MUTT: It certainly reads like some kind of divine pronouncement or declaration at the end. I, too, thought a lot about the title of the collection with regard to this story. On one hand, you could take it literally and imagine that the story's told from a kind of "lost son" of Jesus, wandering around, not sure of who he is or what his role in the whole miasma is. On the other hand, you can take this story, and the whole thing, as a meditation or riff on the life of a drug addict, and Johnson could just be trying to put into words the state of mind of a person deeply addled with drugs. This story could be seen either way, I think. The cotton balls point easily to the second interpretation.

DUKE: I think he's consciously playing with both ideas... clearly, on the surface, these are the "adventures" so to speak, the experiences, of a drug-addled lost soul... but then of course, they're also, every one in its own way, meditations on our condition... God looms large in just about all of them... as does guilt, shame, the possibility of redemption...

MUTT: Yeah. It's really fascinating. You know going in, if you know anything about Johnson, that he had some addiction struggles. And yet he has this interest in faith, religion, theology, and that's quite clear. And I think maybe he is trying to articulate some of what he experieced as a drug addict himself, but also possibly examine a mysterious connection or relationship between the experiences of an addict and religious experience. It's a very, very fascinating brew. And his sentences and images are incredibly powerful.

DUKE: Indeed they are... spiritual concerns are all over this story and collection, from small details to major themes. For example, it's not a huge part of the story, but I thought it was a fascinating detail that one of the guys the hitchhiker rides with, the "family man," is talking about his life and he seems to go through a whole list of reasons why he should be happy - good job, great wife and kids ("I'm gifted with love"), two cars, a boat... and yet, he's going to see a mistress, is a drunk, and is obviously another lost soul. To draw from one of your favorites, the man obviously "still hasn't found what he's looking for." So that's a minor example. But then I have a more significant one...

MUTT: Well actually I hadn't focused so much on that moment, but you're right about that too. What's the "more significant" example?

DUKE: In terms of spiritual themes/concerns... is it me or could this story also be read, at least in part, as an interesting take on the Good Samaritan parable? Because I was very struck in my second and third reads at the narrator's worry that he was going to have to act somehow, or that "something was going to be required of me," and when it isn't his relief is palpable... now I don't know about that you but that made me think powerfully of another story set on a road, when a traveler is in trouble and physically wounded, the point of which seems to be our obligation to our neighbor... the more I thought about this connection, and then the collection's title again, and the last line again, I found some really interesting parallels and connections there.

Jesus said, "Which of these acted most like his neighbor?... Go and do likewise."

MUTT: That is a fascinating idea, I never thought of that. I think that holds some water. But then there are many mixed messages and religious "hints" in here. At one point there's an almost madonna-like image, where the narrator "standing out in the night" with the baby in his arms. The notion of the Good Samaritan is not one I thought of, but I think you definitely could take it as a spin on that. A great observation.

DUKE: Thanks... his great anxiety over being called upon to act or somehow be responsible for these hurt people is what got me thinking about it. "And you expect me to help you..." By the way I just want to state in passing that there are certain lines, as you know, that just seem to burn into your brain from the first time to read them... that phrase from O'Connor, I know, is a classic example for both of us: "he went around the countryside with Jesus buried in his head like a stinger." Well there's one in this that is not quite as great as that, but has nevertheless stayed with me from the very first time I read it: "Under Midwestern clouds like great gray brains..." Somehow that image is just perfect. Invokes kind of a dark omniscience almost, hovering over the proceedings as well... or maybe that's just my own take on it.

Anyway I can see those Midwestern clouds, from our own experience, in my mind...

MUTT: I agree, he writes astounding similes and phrases, and I'm glad you brought that up because it helps me point out that in some places, like the last paragraph, almost every word can just blow me out, even in their great simplicity. But, he also has the capability to just baffle you. Consider this utterly mystifying sentence, which i type in here: "My secret was that in this short while I had gone from being the president of this tragedy to being a faceless onlooker at a gory wreck." The use of "president" completely surprises me there. So he throws a lot of curves.

DUKE: Oh man, I'm glad you brought that up, because I utterly howled at that line... I don't know why... the use of the (agreed, bizarre) term "president" struck me as hilariously funny for some reason. But you're right, it's also totally enigmatic. Why is he the head honcho of the wreck? Isn't he just a random victim like everyone else? And yet, when you couple that with his supposed foreknowledge... well, it goes back to the whole God question again.

MUTT: What is incredible about this story is Johnson's ability to confound, surprise, frighten, and touch you all in a few pages. It's really remarkable. And the other point I want to make is, the writing in these stories, all of them, is like Hemingway, extremely clipped, with no words wasted. And yet Johnson is also a very lyrical and sometimes long-winded writer elsewhere. Take Tree of Smoke or Already Dead, both of these are sprawling, almost rambling novels. So the discipline, the skill, the WORK of writing is on glorious display in this great and worthwhile book.

DUKE: Yeah, these stories are very different from both the novels (Resuscitation of a Hanged Man) and the journalism (collected in his book Seek) I've read from him. In their clipped style, I mean. These are (and again, I quote your boy Bono... don't know where that's coming from tonight... maybe a kindred spirit to Johnson somehow in his sensibilities?) "miracles of compression"... I'll tell you what though, that line you mentioned above isn't even the most enigmatic part for me. For me it's when the narrator looks down at the dying man "with great pity," but then hastens to point out that the pity is not for the fact that he's dying... it's that "he couldn't tell me what he was dreaming, and I couldn't tell him what was real." that's the line I've had the most trouble wrapping my head around... any thoughts? (There's an easy one for you!!)

MUTT: No. I can't really explain that line. That's where he sounds less like a "god" or spirit and more like a drug-addled junkie. But Johnson offers you no clues.

DUKE: The only thing I can say about it is that it somehow connects to the very end, when the guy is obviously slipping into some kind of hallucinatory state again (though who's to say, really, that he hasn't been in it the whole time??), with the talking cotton balls and the rain and the gigantic ferns (in a hospital?) leaning over him... BTW, interesting side note, in the last story, "Beverly Home," the main character works in a hospital, and at one point he has this dream/hallucination in the halls that it's raining... weird connection there...

Not sure I have a point, just making observations...

MUTT: Yeah, with some of those lines, I am not even sure an explanation is possible to find, or even needed. Interesting point there though about "Beverly Home". I just want to say, for the record, the simple sentence "The forest drifted down a hill" gets me every time. It feels like the story could literally "drift" right into the novel from 15 years later (!), Tree of Smoke, and be right at home. Amazing!

DUKE: It is... this story, all of 5 or 6 pages or whatever, could sustain us all night. It reads simultaneously as a fever dream, a nightmare and kind of a parable too, all in one. We won't get to the bottom of it here tonight, I know that... and I need to hit the rack soon. But one final observation: man, that part late in the story when they observe the woman go in to consult with the doctor, and the door closes and she finds out her husband's dead, and she shrieks... that might be the most unsettling and disturbing part of the whole story for me, and that as you know is SAYING something. It's in how the narrator observes it that's so dang creepy... first of all, when she comes down the hallway "glorious, burning" - that right there is another example of Johnson's very odd, catch-you-off-guard word choices. It almost evokes angelic figures, like the seraphim (literal meaning, "the burning ones"!!). Then the capper, when he hears her scream... "It felt wonderful to be alive to hear it! I've gone looking for that feeling everywhere." For some reason that is really disturbing to me.

[Editor's note: Apologies for the abrupt ending to this session... one of us had to attend to family needs... such is the life of the husband/father/blogger, which describes both of us! But we hope you enjoyed the discussion up to this point. Thanks for reading.]

A few thoughts on Mario Vargas Llosa

2010-10-08T17:09:00.000-04:00

By the standards of our current 24-hour news cycle, it's old news already: Mario Vargas Llosa was announced yesterday as the recipient of the 2010 Nobel Prize for Literature. An interesting and, by some accounts, odd choice - not so much based on his literary reputation as the timing. Why him, and why now - especially as he hasn't written anything that most literary critics from around the world would call a major or important work in a good 20 years? Well, after the Nobel Committee (in)famously awarded last year's Peace Prize to Barack Obama, well before he had accomplished anything of note as President, all bets were pretty much off. No one can fathom the murky depths of these white, left-leaning Europeans' reasoning.

Still, I'm not here to say he's not deserving of the honor. First, who the heck am I to say; and second, from the little experience I do have with his work, his talents and ability to craft an interesting story are indeed impressive. I own three of Llosa's books, and I've read two: The Storyteller and Death in the Andes (the one I haven't read yet - though my blog partner Mutt has, I note in passing - is The War at the End of the World). Both of these books in my opinion are noteworthy for the insight they provide into the culture, mythology and practices of various peoples indiginous to Peru in general, and the high Andes Mountains in particular.

It was only about a month ago when I happened to be reading Death in the Andes, and one night I went with a group of people I work with for drinks after COB. Somehow the rambling conversation got around to books and someone asked me what I happened to be reading. I told them it was Llosa's book, and a few people within earshot looked at me as if another head had just sprouted from my left shoulder. Because human nature is what it is, I felt initially a little sheepish, but then quickly recovered and explained that one of the main reasons I read at all is because I want to expand my knowledge of the world, I want to experience different worlds and cultures and ideas - if only vicariously, through the words and lives of others real and imagined.

Discovering Llosa's work is as good a chance as any for anyone who's of that mindset to do the same. Both of these books vividly portrayed a world of opaque, humid, mysterious jungles; ancient ruins and tribal rituals; poisonous animals and fierce, painted warriors disappearing like vapor into the dense foliage. Yet they also provactively juxtapose these remnants of an older order with more modern trappings and problems - chief among these being the encroaching machinery of Western civilization and warfare, and the ongoing struggle between democracy and dictatorship. I believe that Llosa overarching aim is to help those outside of his country to understand and appreciate the rich cultural heritage of Peru and South America in general; while at the same time encourage and rally his own people to recognize their own contributions to the world and not allow these to be tainted by the corruption and greed of the few rich and powerful.

One can also appreciate in Llosa's work a unique blending of popular genre fiction with the mythologies and traditions mentioned above. For example, Death in the Andes could easily be read as a detective novel, a whodunit of sorts, set in the exotic and mysterious setting of a remote Andean village. A modern policeman travels from the city (Lima) to investigate the disappearance of three construction workers, and finds himself dealing with ancient forces and beliefs well beyond his power to comprehend - or control. His latest book, The Bad Girl, was supposedly a modern re-telling of Madame Bovary, which is an interesting - and bold - choice in its own right. And his forthcoming novel, Celtic Dream, tells a story of the real-life historical figure Sir Roger Casement, an Englishman who supported the Irish rebellion and also, notably, defended the cause of native tribes in the Belgian Congo and the Amazon region against British colonialism and exploitation.

To sum up, Llosa, like other great Nobel laureates before him (Halldor Laxness, Sigrid Undset and Naguib Mahfouz come to mind), offers a treasure trove of experiences and stories - only available from a particular culture - to hungry minds that want to experience something new and different every time that they crack open a book. Take him on, or any one of the aforementioned writers for that matter, and you'll experience more than just a good read - you'll gain some wisdom, too. And who couldn't use a little more of that?

The Races

2010-10-05T19:37:00.007-04:00

A short story

MUTT SAID HIS FATHER was helping him make a race car.
‘It’s something we can do together,’ he told my twin brother Tommy and I while walking to school one Wednesday. It wasn’t the first time we had heard him say something about his father that sounded rehearsed. His voice would take a tone like a parent’s, as if he was trying to convince himself.
For a moment neither of us said anything, because he mentioned Mr. Ploughman only rarely. We looked at each other but did not communicate anything through the glance the way we sometimes could. We had only seen Mutt’s father once, the year before, on the day our sister Katie was born. Mr. Ploughman had been like a frightening vision that day, seated in the shadowy living room with a drink in his hand, not looking at us. We’d come away with unknowable feelings, more questions than answers.
‘What for?’ I asked Mutt, to fill the silence.
‘The Pinewood Derby,’ Mutt declared proudly, ‘on December 10.’
My heart sank. I looked at Tommy again.
—Oh crap.
—Not again.
—I hate it when he talks about the scouts!
—Me too.
The Pinewood Derby was an event for the Cub Scouts. Tommy and I weren’t in the Cub Scouts, but all of our friends were, so we were jealous. We had been forbidden to join by my parents because they didn’t feel that we were concentrating on our school work enough. Of course my older brother Kevin had been allowed to join ahead of us. His grades were top shelf. Tommy and I both struggled.
This turned the Cub Scouts into a target for our collective vitriol. Every time there was an event for the scouts in the afternoon or evening, all the boys would wear the uniform to school on that day to remind everyone that they were scouts. There may not be words to describe how much I coveted that uniform. The dark navy blue shirt, the yellow handkerchief around the neck with the metal Cub Scout clasp, the patches for meritorious achievements. After all, it was a uniform; it signified membership into something, a club, a boys’ organization, a league of like-minded pals.
The Pinewood Derby was an annual event where the scouts got to race tiny cars, crafted out of wood and hand-painted, against each other on a specially-made track. Each scout was assigned the task of building and painting their own car, with the help of an adult – ideally their father. Tommy and I remembered three years before when our Dad had helped Kevin build his car, an aesthetic insult that Kevin had inexplicably painted orange with black stripes and the random number of 17. That car lost every heat. We learned that even Kevin didn’t do everything well. But what I remembered more was that I was dying to reach the day when I could build a car of my own with Dad and race it.
This is why Mutt’s comment had made me so upset. I had forgotten about the Derby, because Kevin wasn’t in the scouts anymore (he’d gotten bored of it) and I had deliberately cast it out of my mind. Yet somehow I managed to mutter to Mutt:
‘Oh. Well. That’s not too far away.’
‘A couple weeks,’ Mutt said.
‘Should be fun,’ Tommy said in a tone that was like someone trying to sound positive about a visit to the dentist.
‘Sure wish you guys could go,’ said Mutt. For once, it sounded like he meant it.
‘Yeah,’ I said.
We crossed the street at the corner with the assistance of Pietro, the crossing guard, an elderly Italian man whose face looked like those parchments from ancient Egypt we saw in filmstrips during social studies. We were learning about things that came from before the birth of Jesus, and Pietro looked like one of those. He smiled at us and said nothing.
I felt a little bit guilty that I had been so angry at Mutt, now that he had said he wanted us to be there too. So I asked Mutt how far along they’d come with their car.
‘Pretty far,’ Mutt bragged, a flash of pride illuminating his face. ‘I’m sanding it now. Then we have to paint it, and add wheels last. But get this: my Dad is also helping me build a practice track! So I can test it out before we get to the Derby! Isn’t that great?’
‘Wow,’ Tommy said, curiosity overcoming other feelings. ‘I didn’t even know your father could build stuff.’
‘I didn’t either,’ Mutt said.

▫ ▫ ▫ ▫

I WAS AWAKENED by a low rumbling noise, rising from the depths of the house. Chains, gears, wheels; the machines of the dream world.
Darkness swam through the room. I flipped over in my bed and squinted at the Casio alarm clock, carefully positioned on the stool next to my head. 5:47 a.m. In three minutes that irritating little unit would blare to life, worse than a drill sergeant.
‘Crap,’ I said.
Then a second noise, this time a heavy thump, sounded off from below. Unfortunately, I now understood what was happening. The low rumbling noise had been our garage door. My father was awake and had yanked it up. The truth fell hard upon me: a new day had arrived. I had to get moving. If I did not, my father would be up to make sure, and I didn’t want to suffer through that.
I dragged numb-dead legs out from underneath the blanket and tossed them over the side. The air was cold. I could feel in my bones more than the air the impending winter.
The red second hand of the Casio swept along indifferently. With more force than I knew I had, I whapped the little lip on the top of the clock shut.
The sound of steady breathing, not my own, encroached upon the silence. Tommy lay next to me in his bed, dead asleep. I looked around. On the floor nearby was a rolled up sock I had worn the previous day. I plucked it off the floor and floated a light pass towards Tommy’ head. Terry Bradshaw could not have applied a sweeter touch. The sock unrolled in flight, and draped across his face.
‘Mwwf,’ he said.
‘Wake up, Tommy.’
‘No,’ he muttered.
It was the Sunday after Thanksgiving. Sundays meant the route took two times as long because the papers weighed about a hundred pounds each. Then we had to go to Mass at nine. By the time you got home from all of that it was about 10:30, and the day was practically half over.
Tommy made some sort of suffering noise, like a baboon having a baby. The sock slid over his face. ‘…..Whasthis?......aaagh……jerkoff!!’ He hurled the smelly sock across the room. I had managed to get him going on the wrong side of the bed too. When that happened we usually spent the morning insulting each other, or maybe pounding each other’s arms with our fists.
I beat Tommy downstairs by a long shot and started hunting around for the Sunday shoes, brand-new, that my mother had just bought the week before at Thom McAn. I rooted through our notorious shoe pile by the front door. My mother always said shoes grew there. Everyone seemed to dump their shoes in the same place when they came inside the door. Whenever we were seen walking by the shoe pile she would order us to stop and pick them up.
Lo and behold, my shoes were there. I yanked them out of the pile like twin Excaliburs. As I wrenched them onto my feet, Tommy came trudging down the stairs, dragging a brown leather belt. ‘Come on,’ I prodded, pulling my winter coat out of the closet. We both knew what would happen if we took too long.
Tommy dug his shoes out from the pile. By this time the integrity of the mound had been compromised and they were spread all over the place. He folded himself into a sitting position on the stairs. ‘This sucks,’ he declared.
‘Yeah,’ I concurred, pulling on some gloves. Stumbling down the hall, I opened the door leading into the garage and a blast of cold morning air assaulted me. My dad was restacking newspapers at the front of the driveway.
‘Let’s go, men!’ he hissed, trying, successfully, to put force behind the words without waking anyone. ‘Let’s get this show on the road!’
I watched Dad working fervently, full of energy. That was his way. The earlier the hour the harder he seemed to work. He was attempting to keep the ‘guts’ of the newspaper on top of his stack from sliding out onto the driveway. That’s what we called all of the junk they put in the middle of the newspaper: coupons, catalogs, Parade magazine. We could never get that stuff to stay inside the paper. Dad’s stack was drooping a bit and the guts kept sliding back out. Finally he grabbed the whole top paper and reversed its position on top of the stack.
I stood there in my green winter coat, plaid shirt underneath, corduroy slacks and Sunday shoes. My unbrushed hair was sticking straight up. I was more or less ready to go.
Dad laughed at my miserable demeanor. ‘Come on, Terry. Don’t look so glum!’ he offered. ‘Finish stacking these for me while I back the car up, will ya? These things are like cinder blocks today. Where’s your brother?’
‘Putting on his shoes.’
'Judas priest! What’s he using – his elbows?! If he ever does make it out, tell him to help you. I’m gonna back it up.’
‘All right,’ I mumbled.
We did the exact same thing every Sunday. Tommy and I had been delivering The Newark Star-Ledger for two years. On weekdays all we had to do was pile up the papers in the pull-cart we had purchased the year prior and drag them around from door to door. On Sundays, however, it would have taken all day to drag those bricks around. So we loaded up the Sunday Ledgers into the back of my parents’ station wagon, and Dad drove them around the route while we plucked them out.
The ruby-glowing brake lights glided steadily towards me as Dad slowly backed the car. It looked like the Millennium Falcon being sucked into the Death Star in Star Wars. Dad edged it very slowly right up to where the stack of papers had fallen over again.
‘Shit,’ I said, mainly because I was out of earshot.
Tommy finally wandered out of the house while I was straightening the stack again, his own navy blue winter coat zipped up, but without gloves.
‘Took you long enough,’ I said.
‘Shut up.’
My Dad came around the back of the car. ‘Keep your voices down,’ he said. ‘Let’s not wake up your mother. No one wants that. Hey, morning, Tommy! Look alive! Give Terry a hand … it’s almost 6:15. We’ve got to deliver the news.’
Dad walked over to where Tommy stood, looking as though the whole unfeeling world had toppled over on him. He chuckled and slapped him on the shoulder. ‘You guys are two of a kind. It’s not so bad, Tommy.’
Tommy said nothing. He bent over and started to help with the papers. We couldn’t tell which guts came from what paper, so we just shoved them in wherever. Dad lowered the back door of our old Chevrolet station wagon and we started piling them in the back according to our established system. Five stacks across the back of the car with five to six papers each, since we had a total of 28 customers. On some occasions our ‘manager’, this high-school dropout named Bronco, shorted us a few papers. But on this Sunday he had gotten it right.
The station wagon’s motor was chugging. It was suffering through its last few years of slow, cancerous death. I watched as the exhaust pipe coughed out gray smoke, feeling like I might puke at any moment.
‘We’re burning daylight here,’ Dad urged us yet again.
The weak light was beginning to breach the defenses of the wood line across the street. I yawned so widely that I thought my head was trying to turn inside out. Tommy was already sitting in front. I should have called shotgun when I had the chance.

▫ ▫ ▫ ▫

I was dallying down the left-hand curb of Magnolia Lane with two massive Ledgers, one under each arm. We were on the homestretch, and I was beginning to feel human. All I had left to do was stuff one of the papers in between the Jacksons’ storm door and front door, hurl the last one onto the Perrys’ front stoop, and I’d be finished. Every customer had their own preference about precisely where they wanted to find their paper waiting. When you first began a route, those specifics were important to get down, but after a while you did it by rote, like praying.
It was Tommy’s job to cover the even numbers on the right side. He had fallen behind somewhere. I had last seen him coming out of the Johnsons’ driveway several houses back.
At the end of the road, where Magnolia dumped back into Orchard, Dad pulled up to the stop sign and put the car in park. As we would wander on our own through the front yards of customers and non-customers alike to get to the next subscriber, Dad would pull the station wagon forward. That way, when we unloaded what we were carrying, he’d be there with the rest of the papers.
I labored up the Perrys’ driveway and tossed the paper on their doorstep like a hooked flounder. It landed with the open end facing away from me, and the inertia caused all of the guts to slide right out again. Every week we spent half of the time trying to keep that crud inside the paper.
After gathering all the stray guts and stuffing the paper again, I headed towards the idling car. It sat there like a sleeping rhinoceros. Dad saw me coming. I watched him prepare for the race.
With the car in neutral, he began to rev the engine. The brake lights flickered like flames. I knew he had his foot stamped on the pedal, just waiting to release it. I could feel him staring me down in the rearview mirror. I grinned and picked up my speed.
‘Tommy!’ I yelled over my shoulder. ‘Where are you?’
‘The Branskys,’ I heard him holler in reply from somewhere behind me, probably waking up the elderly couple that lived there. He was still a good ways up the street, most likely cutting through the side yards to save time. A few moments later he emerged, closer than I thought, shuffling down the driveway of house #10, the last customer.
We heard the station wagon’s engine growl again. The gauntlet had been chucked.
‘You ready?’ I asked Tommy, lifting an eyebrow.
‘Yep.’
We turned in unison and bolted towards the car.
I don’t even know how this weekly event started. But by that time it was a firm ritual. My father might have done something similar as a kid. Yet he insisted that this father never gave him rides anywhere. If Grandpa Meegan had been around I might have asked him, but he had died right before my family moved to River Heights.
This was the contest: whenever we’d finish up delivering the last papers on Sunday, Tommy and I would race Dad home – him in the car, ourselves on foot. The rule was that he was not allowed to accelerate. He could only let the car coast in neutral, because turning onto Orchard Street and then onto Arbor to get to our house was entirely downhill. All Dad was allowed to do was let up on the brakes and hit the gas once to get the car moving.
The station wagon, battle-tank that it was, started out painfully slow, of course, but always picked up a great head of steam at the end, barreling like Hell’s locomotive through the timid suburban void. Dad would have to stomp on the brakes again by the time he got to our driveway to avoid flattening my Mom’s smaller Toyota into scrap metal or busting through the garage door.
In the two years we had been racing, we had never beaten the station wagon. It passed us every time on Arbor Street, and Dad would honk and yell at us as he cruised by. The car was just too big and the hill too steep: it was probably a matter of cold physics. Yet week after week we could never resist the impulse, like Charlie Brown, to try it again. The result was always the same.

▫ ▫ ▫ ▫

Stumbling and tripping over one another, like a couple of maniacs unbound, Tommy and I tore down Magnolia Street. Just before reaching the car, we cut quickly through the side yard of the house on the corner. We dashed through a spot of brilliant sunlight that had powered its way through the trees; for a moment I felt its glorious heat. Tommy pulled ahead of me by a few strides, like John the apostle on the way to the empty tomb. The dew from the damp grass soaked my shoes.
Tommy hollered something at me over his shoulder. All I heard was the word ‘slow’, but I got the message. We reached the end of Orchard Street, but then had to halt, because Arbor Street was a much busier road. Tommy had to allow a red pickup to roll by at what seemed like the slowest possible speed. When I caught up I fake-tackled him.
‘You idiot!’ he hollered.
‘Mean Joe Greene!’ I cried.
Out of the corner of my eye I could see the station wagon slowly gathering momentum, rolling faster and faster. That familiar sensation seeped into my bones: we were going to lose. Even though it happened every time, it always felt like someone had dumped ice down my shirt.
The driver of the pickup evidently had never seen two boys standing by the road before. He crawled by to take a closer look. We glared back.
When the truck finally passed, we crossed and started sprinting down the hill with all our might. I knew I could stumble over my own feet and smash head over tail onto the hard black sidewalk at any moment. I’d probably rip my pants, and get creamed by my mother if not by the fall. But I didn’t care. I was caught up in the desperation of a race against something I knew I could not outrun, like the climax of a terrifying dream.
I was almost past Mr. Crowders’ house, right next door to ours, when the station wagon’s horn went off like an air-raid siren. It was always so terribly loud, enough to wake up the entire neighborhood. Tommy and I couldn’t even talk in the morning because we’d wake someone; but my Dad could trumpet victory over his sons throughout the neighborhood indiscriminately.
Tommy and I pretended to concentrate on the finish line. We ran like we still believed we could win. But the station wagon rolled unfeelingly past us. Dad knew we were looking. He waved his hand back and forth out the open window, and I heard him crying out, as he turned the car into the driveway, ‘Someday! Someday!’

▫ ▫ ▫ ▫

Early on in the following week we saw Mutt often, mainly in school where he was in my class, but the subject of the race car did not come up again. This was true even on Tuesday, when the Cub Scouts were having one of their weekly meetings after school. Mutt came in wearing his over-sized blue shirt and the neck kerchief proudly, but knew better than to talk to me about it. It was bad enough to see him and all the others dressed in their uniforms. In Mutt’s case it looked like someone had taken a ventriloquist’s dummy and dressed them up to join the scouts.
Mutt’s real name was Matthew. We called him “Mutt” because he was rather miniscule, in both height and weight. Also he had been born with slight deformities in both forearms that made the bones slightly crooked. This impeded his development in sports, except no one ever told him that, so he acted like he was the greatest in every game even though he could barely throw. Kevin had once said that he was that way because his mother smoked a lot, but he got in trouble for it. Yet Mutt always did have a chip on his shoulder, as if trying to compensate for what he had been cheated out of.
We would have been jealous of the other boys anyway, but my resentment whorled like a mental hurricane whenever Mutt had something I didn’t, or seemed to be making out better than Tommy and I. Part of me secretly believed that I was somehow superior to Mutt; that I actually deserved better. I didn’t acknowledge the feeling, let alone ask myself what it might have been founded upon.
I wondered how Mutt and his father were faring and would have loved to have seen the car in progress, but I certainly was not going to ask about it. Truthfully, Tommy and I were just as curious to find out how things were going between Mutt and his father. We had been astounded to hear Mutt say that Mr. Ploughman was helping him build it in the first place. I had gotten the impression that Mutt was just as surprised himself as we were to hear about it.
This fascinated me, because I could not conceive of a life where my father did not help me when I needed him. Every single week my father had no other purpose than to help us deliver the Sunday papers. If anything was clear to us, it was that he enjoyed that ritual far more than we did. So what was Mr. Ploughman’s purpose, if not to go to work (we did not know if he had a job or not), or not to help Mutt get along in life?
By the middle of the week, I was almost desperate to think of a way I could ask him about it without having to talk about the Pinewood Derby, which was less than a week away. But I never got the chance.
Mutt acted normally from Monday until Wednesday, but was inexplicably absent from school on Thursday and again on Friday. We had seen this before. There would be sudden absences for anywhere from one to three school days with no explanation to anyone. Tommy and I did know that most of these absences had nothing to do with illness, because we would see Mutt later in a supermarket or outside his house. It had something to do with the Ploughman family and how they all got along and what they had to do to get by. We knew this by the way Mutt would shrug off questions when he came back. He’d look away, or shift his feet, and often would do or say something stupid to distract your attention.
Friday afternoon found us walking home from school, throwing suspicious glances down Arbor Street at the entrance to Mutt’s driveway and speculating about what must have been going on in the house.
‘Maybe Mutt’s parents let him stay home so they could work all day on the race car,’ Tommy said, without much conviction. He booted an empty can of Miller High Life along the sidewalk.
‘No way,’ I scowled, looking at Tommy like the idiot he’d suddenly become. ‘Come on. Even Mutt’s parents wouldn’t let him do that.’ I pushed him away and kicked the can myself.
‘How do you know?’
This was a good question. I really didn’t know. But it seemed inconceivable. Also, whenever Mutt came back before it didn’t seem like he’d been home because his parents had inexplicably offered him a few days’ reprieve. It was clear that whatever he’d been doing, even though he hid this from most people, he would rather have been at school.
So I answered, ‘I don’t. But you can tell it’s not that.’
Tommy nodded. ‘Yeah, you’re probably right. I don’t know. I guess maybe we’ll find out on Monday.’
We were approaching the crossing guard. Tommy kicked the beer can with force. It skidded out into the middle of the street and was immediately flattened by a passing UPS truck.
Often on Friday nights my mother didn’t feel like cooking, so it had become ‘Pizza Night’ in our house. Especially during Lent. That was certainly okay with Tommy and I.
Early that evening, Dad walked into the family room with car keys jangling to find us sprawled on the couch, watching a rerun of The Jeffersons after the rigors of the school week. I didn’t even know Dad had come home. Out of instinct, both of us straightened, as if we were caught in the act of something.
‘Hi Dad,’ we said in unison.
‘Hi guys.’ He was still in his work clothes: rolled up shirtsleeves, no tie, collar unbuttoned. His formidable six-foot, two inch frame obscured the open doorway. I could feel him staring at us, thinking his unknowable thoughts.
‘Pizza Night,’ he said, continuing to jiggle the keys. ‘You boys want to go with me to get the grub?’
‘Sure,’ we said, or one of us said it. Dad would often ask someone if they wanted to go with him on such nights, even though it only took about ten minutes. It seemed to be his way of re-connecting with us at the end of the long week. Sometimes he asked Kevin instead of us, if he was around; other times he’d ask only one of us, not both.
We grabbed our coats and stepped out into the darkened evening to a dive-bombing temperature and a sharp, clear sky not yet punctured by stars. We took my mother’s tiny Toyota. I grabbed shotgun while Tommy was forced to the back seat.
As soon as we got in the car and Dad had backed out, he startled us by bringing up Mutt and his family.
‘I read about your friend Matthew’s father. Or what is it you guys call him?’
I felt Tommy’s eyes poring into my head. I swiveled around.
—What is he talking about?
—I don’t know.
—Did something bad happen?
—I don’t know!
‘Mutt,’ I said.
Dad chuckled. ‘Mutt. That’s right. Boy, that’s kind of funny.’
I smiled.
‘Dad, what do you mean you “read about” Mutt’s father?’ Tommy interrupted impatiently. We had no idea was he was talking about.
‘Didn’t he say anything to you?’
‘He hasn’t been in school the last two days,’ I said.
‘Really.’
‘Dad, what do you mean? What happened?!’
‘I’ll tell you,’ he said, slowing down for a red light. He turned a bit to face Tommy. ‘But you’re going to be surprised. There was an article in the paper this morning. Apparently he’s gone missing. Or, he skipped town.’
I was astonished. Missing?! It sounded like something out of a movie. Missing, or gone. One was an accident, one was intentional.
‘I can see you guys are shocked. I was damned surprised myself. I’ll have to show you the article.’
Downtown River Heights surrounded us. It only consisted of a few main streets, a couple of miniscule strip malls, a movie theater, a library, a post office, St. Francis de Sales Catholic Church, gas stations. The sidewalks were blank owing to the frosty air, but there were plenty of cars at the Foodtown. And at The Back Alley, the town’s cheesy watering hole, for that matter. But I was not paying much attention to these things. My brain was struggling to accept the information I’d just heard.
‘What happened, Dad?’ I asked.
‘It seems that he got into a car accident. But while he was being questioned by the police, he flew the coop. You can read the article at home. I don’t remember everything it says.’
‘I wonder if he killed somebody,’ Tommy thought aloud.
‘I doubt that, Tommy. The paper probably would have said so.’
Or maybe he hurt someone, I thought. Then I thought of Mutt. And his race car.
‘Here we go,’ Dad said, pulling into the pizza joint. ‘You guys stay here.’ He got out of the car and went in.
‘Do you think he’s really gone?’ Tommy asked me.
‘I have no idea.’
‘Guess that’s why we haven’t seen Mutt.’
‘Do you think he went with him?’
‘I don’t know anything. I haven’t seen him in the past two days. Do you?’
‘I don’t think he did. It sounds like just his father took off.’
‘Why would he do that?’
‘Especially if he had just hit somebody or busted his car.’
There didn’t seem to be much use in talking about it more. But it felt to me that the news somehow expanded, or maybe confirmed, a feeling that I was already nursing about Mutt, his father, and the race car. Since he had first mentioned the week before that his Dad was helping him, he’d brought it up a number of times, with the requisite predictions of a stunning victory. But even I could tell that his pride didn’t have much to do with the car or the race. It had more to do with the fact that he was teaming up with his old man. I could understand that.
Now, the races would come and the races would go, but there would be no victory for Mutt’s joint creation with his father, and there’d be no victory for a Meegan brother either. We were linked uncomfortably with Mutt in a kind of fraternity: those who had lost the race before it even started.
My Dad returned and we drove back home in silence. The pizza smells rushed against our senses like successive waves on the coast of ‘the auld country’, as my Dad sometimes liked to say. My hunger rose Godzilla-style from the depths of that sea and threatened to consume everything. But even that failed to dispel the strange melancholy that had spread through my insides like a crawling fog on the ragged shoreline.

▫ ▫ ▫ ▫

Shortly after we got home we all sat around the table. Kevin materialized out of nowhere when the pizza showed up. Katie made only a brief appearance in a zipped-up sleeper to receive my father’s kiss before being whisked to bed. My Dad slapped a folded newspaper section in front of Tommy and I. A small headline jumped out:

LOCAL MAN VANISHES FOLLOWING COLLISION

I plucked the paper off the table. ‘Let me see it,’ Tommy protested. Instead, I read the article aloud:

A local man whose vehicle was struck by an elderly motorist unexpectedly Wednesday evening eluded the police after they arrived to investigate, witnesses said. Fifty-one-year-old James Ploughman, an unemployed industrial machinist, did not appear to be at fault for the collision, but behaved ‘strangely’ and seemed ‘distracted’ when questioned by police. The other motorist, 82-year-old Mavis Bodnar, suffered minor neck injuries, and was taken to Overlook Hospital for treatment.
The accident occurred when Bodnar, a resident of Saltbrook Meadows long-term care facility, took her vehicle out unauthorized, and ran through a stop sign located at Pine Street and Passaic Avenue. Her vehicle struck the right front bumper of Ploughman’s Oldsmobile as he was passing through the intersection.
Witnesses say that Ploughman did stop and exit his vehicle to see to Bodnar. Noting her condition, he waited until police arrived. But Ploughman appeared anxious and elusive when they began to question him.
According to Joel Duvell, 33, an eye-witness, ‘the police asked him to wait while they filled out some forms and questioned the woman. He didn’t want to do that. He kept saying he wouldn’t press charges and that he would take care of his car himself.’
Ploughman ‘was obviously impatient to leave’, one officer stated. He apparently became such a distraction that the police instructed him to sit in his car and wait while they radioed for medical assistance. They said they would question him once they had attended to Bodnar.
When Ploughman returned to his car, he ‘bolted’, Duvell said, departing the scene.
River Heights police had not taken Ploughman’s vehicle information and were unable to comment on his whereabouts at press time. Ploughman lives in River Heights with his wife and one son, but did not return to his home and is now listed as ‘missing’. He is not wanted in connection with any criminal charges. Police declined to speculate on whether any alcohol or drugs were involved.
Duvell described Ploughman’s behavior as ‘bizarre’. ‘I don’t know where the guy was going,’ he said, ‘but he wanted to get there pretty badly.’

I laid the newspaper down on the table. Tommy stared at me. The pizza cooled.
‘What an idiot,’ said Kevin.
‘Kevin,’ my father said. ‘Come on.’
‘Well, why would he just take off like that?’
‘Obviously, the man is having difficulties. You have no idea what they might be.’
I swallowed. I couldn’t understand what I had read. No wonder Mutt was weird. His father was …. I didn’t know what. It seemed unreal and sad and frightening at the same time.
‘How’s Mutt going to race his car now?’ asked Tommy.
‘He’s not,’ I said.

▫ ▫ ▫ ▫

Two days, later, Sunday morning, was the day I should have won the race. In fact, there are times when I think I should just count it as a win. It would have been, under normal circumstances.
It was early December already, but the temperature hovered above the freezing mark; the sky was overcast but without precipitation. Dad got us moving along with the brick-laying procedure of loading up the Sunday Star-Ledgers. I was feeling better rested and more alert than usual.
Aside from the tiresome ritual of the morning papers and the obligatory attendance of Mass at St. Francis de Sales, I loved Sundays, especially during the fall and winter. After Mass, as soon as twelve o’clock hit, the news shows went off and the football came on. Tommy, Kevin and I were all big football fans. It was only a matter of time before we’d spill out the doors and start tossing around the pigskin while the leaves cascaded slowly down from the boughs or the snow flurries began to sift like flour from the gunmetal sky.
Tommy and I rolled through the paper route, tag-teaming along either side of the road. Papers were tossed perfectly into position with no spillage of guts; the station wagon would roll into view just as we were emerging from one driveway to grab another armful. It was the sort of morning where everything was clicking, and we were finishing off the route in what seemed to be record time.
I found myself at the end of the route, where I experienced a sudden burst of inspiration. I don’t know what prompted the thought. But the moment the paper slapped onto the Perrys’ front porch and the sound ricocheted off of the façade of the house across the street like gunfire, it occurred to me how to beat Dad in the race. It was simple. It had to be done independently of Tommy.
Swiveling on the front walk, I bolted across the grass as fast as I could and stumbled, arms flailing, onto Magnolia Street. It was about 7:10 a.m. and the skies were only just beginning to brighten. I did not wait for Tommy. He would have to catch up. Where was it written that we had to do everything together?
Pale light was gradually drawing shapes out of shadows. I heard a hollering behind me and I knew Tommy had seen what I was doing. The station wagon was waiting at the stop sign. I saw Dad look into the rear view mirror, then crumple a newspaper rapidly and fling it aside. He yanked the gear shift on the side of the steering wheel and revved the engine once. I cut through the yard on my left and barreled towards Arbor Street. I was past him and he hadn’t even switched gears.
Behind me I knew Tommy was running with all he had to catch up. I thought he might be able to at Arbor Street, or maybe even on the way downhill. He was going to be angry as hell if I won the race without him, but it wasn’t my fault he hadn’t figured out how to win. I thought Dad might accuse me of cheating, but in my mind I was being pretty clever. The way I saw it, if I won, I deserved to win.
When I got to Arbor Street, it was as if the town had been evacuated. No cars were visible, and no one was out walking their dog or jogging, which was unusual. But it filled me with all the more elation. It was destiny! Brisk wind rushed towards me in what seemed like great, sweeping gales due to my extraordinary speed. I’m sure I bellowed a victory cry the likes of which had not been heard since the age of the Vikings. I made it across Arbor Street and began the final leg of the race. It seemed victory was mine.
Then I made the mistake of looking over my shoulder, and saw two things careening after me, as if I was Adam and God was chasing me out of Paradise. One was Tommy, about thirty paces behind. The other was the station wagon. The car was just rounding out after the turn. I could see Dad’s form hunched over the wheel, as if he were urging on the old jalopy like a wild hitch. I experienced a sudden rush of panic, the white-blinding fear that overwhelms the hunted. I turned back. All that mattered was reaching the driveway.
Just as I was about to pluck the sweet grapes of victory from the vine, I noticed something that nearly brought me to a complete stop. Just like that, I forgot everything else. In the stillness of the early morning, at the end of a driveway up ahead, I spotted something moving slowly in labored progress. It was not our driveway, but the one that belonged to the fourth house down Arbor Street from ours.
From a distance, I could not tell, at first, what the tiny form was. It looked like a small dog or other creature was pushing a heavy object, a crate or a box, towards the curb. The apparent weight of the box and the slight incline of the driveway made this task a challenge for the under-sized thing. Then I realized it was Mutt’s house. I stopped entirely.
At that moment, the station wagon rolled by. Dad pounded on the horn and waved his arms wildly, gleeful that I hadn’t beaten him even with my best jump ever.
Tommy stumbled up behind me, out of breath. ‘Terry! What are you doing?? You had him! Why did you—?’
‘Look,’ I said, my eyes fixated on Mutt’s driveway.
Tommy looked down the street.
‘Hey. It’s Mutt. What’s he doing?’
He was straining to push a large cardboard box, at such a low angle that I thought his elbows were going to scrape the ground. He wore a dark brown coat and a hat. There, in the early dawn when I didn’t think he’d even be awake, the tiny friend we hadn’t seen for three days was, apparently, determined to put something out for the garbage men. Tommy and I were still a couple hundred yards away up Arbor Street.
He never saw us. It was clear from his demeanor, even at such a distance, that he would not turn or look around. I’d seen this from Mutt before, too. He shoved the box with the same determination he had in backyard sports games, the will of someone out to prove he’d been underestimated. He muscled that box all the way to the end of the driveway.
Tommy and I watched in silence, dumbstruck, as he straightened himself, stared momentarily into the box, then turned and walked back with his head down.
Our own house appeared on the left. Dad had pulled into the driveway. He stepped out of the car and went into the garage.
Tommy was looking at me. —What’s he doing?
—Let’s go.
—You want to go down there?
—Yeah. Let’s find out what’s in the box.
—We can’t do that.
—Yes we can.
Nothing was going to prevent me from discovering what had gotten Mutt out here so early. I knew I would have to be quick about it. It seemed risky. But something about the way Mutt had struggled to shove the object up the paved tarmac made me want to investigate all the same.
So I walked right past our house, and Tommy followed, casting a nervous glance over his shoulder. Dad was still in the garage. Or maybe he had already gone inside.
A soundlessness had again fallen over the sleeping street. Still no cars went by. Light from an afflicted winter sun that seemed to lack exposure to itself permeated the houses and the trees. Tommy, deferring to my lead, was a few steps behind.
As I came closer to the box, I was fixated only on it and the objects within it. There were jagged fragments of what looked like kindling sticking out of the top. The box itself was a nondescript, cardboard container that said ALLIED VAN LINES on the side.
It was not until I was almost on top of it that I finally understood what the wood pieces were. I stopped short and gasped. Tommy stopped next to me. A turtle dove wailed, high on a distant branch. We stared down through tiny puffs of breath we both were expelling into the graveyard air. Mutt’s house loomed next to us, silent and imposing like a forbidden fortress or a dark ship. No one came out.
It was clear the destruction was Mutt’s work. He hadn’t been lying about the race track. From the number of shattered pieces in the box – the thin wooden dowels that had been intended to elevate certain sections of the track above others; the chipped, gouged lengths of the track itself; and the painstakingly crafted little curbs on either side of each section to prevent the cars from slipping off the side – we could tell that Mutt’s father had been making something special.
But the track had been decimated. Not only were the segments broken in many places, but they had been mercilessly hacked apart by something sharp, such as a hatchet or even an axe. Huge gashes, ruts, and scratches had been pounded into every piece. Portions of track that had been melded together with glue had been smashed by a foot or a hammer. Splinters jutted everywhere from compound fractures.
I couldn’t go any closer. But Tommy had suddenly lost his qualms. He leaned over the box. His eyes spotted something. Glancing first at the house, he reached into the thicket of broken-boned sorrow and pulled out a small, battered race car. It had no wheels. It was crudely shaped, and had been painted a strange maroon color.
The car looked as if it had been chewed on by a Tyrannosaurus. It was riddled with gouges, cuts and pounded-in nails. Round, sunken hammerhead imprints pocked its surface like craters on the moon.
Along the side of the car, still legible, a silver paint-pen had been used to inscribe the words MATT’S PHANTOM. Tommy held it up to show me. I stared dumbly. Then he tossed the car back into the box. It hit one of the shattered pieces and bounced onto the driveway. Neither of us moved to pick it up.
‘Wow,’ Tommy said.
We turned and began walking silently up the hill. A dark river of shame coursed through my blood and spewed bitterness onto my tongue. The cold air gripped my cheeks like an elderly hand.
As I walked, I lifted my eyes. At the end of our driveway, though it seemed like a long way off, our father stood watching, waiting for Tommy and I to come back home.

(c) by Jude Joseph Lovell

The Secret Thread presents LITERARY DISCUSSIONS #1

2010-09-21T19:57:00.007-04:00

SUBJECT: "Kindling", a short story by Raymond Carver

Mutt Ploughman I'm Mutt Ploughman, husband, father, New School graduate, sometime fiction writer and essayist. Welcome to "Literary Discussions", the first of an occasional series brought to you by The Secret Thread, in which we kick around literary matters – great writers and their work. Tonight, we take on a legendary American literary icon, Raymond Carver; more specifically, we will be discussing his short story "Kindling", which first appeared in Esquire in 1999, and was collected in 2000's Call if You Need Me. Joining me tonight: husband, father of four, published poet, amateur film critic, and the sole founder of The Secret Thread: Duke Altum. Say hello, Duke!

Duke Altum Hello sports fans! Nice background work there... I thought this was #2 though? 'Confederacy' [of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole] didn't count?

Mutt Ploughman We never finished it.....

Duke Altum I guess not... well, I will do my best to keep up...

Mutt Ploughman Great. Allow me to lay only two ground rules: 1. This is a discussion, not an interview, so there are no specified "questions". However, in a minute, I will kick things off with a question. 2. In order for us not to step over each other, I propose one man "chats" at a time, and when you've made your point, type an "*". I will then edit that out of the transcript.

Duke Altum OK, makes sense...

Mutt Ploughman Awesome. Maybe we'll start this way: what's your own personal background and experience with the writings of Raymond Carver?

Duke Altum Well it won't take too long to go through it. I know him by reputation really. I heard a fairly long interview with him (audio) on that Don Swaim radio program, so I learned some background information on him there. Then I read his collection, Cathedral, once. And that's about all of my familiarity with him or his writing. Besides this story now, I mean. Yours?

Mutt Ploughman Even less. I have never read one of his books, really. I have read a few of his stories here and there. "Cathedral", "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love", now this one. As you said, I know him by reputation as well. He is very well regarded and respected and his personal story is well known. He also taught some great writers. I feel like his personal writing style precedes him, and most people interested in writing fiction have at least some idea of how he wrote and worked. I need to read him a lot more. What were your first impressions of this story, "Kindling"?

Duke Altum Oh I just thought of something else I should mention too... I heard a few of his stories on audio tape once, not all of which I remember but I do recall "Where I'm Calling From" and "Neighbors." Also I own a large collection of his stories called Where I'm Calling From, but haven't read them yet. But to answer your question, my FIRST impression was basically "Evocative writing, but there's not that much to this story." However, on my second read, I found more there to chew on...Perhaps not surprisingly...

Mutt Ploughman Well, before I share my own impressions, can you expand on that?

Duke Altum Well as with movies, I notice, I am definitely a second-time-around viewer/reader... first time I just seem to let it impact me emotionally......it's the second time [that] I tend to notice more details. So in this case, the second time around, things jumped out at me about the characters. Myers' guardedness and resistance to make any personal connection to the couple. Sol and Bonnie's seeming naiveté and innocence, and unhappiness (at least on Bonnie's part). Maybe 'unfulfilled-ness' is a better way to say it. I recognized these things in passing the first time, but didn't really notice them until the second read. And began to think about what they meant. I could go on, but that's an example...

Mutt Ploughman What do you think about Carver's vaulted prose style? What are your comments on the way he writes in general?

Duke Altum Not exactly sure what you mean by 'vaulted'. Can you clarify? Do you mean just, much praised?

Mutt Ploughman Yes. Or is it "vaunted"? I can't remember the right term.

Duke Altum Oh yeah... I think so. Anyway the second part of your question was what mattered. I like Carver's minimalistic style, mostly because it's deceptive in its simplicity. I noticed this while reading Cathedral. It's so spare you can easily mistake it for not saying anything. But the story is almost in the details he describes, and not the narration of the actual 'action.' Carver gets at his truth through details, gestures, glances, very subtle observations. It commands that you pay attention. But more often than not there is some interesting stuff going on underneath the surface. Again, I noticed that here, but only the second time around. But it can also be maddening, because he gives you not even one hint of what it might mean. It's entirely up to you to fill in the blanks.

Mutt Ploughman Good points. I find the experience - and I guess this is my third or so - sort of a mix of inspiring and frustrating. It reminds me a lot of my experience in reading Hemingway. Carver was obviously a very talented man and a very gifted writer. But there were some lines in this story that if I saw them anywhere else, I would have been nearly pissed off! It's a weird experience.

Duke Altum What's an example of that kind of line??

Mutt Ploughman I have one here...."...it was a matter of life and death that he do so. I must finish this job, he thought, or else....." If I had seen that in a New School story I would have killed the guy/woman.

Duke Altum Hmmm... yes I see your point on one hand. I wondered about that line too. But, maybe for a guy in his position, fresh out of rehab, he doesn't know where he's going... and doesn't understand his own desperation, maybe. He may feel that way and not really know why. He may at this point in his life not have a very good understanding of himself at all. The first line does seem to indicate he is in a kind of limbo... "he was between lives." I think that description in the very first line, right off, is significant.

Mutt Ploughman That's a good point too. I'm not saying that "matter of life and death" line is no good, but I am saying that if I had seen it in an amateur's story, I might have thought it was no good. Also all the repetition, nine mentions of the river flowing (I counted) in eleven pages. Repeated references to water. All of this could seem heavy-handed. That's why I had the weird experience while reading this story that I had read a million like it. It's because so many people since Ray Carver have wanted to write Ray Carver-type stories. But all the non-explanation of things bugs me a lot too, sometimes.

Duke Altum That's funny, I made the exact same count... for the same reason...hard not to notice that... but that's a good example of what you're talking about too. Obviously the sound of the water is significant in some way. But why? What does it mean? That's an example of one of those details I was talking about earlier, that Carver stubbornly refuses to give even a hint of an explanation about. What its significance is, to Myers or even to us, is entirely for us to decide, I can only conclude... if there is any.

Mutt Ploughman Well, this is the whole rub with this kind of writer. Hemingway, and Carver after him. They give you nothing. They don't want to give you any nods at all. You figure it out. It's part of a whole saga fiction went through in the last century. It was being simplified, taken apart all the time. Take a look at the last two lines: "He left the window open when he got into bed. It was okay like that." What the hell is that supposed to mean??? This kind of title bugs me too sometimes. "Kindling"? What does that have to do with anything? I remember a classmate at The New School, she used to do that all the time. She wrote about women in mental institutions, and in one story there was a candle and ONE time she mentioned a moth flickering around the candle, so the story was naturally called, "Moth". This kind of thing. What do you make of it?

Duke Altum I was going to ask you about the same thing... I can see that reaction too, because it's almost imposing on the reader some kind of symbolism that may or may not be there... it has you looking for some, anyway. Kindling is only mentioned once, as I recall, in passing. I really don't know why he called it that. Any explanation I can put to it feels like too much of a stretch. Again, it's like he's saying 'make of this what you will.' The ending is very cryptic, I agree... Hemingway at least tends to leave you with tangible despair, or loneliness, or some kind of strong emotion... but this story doesn't really. It just ends of a note of, "It was okay." It seemed like the passage Myers wrote down right before the end was coming towards revealing something, but then it kind of abruptly ends.

Mutt Ploughman Yes. And it's very hard to know what Carver was ultimately trying to say. Maybe nothing. Maybe his point is that there is nothing to say. Everything has already been said for Myers. I find myself really torn on Carver because I do admire his language and his attention to small details. His sentences here and there about the river and the land, though repetitive, are wonderful. To wit: "...slowed a little, as if it had spent itself, then picked up strength again and plunged into the ocean." So simple, but powerful.

Duke Altum Yeah I know what you mean but I do come down on the side that he is a fine and talented writer, as I know you do... his style is obviously not your favorite, and probably not mine either, but I admire the skill it takes to strip one's writing down to the bare bone and still make something interesting... of course maybe there is a fine line, razor thin, between 'still interesting' and 'kinda pointless' that he dances right along... I mean, I would say about half of Cathedral were 'hits' and half 'misses' for me, but the powerful ones stayed with me, as did the collection as a whole... but I do enjoy the hints he gives us of a rich, more complicated story under the surface of these lives. That is interesting and mysterious, and it's kind of fascinating how he butts up against that and yet, doesn't dive in. Like Myers writing to his wife, or his little notebook scribblings... or, the interesting small section where Carver gives us what each of the three dreamed about. Now that small passage hinted at some things there... did it not? Maybe you could argue Carver hasn't given us enough about them to really care, but it is nevertheless psychologically interesting... Sol and Bonnie both kind of dreamed happy dreams, kind of like wishes... but Myers' was all about regret, and was kind of a nightmare...

Mutt Ploughman I thought the dreams were convincing, especially Bonnie's. And I like how in this story and other Carver works you can feel the artist struggling to make something out of life, to understand this existence. There is a sadness, a melancholy at play. But at the service of a mysterious kind of talent. And he obviously cared a lot about his language, his use of words......

Duke Altum Oh yeah, Carver is definitely trying to get at a deeper meaning, if there is one, underneath so much mundane everyday stuff and sadness and frustration... frustration seems to be a major theme in Carver, unfulfilled dreams maybe... high hopes that don't get realized. By the way, do you think there is anything to the landlord's deformity? Or Myers' notebook? What's going on with those? Or are they just what they are, and that's it? I suppose these details could be more or less like the title, "Kindling"... will we ever know their meaning?

Mutt Ploughman I am not really sure about the deformity, what's being said there....or the notebook really....but I did find the notebook writings intriguing......almost like the guy was just trying give voice to whatever was going on in him. He just seemed lost. But see, the whole thing seems cliche when you attempt to describe it, but this guy was a pioneer of this kind of writing.

Duke Altum I don't think we'll really get to the 'why' of a story like this. I think it deliberately asks you to take it in your own direction. Again, I go back to the beginning, where he says Myers is between lives. At the end, there is that brief moment of introspection in his notebook, and he's just told them he's going to be leaving... so the reader is left to ponder whether things are going to get any better for this guy, or if he's just going to drift back into who he was before. Personally, and I'm not really sure why, I get a sort of hopeful vibe from this ending. I think he is trying to understand himself, and the fact that he was able to push through and get that one job done - finishing [chopping] the wood - was somehow significant for him. At the end of that he even gives them a grin. Maybe these small details indicate something. Maybe the next 'life' will be a better one for him.

Mutt Ploughman You do kind of get a sense that he has purged something out, and that there is another chapter opening for him somewhere and somehow. And I do admire the way Carver seems to capture that sense of life on the page. And he does it with minimal language. What I find hard about stories like this is the deconstructionism, the reduction of everything to small bits, so that every meaning you can find has to be located in a miniscule pinhole somewhere. I guess I feel like I am a sucker for more traditional pleasures of storytelling. But at the same time I feel other writers can learn a lot from reading Ray Carver. Any final thoughts on this?

Duke Altum I think you hit upon it for you, you can admire the skill involved but subjectively, his style is just not what most appeals to your own sensibilities... you like lush language, just like (interestingly) you like lush music... layered and complex... I like those attributes too, but maybe because I don't try and write fiction myself, I sort of am intrigued and impressed by what I said earlier, the truth and meaning of a story compressed into tiny details, gestures, glances... maybe that is the side of me that tends towards poetry talking, where every little word must be packed with meaning, and be exactly the right word... no fat, no throwaway words... perhaps it is significant that Carver also wrote poetry. By the way, [Denis] Johnson, who also as you know wrote poems, wrote in almost a Carveresque style in Jesus' Son. But somehow those stories seem to carry a lot more of a wallop. Think about it, those stories are incredibly spare too...

Mutt Ploughman You're right. Also I find it interesting that the poet in you admires Carver's style. I am looking forward to reading and learning more from Carver though. Good discussion. Let this be a first salvo. Next topic is your choice......

Duke Altum Cool... great organizing. Great idea. (Great drummer. Great look.) I definitely look forward to the next one... TST.

(c) 2010 The Secret Thread

Teen Night (a tongue-in-cheek original poem by Duke Altum)

2010-08-06T13:39:00.001-04:00

A poem of this caliber doesn't merit much introductory commentary, but all I can say in my own defense is... I had fun with it. It came to me in a rush, out of nowhere, and since it's based on totally arbitrary moments from my distant past that have no real significance whatsoever, I thought I'd just go with the flow... see what ridiculous images might emerge from the dusty vault of memory.

Don't your middle school/early teen years seem, looking back on them from the safe distance of adulthood, like a trip once taken to some remote and bizarre planet? I can't be the only one who looks back at some of the things I remember from that time and thinks, "What were we even doing then? What was that all about? What were parents and teachers thinking, organizing such events?"

Those kinds of questions, and a sudden and random memory one afternoon of something we used to attend called (with a hilarious lack of imagination, as if tacitly acknowledging the boredom the event would only compound) "Teen Night," have brought this particular indulgence upon us.

Ah, to be young and stupid again in suburban New Jersey!!

*******

Teen Night

Not knowing what else to do,
we would hang around delinquently
along the back wall of the gym,
trying to out-cuss each other
over the squawk of Billy Squier or Def Leppard
from the pathetic little boom-box
on the stage across the room.

I might have been the one
getting stupid on No Frills grape soda,
working the sleeveless OP shirt
and the cut-off jean shorts,
thinking if I slouched at just the right angle
I might just pass for a blonde Ralph Macchio.

Meanwhile, the irony of the red-faced,
vein-popping gym teacher (Mr. Silence)
bellowing at us for no apparent reason -
“Either get your drinks, or GET OUT!!” -
wasn’t lost even on our blunt, hormone-addled brains.

And the girls? Needless to say
I can’t recall where they mingled
at these aimless gatherings,
but my memory’s brutally clear on this:
they weren’t anywhere near us.

RAL 8.0

2010-08-04T04:38:00.004-04:00

My father at eighty years old.

While I am in this world, there will only be one time – a handful of months – when I will be forty years old; my twin brother will also be forty; and our father, Richard Arlington Lovell, eighty. It’s coming up soon. If I contemplate this at any length, I may conclude that the same figure who loomed in my own and in my brother’s early life, the one who gave us our very maleness, really is no more than the sum of our two parts. If only I had understood this as a boy! For he seemed much larger at the time.

A few weeks ago, while at a lake house with a couple of old friends of mine, both men told me that when we were youngsters, they “feared” my father. Before even thinking about it, I blurted, “So did I.” Probably all boys are scared of their father at one time or another. But, growing up, we knew ours was different. For one thing, he was older – forty when I was born. Also, he was highly educated, a scientist; by the time I came into being, he had a Ph.D. in Neurochemistry, and post-graduate degrees and fellowships on his curriculum vitae.

And thanks to my brother and I, he went from having two children to feed to four, literally overnight. Later he would sire two more. No wonder he was feared in his time: he was a serious thinker, a mental giant; but he was also virile, something we could sense instinctively if not fully comprehend. He could giveth life – today there are six adults who can stand witness – but he could also explain it, at least scientifically, which to us was, well, inconceivable.

Today this man turns eighty. But getting here hasn’t been easy. He was born almost exactly nine months after the stock market crashed in 1929 to usher in the Great Depression, a fact that I’ve always found both funny and a little weird at the same time. He grew up in a tiny town in western Indiana, barricaded in by corn and soy plants, under circumstances that brushed up against poverty. His father was charismatic, earnest, ultimately troubled; his mother was gracious, resilient, and loving. It was the latter’s long example of self-sacrifice and spiritual fortitude that for him would resonate like the sustained closing chord of a Mozart concerto.

As a young man coming of age in the 1950s, my father cared a lot about facts. He cared about science, chemicals, statistics, molecules. He cared about books. But he also cared about mankind and his predicament; he cared deeply about God. So much so that he made a long, vigorous attempt to devote his adult life to His service as a Jesuit priest. For a dozen years he lived the minimalist lifestyle of a novice while enduring what for me is still the most punishing educational regimen I have ever heard of – everything from biochemistry to history to philosophy to Scripture. At Saint Louis University in the late 1950s, while studying moral theology, he took copious notes during lectures in miniscule, precise penmanship – all in Latin. Just looking at them gives one vertigo.

In the early 60s, he arrived at the great crossroads of his lifetime. After so much time, effort, and sacrifice, he found himself torn between what could seem like two poles: the pursuit of scientific knowledge in the service of reason, or the pursuit of holiness in the service of God. He had hoped as a Jesuit he would be able to blaze a trail down which his journeyman’s intellect could travel, all the way to Heaven perhaps, while satisfying his hunger to understand both sides. But as Christ himself once said about money, “No man can serve two masters.” The phrase seems applicable here as well. He left the Jesuit order in 1964, a man of 33, feeling shackled by his own indecision, and possibly by what he may have perceived as failure.

Yet his existential angst is responsible for my existence, so to me it was nothing of the kind. God had another summons for Richard Lovell. He wanted the man who never got to be called Father Lovell to instead be called a father.

By 1965, everything had changed again. He was married to my mother, and in the early winter of 1968 she brought into the world the first of his six children. For the next quarter century he labored in the world of science, first as a research chemist, then in pharmaceutical drug development, in order to earn enough money to raise a large family in Reagan’s America. He was older, slightly more jaded, and far more intellectual than most of the other fathers I knew as a kid in suburban New Jersey. His professional career was continually hobbled by business politics and bureaucracy; it never fulfilled him. But he kept at it, and between his and my mother’s unflagging stamina in various jobs and in the household, they kept all six of us fed, clothed, educated, and happy. We attended Mass every Sunday; we prayed and ate together as a family. There was no violence, abuse, or other traumatic occasion to my childhood, and I bless my parents for that.

Although I believe his virtues as a father are many, and can’t all be examined here, there are two memories I have of my father’s paternal method that I have frequently returned to, especially as a father myself since 2003. For me they have been enough to overshadow his aloofness, his occasional bouts of explosive anger or impatience, his strenuous applications of discipline born out of a hardscrabble childhood (at one point he kept a yardstick over a doorway called “The Stick” that he would rap our behinds with if we really stepped out of line). They don’t necessarily stand up as examples of innovative parenting or extraordinary acts of personal sacrifice. But they have stayed with me throughout my entire life. I recall them again and again when I contemplate the essence of my childhood and my relationship with this unique figure of manhood, forty years my senior.

The first of these was his habit, when my siblings and I were small, of rising early on a Saturday or Sunday morning, slowly ascending the stairs to where we all lay, and choosing one of four bedrooms to quietly slip inside. I remember so many days lying there, faking my slumber, wondering if he would choose me. If it was your day, he would gingerly approach your bed, usually side-stepping someone else, and shake your shoulder gently. When you opened your eyes he would say, “Do you want to go to the store with me?” It was usually some sort of simple Saturday errand – a hardware store, a library, an oil change – but it meant that you would spend a few hours together, and it almost always meant lunch. He did this, week in and week out, for many years. In such a way he spent individual hours with each of his children, something I try to emulate today.

The second is the way he helped all six of us deliver The Newark Star-Ledger newspaper. He used to boast a lot about how he had three paper routes as a kid – particularly when we bitched about the one we had. Having a paper route became the only job ever held, at one time or another, by all six of us siblings. The job meant you had to get up much earlier than most kids, seven days a week, go out to your driveway in any weather, retrieve the bundles of paper your “manager” would deposit there at an even earlier hour, take them out of their bindings, and carry them around to the customers. My dad helped with this job every single day of the week for years and years.

He would rise, always earlier than everyone else, and go bring the newspapers in from the driveway himself. He’d prepare them for us to deliver while we were still trying to wake up and get dressed. On Sundays, because the newspapers were so thick, there was an entirely different process in which he would help us load them into the back of our family station wagon and drive them around while we grabbed them, one by one, from the back of the car to distribute. This little ritual resonated so memorably for me that I once wrote a short story about it called “The Races”, which remains a personal favorite. The point is, he was there, every day, rain or shine or snow.

It was early one morning in 1988 that Dad, while hauling papers on the driveway, suffered the first of two minor heart attacks he has survived. Since then he has had numerous physical struggles, most acutely in the last decade, after being diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease. In 2009 he had a difficult year, with numerous issues related to the disease and to medication; there was more than one time when our whole family worried for his long-term well-being. Yet in 2010 he has rallied. Today he is still sharp and engaged with the world and his family. There are times of struggle, as one can only expect from a man in his season of life; yet recently, one doctor commented on his remarkable resiliency, for a man entering his ninth decade, and suffering from a chronic condition like Parkinson’s.

I came across a line once in a novel by Denis Johnson, a writer I greatly admire, that for me rang out like a bell with mystery and truth. That doesn’t mean I understood it. I can relate to it on a level I cannot quite articulate, and maybe no man could. But I also like to imagine that my father, in his twilight – who has outlived his own father by almost half a century now – can find purchase in these words, and perhaps will dig into them up to his elbows in his own heart’s solitude:

A child stands like a priest under his father’s sky.

I thank God for my own father’s stamina and strength. He deserves credit for caring for himself in such a way as to live eighty years and still have more to contribute, both to this world and to the lives of those who love him. I congratulate him on his eighty years. I want him to live forever.

(c) 2010 by Jude Joseph Lovell.

Hand in the Air

2010-07-21T20:21:00.001-04:00

for my daughter, CEL, born 7/22/2003

Were you born with the answers
To the questions we all ask?
Holding up your hand like you were
In your first grade class
Were you covering your mouth
To hide your grin?
Or were you waving at the world
As you came in?

Pretty little girl with the fuzzy brown hair
Came into the world with your hand in the air

The little girl lies sleeping
With one hand above her head
While a gathering of angels
Assembles 'round her bed
She's got a millions sights to see
And things to do
Teaching me the things
I never knew

Pretty little girl with the fuzzy light hair
You came into the world with your hand in the air

Will you smile like your mother
So that everyone can tell
You're spreading love to others like
Your mother does so well?
When I look at you
I do not have to ask
I know my purpose in this life
I know my task

Pretty little girl with your curly light hair
You came into the world with your hand in the air

Will I die with the answer
To the question that I've had?
Wondering if I was good -
Enough to be your Dad
Will you remember that I loved you
In every way?
And hear my voice inside your heart
Down all the days?

Pretty little girl with your fuzzy brown hair
You came into the world with your hand in the air

My pretty little girl, when I am not there
Keep your father in your heart
And your hand in the air....

(c) Jude Joseph Lovell, 2003

In awe of the gift...

2010-07-20T15:34:00.001-04:00

Behold, readers, I give you a great mystery... a miracle of sorts, really. I stand in awe of the gift that so very few people have, to take ordinary everyday experience and somehow filter it through their own tools of imagination, language and cadence to create something... transcendent, sublime. Very concrete and specific in its details, but universal in its meanings and resonances.

Seamus Heaney is, without question, one of those rare masters. Look what he does here with a simple childhood memory. I heard him read this brief poem in an audio interview recently, and was just amazed by it... how he could take something so simple and transform it into something so beautiful and profound. He explained before reading it that his childhood home (in County Derry, Northern Ireland) was very near to a train track which were lined with telegraph wires. As kids they would climb up the grassy hills and look at the wires following down the tracks, towards the horizon. They thought the messages moving through the lines were carried within the raindrops they'd see attached to those wires. That is all you need to know.

The Railway Children

When we climbed the slopes of the cutting
We were eye-level with the white cups
Of the telegraph poles and the sizzling wires.

Like lovely freehand they curved for miles
East and miles west beyond us, sagging
Under their burden of swallows.

We were small and thought we knew nothing
Worth knowing. We thought words travelled the wires
In the shiny pouches of raindrops,

Each one seeded full with the light
Of the sky, the gleam of the lines, and ourselves
So infinitesmally scaled

We could stream through the eye of a needle.

That ending literally gave me goosebumps when I heard it - especially since it evokes, as anyone raised in a Catholic or Christian household will recognize, thoughts of the Kingdom that lies on the other side of that "eye" according to some very famous words from a very famous man... and with that one little hint, Heaney opens up a portal to another plane. He takes us to "the spirit level." To be able to do that with mere words is simply a marvel. I have no idea how it works, but when I hear something like that and feel its impact in the heart like some kind of pointed shaft, I'm just grateful to know that it does.

Reflections on Typee

2010-07-16T05:54:00.002-04:00

The Melville, Pennsylvania Project - Book X

Herman Melville’s first novel, Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life, was published in 1846 to modest acclaim and fairly robust sales, for an adventure yarn by an unknown literary commodity. It was based on real-life experiences Melville acquired four years earlier, during his travels in the South Pacific seas. He took the challenges he encountered and overcame, first as a young sailor, then, later, as a deserter living in the wild among Polynesian natives, and he ficitionalized them in such a way as to compel, educate, shock, and entertain readers.

It if sounds as though the novel that landed Melville on the literary map was ready-made – that all he had to do was simply write down what he witnessed and presto! a best-seller – I can tell you even from my own personal experience that this is an illusion. Just because Typee flows smoothly and makes a rollicking entertainment doesn’t mean it was easy. I tried to pull off the same thing with my own early experiences as a soldier – not once, but twice. I first wrote a complete nonfiction account called Mech Soldier, about my first year as a mechanized infantry platoon leader; years later, as my graduate school thesis, I’m ashamed to admit, I worked for over a year on a foundering “novel” based on the same material. Both of these writings today are consigned to the loamy literary graveyard known as my basement, where they have earned their plots.

The point: it ain’t as easy as it appears. Melville’s novel, though not the mature and penetrating work his reputation rests on today, is an impressive, remarkably entertaining book. It has exotic backdrops, adventurous journeys, chases, tribal rituals, drug use (in the form of smoking strange weeds), humor, violence, inferences of sex (evidently edited down from earlier drafts, for fear of scandal), and, if all that’s not wild enough for you, an appetizing dollop of cannibalism. These disparate elements are blended together skillfully by the young Melville, who was obviously uncovering a gift for narrative structure, and knew how to present the material in digestible chapters that made readers hunger for more. He was not very advanced in years (he was about 25 when he wrote the novel), nor was he very long in the tooth in terms of literary experience. Prior to publishing this book, he had only written a few pieces for a newspaper called the Democratic Press in upstate New York, the most notable of which were two parts of a longer story called “Fragments from a Writing Desk” – a dark tale that testifies most convincingly to the long influence of Edgar Allan Poe.

So how did Melville bring off Typee? He did it the only way writers can: he recognized his talent and pushed it to its limits. In other words: hard work. A segment of a great volume I read earlier this year called Tales, Poems and Other Writings examines in detail an earlier version of Typee’s 14th chapter, the manuscript of which has fortunately been preserved. It clearly reveals the revisions and re-writing Melville put in to just this one section, toning down certain places, embellishing others, sometimes simply going through three or four individual words before settling on the correct choice. The result is impressive. Typee rolls right along, as though Melville himself were telling you the tale around a hearth – which, by all biographical accounts, was more or less the original method of delivery.

The story itself is about a young sailor on a whaling vessel (what else?) in the South Pacific who decides that the brutal conditions aboard the ship are not for him, and determines to make an escape. According to critic Andrew Delbanco, “something like two-thirds” of all whaling crew members deserted “at one stop-over or another”. At the last moment, the sailor enlists a comrade who is of a similar mind, by the name of Toby. Together they successfully desert when the ship comes to port on an exotic island near the Marquesas, populated by two native tribes – the Happar and the Typee. Their information, acquired from other sailors, is that the former of these tribes is receptive and kind to visitors, whereas the Typee are vicious and belligerent cannibals. So the two adventurous men set out to cross the untamed island, dangerously straddling the line between getting caught and brought back by their own crew to face justice, or running smack into the Typee people. What they hope they will find first, of course, is a Happar settlement.

Melville writes of their initial escape and treacherous journey across the island convincingly. It’s no leisurely stroll through sparkling waterfalls and lush valleys:

The most annoying hindrance we encountered was from a multitude of crooked boughs, which, shooting out and almost horizontally from the side of the chasm, twisted themselves together in fantastic masses almost to the surface of the stream, affording us no passage except under the low arches which they formed. Under these we were obliged to crawl on our hands and feet, sliding along the oozy surface of the rocks, or slipping into the deep pools, and with scarce light enough to guide us. Occasionally we would strike our heads against some projecting hub of a tree; and while imprudently engaged in rubbing the injured part, would fall sprawling amongst filthy fragments, cutting and bruising ourselves, whilst the unpitying waters flower over our prostrate bodies.

I quote the above passage at such length because I appreciated the sheer earthiness of the writing, and I think it is illustrative of one of the most impressive features of Typee. It is written vividly enough to make you feel as though you are right there with the two fugitives, and honestly enough so that you don’t get the sense that they traveled with ease over totally unknown, rugged land. I think audiences responded to Typee for its particularly strong delivery of a “you are there” experience for a readership that would, in the greatest likelihood, never experience anything of the kind.

The two sailors – “Tommo”, as the protagonist comes to be known, and Toby, eventually run into a pair of ragged native children, reminiscent of Dickens – one boy and one girl, who lead them tentatively into the settlement of their tribe. But which tribe is it? Melville creates tension by presenting the village and its inhabitants from the perspective of the visitors, who have no idea if they’ve reached paradise, or a sadistic dinner party in which they themselves are the main course. Quickly they learn the truth, which is that they have landed among the Typees. But luckily for Tommo and Toby, what they have told by others about the nature of the tribe does not correspond to their experiences among the people.

Another of the great strengths of Typee is its debunking of expectations and stereoptypes, and its compassionate, sometimes philosophical reflections on the differences and the similarities between “civilized” 19th century society and communities built and perpetuated by “savages”. Nothing is quite as it would seem within the world of the Typee, Tommo learns. He and Toby are treated humanely, even to the point of being pampered with large meals, entertainments, rudimentary medical treatments, even luxuries like tobacco and massages. Tommo is continually impressed with the natives’ treatment of not only himself and Toby, but of one another:

Entering their valley, as I did, under the most erroneous impressions of their character, I was soon led to exclaim in amazement, “Are these the ferocious savages, the blood-thirsty cannibals of whom I have heard such frightful tales! They deal more kindly with each other, and are more humane than many who study essays on virtue and benevolence.” I will frankly declare, that after passing a few weeks in this valley … I formed a higher estimate of human nature than I had ever before entertained.

Toby and Tommo, against expectations, are taken in and treated as venerated guests. Tommo is even allowed a kind of valet or personal assistant, by the name of Kory-Kory, who attends to him every waking moment. But eventually this begins to smother Tommo; he can’t help but wonder why the fawning and preening. It dawns on him that he is never left alone at any moment. His other problem is that he sustained an injury to one leg on the trek to the village that appears to be festering. When news reaches them that a ship from the “advanced” world has arrived on one of the coasts, the natives allow Toby to set out for it in the hopes of finding medical assistance for Tommo. Toby swears he will return, but is not heard from again, leaving Tommo to wonder if he was betrayed, or if Toby suffered some kind of unspeakable misfortune along the way.

While his leg eventually heals, Tommo grows more accustomed to the natives’ way of life, even exploring a semi-romantic relationship with a beautiful island woman named Fayaway. But it soon becomes crystal clear: the native don’t intend to let him leave. Have the Typee grown too attached to him? Do they want their “secrets” preserved? Or is it more sinister than that? One day Tommo strolls into a hut where he is clearly not expected, and sees some of the women and the men hastily wrapping up packages that appear to contain human heads. Understandably, from this point forward, Tommo wants out. Has he been pampered all along for a specific, horrific reason? Not particularly wanting to find out, he begins to actively seek a means of escape. This provides the set-up for the book’s gripping final quarter.

There are many reasons why Typee works, and has endured as one of Melville’s most venerated books, if any of his books outside of Moby-Dick are venerated. It frightened, provoked, even titillated readers. But Typee also asks larger questions about the nature of mankind and its relationship to both the natural world and to one another. Who is “civilized”? Who is a “savage”? Has the western way of life acquired a greater degree of moral solvency than others? Melville himself, in his novelistic inquiry, seems to uncover a convincing case in favor of the island society over our own:

There were none of those thousand sources of irritation that the ingenuity of civilized man has created to mar his own felicity. There were no foreclosures of mortgages, no protested notes, no bills payable, no debt in honor of Typee, no unreasonable tailors and shoemakers, perversely bent on being paid; no duns of any description … no beggars, no debtors’ prisons, no proud and hard-hearted nabobs in Typee; or to sum it up all in one word – no Money. The “root of all evil” was not to be found in the valley.

There’s an indispensible anthology of short fiction out there called You’ve Got To Read This, edited by two writers I admire greatly, Jim Shepard and Ron Hansen. The angle of this collection is that contemporary writers were asked to introduce short works of fiction that “held them in awe”. In this book, there is a wonderful piece by the novelist Mary Gordon in which she introduces James Joyce’s justifiably classic short story “The Dead”. Gordon closes her narrative hilariously with these lines, which I now borrow to conclude my own thoughts about Herman Melville’s impressive debut novel:

And he did it all when he was twenty-five. The bastard.

Reflections on Omoo

2010-07-07T22:28:00.005-04:00

The Melville, Pennsylvania Project, Book IX

Anyone with a working man’s knowledge of Herman Melville’s life and his work knows that his first novel, Typee, was his most successful, and that it was based heavily on his experiences in French Polynesia after deserting from a whaling vessel. There in the South Pacific, on the island of Nuku Hiva, Melville spent a period of one month living in the wilds with a companion, a fellow deserter, among the indigenous population. The bulk of his first novel was a somewhat fictionalized rendition of this gritty and no doubt challenging real-life adventure.

The book appeared in 1846 and thrilled audiences and critics on both sides of the Atlantic, so Melville was encouraged by his publishers to embark almost immediately on a sequel. Omoo, released in 1847, is that second installment, and so there is a natural tendency to group the two novels together. But the one thing I was surprised about after finishing Omoo, which means “rover” in the Tahitian tongue, was the differences between the two books. I am re-reading Typee now to help further distinguish the two, but I could tell as I was reading Omoo that from a tonal point of view, and in terms of pacing, it is a different experience altogether from its predecessor. And, it almost has to be said, a plodding, less accomplished novel.

Indeed, I do think the problem is one of tone or general feel of the second book. The atmosphere in Omoo is far more relaxed than the conditions Melville worked to establish in Typee. Omoo contains by far the least memorable or even likable of any of the ships' crews from Melville’s other novels. That includes not only Moby-Dick’s Pequod under Captain Ahab, but also the Neversink under the watch of Captain Claret in the novel White Jacket, as well as the rowdy crew of the villainous Captain Riga of the Highlander in Redburn.

The crew of the whaling vessel known as the Julia in Omoo, upon which the protagonist has just found passage as the novel opens, is by contrast a lazy, inharmonious, and incompetent bunch, under the ineffective watch of a sickly and weak captain who makes my own stint as an Infantry Platoon Leader in the U.S. Army circa 1993-1995 seem like the work of John Wayne. And that’s really saying a mouthful.

The novel opens, as I mentioned, with the same protagonist from Typee, after escaping from his “captors” in the Typee Valley, securing a place on the Julia. When he gets on the ship, however, he immediately notes the discord and overall dysfunction of the crew. In fact, things are so out of control aboard the Julia that the narrator has reason to fear for his own life:

The mere circumstance, therefore, of a ship like ours penetrating into these regions, was sufficient to cause any reflecting mind to feel at least a little uneasy….The many stories I had heard of ships striking at midnight upon unknown rocks, with all sail set, and a slumbering crew, often recurred to me, especially, as from the absence of discipline, the watches in the night were careless in the extreme.

Incidentally, one of the indicators that Omoo is not the same kind of story as the earlier book is the fact that the young narrator goes by the moniker of “Tommo” in Typee, but here is not named at all until late, and then his companion calls him “Paul”. Melville would fashion a whole career out of nameless and/or featureless narrators who happen to bear witness to the events his fictions depict. Everyone knows that Melville’s most famous narrator did, in fact, have a name: “Call me Ishmael.” But you never really learn a whole lot about him, and the same phenomenon takes place in most of Melville’s other novels – going back to Typee and Omoo. Why Melville created story-telling narrators but disliked fleshing them out into real, compelling, well-rounded characters themselves is something I am interested in learning more about.

After what does not seem like much time, the crew of the Julia grows tired of wandering around the South Pacific without a clue of their destination (“Where we were, exactly, no one but the mate seemed to know, nor whither we were going”). So they make a decision, while the captain lies ailing in his quarters, to stage a mutiny in order to bring the ship into port on the island of Tahiti, which according to the narrator, is “magnificent….one mass of shaded tints of green, from beach to mountaintop; endlessly diversified with valleys, ridges, glens, and cascades.” There they send the mate, named Jermin, ashore to seek medical assistance. But Jermin betrays them in the process, bringing back the English consul, Wilson, and a small band of Tahitian “authorities”, who take the “rebellious” crew into custody.

Potential criminals, take note: if you ever want to commit an act that will result in your incarceration, you may want to travel to Tahiti first. For, at least in the 19th century, a Tahitian prison is the easiest place in the world to do hard time, if Herman Melville’s account in Omoo has any basis in reality. A lighter fictional account of time spent in the slammer I have yet to come across anywhere else in literature. I sincerely hope writers like Alexander Solzhenitsyn or that Irish guy that wrote Borstal Boy managed to miss this novel entirely. In any event, the “prisoners” loaf around, sometimes in "darbies" (to borrow a Melville-ism), sometimes not; they go on walks through the verdant landscape; they chat amiably with guards and curious natives; they visit with a well-meaning priest who comes to offer rather inept ministry; they gawk at a young English woman, the lovely spouse to an English official, who strolls around the island in search of distractions.

All of this while the men await prosecution, which finally arrives in the form of a ramshackle legal procedure before a panel of local officials meant to intimidate. But the event simply musters up more chaos, with the crew shouting defiance at their captors. Eventually they are released without consequence, and little worse for the wear. In this segment of the book Melville affords himself ample opportunity to wax, sometimes hilariously, on native customs, British sanctimoniousness and imperialism, French Jesuits, and various other subjects.

After getting out of the brig, the men separate and find different means of employment on the island. The narrator and his steady companion, the Julia’s physician who goes by the curious moniker of Doctor Long Ghost, eventually try their hands in some actual work at a potato farm on the island; an endeavor that seems ludicrous, because of the island’s unsuitable conditions for this kind of crop and the abundance of other food, fruits, vegetables, and wild game. Finally, news that an American whaling vessel has landed upon the island reaches the two former mariners, so they once again set out across the island in the hopes of securing a passage on the ship. To do so requires many visits to native islander’s homes, descriptions of dances, naps, a large dinner party, and various encounters with tobacco. Melville describes all of these encounters vividly, but with a strong sense of leisure, for lack of a better term. Nothing in Omoo feels tense or even particularly substantive; it’s hardly more than series of strung-together anecdotes related in an agreeable and colorful manner.

“Paul” and Doctor Long Ghost finally make their way into the court of one Queen Pomaree Vahanee I, with the intention to seek permission to leave on the American ship. Pomaree is the local “monarch”, descended from a line of Tahitian royalty who act out of tradition as figurehead representatives of the English realm. Queen Victoria even condescends to deliver an actual crown to Pomaree as a measure of good faith, which is taken on the island as a badge of her legitimacy. There is an interesting description of the Queen’s inner courtyard, crammed with statues, small devices, machines, and other doodads that arrived as gifts from “civilized” society but have absolutely no value in an island setting. It’s the one visual metaphor in the entire novel that speaks the clearest and the loudest.

Once they are in the Queen’s court, however, Paul and Long Ghost find a way to unintentionally insult the monarch, and are both exiled from her presence. So they go to the ship anyway: only to be informed that there is room for only one. Our humble narrator departs for Cape Horn and then home (or straight into the 1850 novel White Jacket), but only after Long Ghost decides, somewhat inexplicably, that he intends to stay on the island longer. Cue the LOST title card!!

There is plenty to fascinate and ruminate over in the experience of reading Omoo. I also found that the book provided numerous occasions for Melville to deploy his sense of humor, nowhere more so than in this uproarious smack-talk about a French warship:

There is a good deal of French flummery about her – brass plates and other gew-gaws, stuck on all over, like baubles on a handsome woman …. To behold the rich hangings and mirrors, and mahogany within, one is almost prepared to see a bevy of ladies trip back and forth on the balcony for an airing.

Yet for all the enjoyment, the wonderful prose, and the general pleasure of this novel, it is hard to think of it as much more than a light volley among Melville’s other thunderous blasts. It may be because it was written to capitalize on the commercial promise of the first book he wrote, which is only reasonable; or, it could be because it was based more on his imagination than on his actual experiences. But it’s indisputable that Omoo lacks the tension and danger, and indeed, some of the guts, of its riveting and eager predecessor. To use a film analogy, Omoo is not Blair Witch 2 or anything, but it is Halloween 2 – slightly altered setting in the same overall locale, somewhat less gripping, and a good measure less convincing.

Melville would step forward from this novel into Mardi – a long, rambling, far more ambitious work that was summarily rejected by audiences and critics. But it’s notable for its sheer bravery and massive scope. And it helped pave the way for Melville to write the greatest of all his books, the indisputable masterpiece Moby-Dick. In Omoo, one can find only brief instances of the power and the struggle that Melville would go on to harness so completely. Yet the flashes are there, below the surface, glimmering through occasionally, for those who would care enough to look – as in this foreboding, prophetic, and deeply melancholy closing note:

Behold the fate of a sailor! They give him the last toss, and no one asks whose child he was.

Reflections on Billy Budd

2010-06-30T20:55:00.008-04:00

The Melville, Pennsylvania Project, Book VIII

I’m at least as intrigued by the way Melville’s last published prose work, the novella Billy Budd, Sailor, came to be as I am by the story itself. For it was composed towards the very end of his life and literary career, after he had been working on poetry almost exclusively for the better part of three decades. When you consider the fact that the last work of prose writing to appear by Herman Melville had been published nearly thirty years before (The Confidence-Man, 1857), the fact that there is any Billy Budd to reflect on at all is pretty astonishing all by itself.

Although it wasn’t even published until well after Melville’s death (1924; Melville died in 1891), Billy Budd is still one of his best-known writings. Aside from Moby-Dick, it is the one story that most people I have asked have heard of before and can identify as belonging to Melville’s work. Many of my generation remember being assigned Billy Budd in high school English – my wife is one of these. I don’t remember ever being assigned anything Melville wrote, including Moby-Dick or the famous short story “Bartleby, the Scrivener”.

(I never read anything I was assigned to in English class anyway though, so I’m the wrong person to ask. The only thing I can remember reading is maybe two chapters of Great Expectations, and the Cliff Notes for The Scarlet Letter. In my sophomore year of high school, I dropped from a 3.5 grade on a 4-point scale to a 1.0, or a “D”, in one marking period, chiefly because I didn’t read any of the books. That's an unbreakable record in my family.)

To address that elephant standing in the room, Billy Budd is also cited as “evidence”, for some, of at least a suppressed homo-erotic aspect to Herman Melville’s writings. There is a famous moment from the television show “The Sopranos” where the family engages in discussion of the book’s “gay” themes (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyRPmMi1Mio) (kind of a funny scene really, or at least it is when Tony Soprano describes Billy as “the ship’s florist”!). I don’t know whether this book can be taken as proof of latent (or not) homosexuality on Melville’s part, nor am I all that interested in the subject. Although I am hopeful that one or both of the critical/biographical works I am planning to read in the next couple of months will at least help clarify the matter, for my own general understanding.

Certainly there are numerous references to Billy Budd’s great “beauty”, a word used often in the novella. He has a kind of angelic quality that Melville doesn’t really hold back on. But many have argued that Billy’s looks correspond to a religious subtext in the story, and the descriptions of the young man could be interpreted as being in the service of that. After all, Billy himself does end up dying a rather Christ-like death, fully turning the other cheek.

This subject, while not critical to understanding the whole story, does point in the direction of another question, which has to do with the overall intention of Billy Budd in the first place. Is it a character study, an expansion on the idea of a young, handsome sailor on a ship’s crew and how he may or may not get on with the rest of the men? In other words, is it strictly about men’s interactions, their relationships, their human concerns? Or, as some have speculated, is it really a kind of spiritual allegory, substituting Billy in the martyr’s role, willfully meeting death despite his youthful innocence? These are the questions that have driven the debate around this fascinating tale since the early 20th century.

For me, in general, Billy Budd was more difficult to latch on to than other short works by Melville I have read, or novels for that matter. I’ve spent several days trying to figure out why, and I still don’t really know. In addition to being well-known, it’s considered one of his finest writings by most critics. I can’t say exactly what it is about the novella that makes it more obscure and slightly more impenetrable to me than his other sea-stories, but I may be able to offer some theories.

There was a great deal of time and experience acquired by Melville between the years he wrote his other novella-length works, “Bartleby” and “Benito Cereno”, and the time he was writing Billy Budd, and this naturally had a great effect on the final product. It’s my idea that as time went on, even as early as the later 1850s, when he was writing The Confidence-Man, Melville drifted away from the parameters of a more “conventional” story-telling style. After he concluded his last novel, and it received the usual half-hearted notices and public dismissal, Melville seemed more than ready to gravitate into other forms of writing – which he did, transforming himself into a poet almost overnight. For most of the next 30 years, as I said above, he wrote mostly poems, and some experimental poetry-prose mash-ups.

Indeed, Billy Budd, by all scholarly accounts, began as a poem entitled “Billy in the Darbies” – “darbies”, I have since learned, means irons or chains. The final version of the poem, that is only a couple of stanzas long, appears at the end of the novella. The volume I read which contained the final version of Billy Budd also, helpfully, contained early versions of the poem that led to the narrative story, which was originally longer. You can see how Melville initially planned to tell the story of a very handsome young sailor who was convicted for trying to generate a mutiny on board a whaling vessel, while remaining entirely innocent of the crime. Yet instead of attempting to defend himself against the charges in the impromptu court-martial, he fatally drops his accuser in one blow, then faces his own imprisonment and death with a Christ-like bravery and demeanor.

Looking to my own experience, being a terrible poet, I can’t say that I have ever come close to having a story develop out of a poem; I would think it would be easier to go the other way, and boil a story down to verse, but I can’t really say. I do know that given that provenance, it would seem impossible for Billy Budd to read the same way as the earlier stories that began as “normal” prose drafts and were refined and revised into the present versions. Is it too obvious to point out that the intellectual implements used to bring a poem into reality must be different from those used to draft a work of fiction?

Also, it seemed to me that even if Melville had not been writing poetry for all that time, he was clearly experimenting with narrative itself, and what it means to tell a story using a prose format. If you look at tales such as “The Two Temples” or “The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids”, those “stories”, while written in recognizable narrative prose, are not traditional fictions. As I have written here previously, they examine two similar situations with overlapping characters but in different physical settings. Sometimes described as “diptychs”, I am not sure what writings like this really accomplish, for lack of a better word – but I know for sure they don’t tell a gripping yarn. They’re simply not built for that. They’re more experimental.

Melville had proved more than once he could tell an exciting story. He was interested in different ways of employing his skills as an artist. Even earlier works such as the novel Mardi dabbled in experimental techniques by fusing poetry and prose in many segments, revealing that Melville was interested in such hybrid forms from an earlier point in his career. And clearly this desire to “mix it up”, to use current vernacular, remained alive in this vibrant and self-driven artist up through the very end of his writing life.

Billy Budd, in the final version, is closer to traditional story-telling than many of his other later works, but it doesn’t feel, to me anyway, like a traditional story. It is marked by Melville’s wandering intellect, vast body of experiences, and inclination towards uncharted literary territory. Perhaps this corresponds to his physical wanderlust as a younger man, characteristic of a brave soul who was always willing to discover new things, and to push himself into undiscovered intellectual and even spiritual challenges.

Even if I cannot say Billy Budd is my favorite among his works, my admiration for it as a final cannon blast from the deck of one of literature’s most intrepid man-of-wars is here given earnest, if imperfect, testimony.

Reports of My Death (or the Death of This Blog) Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

2010-06-25T10:00:00.001-04:00

Contrary to what some of you out there must be thinking, this blog is not only about the work of Herman Melville. Nor is it only a showcase for Mutt's talents as a writer of both fiction and non-fiction (click the links to check out his latest efforts in both). And, lastly, ol' Duke is not dead, I am happy to say. Just quiet on the blogosphere. Lately.

Now before I go any further, one thing I want to make clear: I am huge fan (obviously) of Mutt's writing, and I am personally grateful to him for pretty much single-handedly keeping this blog going for most of the past year. He has consistently generated interesting and creative content, and even if it's not your bag all the time, the man is working - and that's saying something, trust me, if you know anything about his ridiculous personal workload and schedule!!

As for me, I suppose there are a million lame excuses I could offer, but it all basically comes down to one thing: I really haven't figured out a way to organize what little free time I have (as a husband, father of four children and full-time worker) so that I can contribute consistently to these pages. In the beginning I was better at it, but as my family grew and my responsibilities along with it, I have found it harder and harder. But then that's obvious, I suppose, from my lack of posts lately. (And yes, lest you feel the need to point it out: I am aware of how much more lame these ramblings sound directly after praising Mutt for his prolific output at TST despite an incredibly intense schedule. Duly noted!)

The desire has always been there. Believe me, there is always something I want to be sharing through this forum about great books I've read, movies I've seen, music I've been listening to, fascinating articles you might have missed, and all that good stuff. I try to use my Twitter page to share some of that stuff, so if you're a Twitter user and share some common interests with Mutt and I, I enthusiastically invite you to follow me! I'm not promising a constant stream of profundities, but I do know through experience that sometimes Twitter is a great way to catch up with something that may have flown below your radar. I've been turned on to numerous great links and articles since I started using it. (I've also dutifully tweeted about most of Mutt's Melville entries, in the hopes that more folks might visit these pages and have their interest ignited in this amazing writer through Mutt's thoughtful and entertaining reflections.)

Anyway, back to that desire of mine: because it's still burning strong (despite all evidence to the contrary), and because I believe that great books and one's interior life are still among the things most urgent to be writing and thinking about, this blog shall soldier on. There's so much of the good, the true and the beautiful out there left to explore... we have not even barely scratched the surface in this enterprise... "the world is charged with the grandeur of God... it gathers to a greatness," as Gerard Manley Hopkins so famously (and magnificently) put it. We cannot not continue this project, because as my man G. K. Chesterton once said, "if a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly."

So then, in the spirit of "doing it badly" (as opposed to not doing it at all!), here are some items worth sharing:

I've finally added another quick film recommendation to the left-hand margin... Waltz With Bashir is an incredible movie and all, but really it was high time to move on to something else, don't you think??
I recently finished reading Ron Hansen's latest novel Exiles, and for my money it's yet another in a long string of underappreciated works from one of America's most overlooked and talented writers. I think part of the reason Hansen is not more widely read is his refusal to write about conventional or "hot button" subjects. Imagine being in the offices of whoever his publisher is when he told them he was working on a novel about the inner life of Gerard Manley Hopkins (two mentions, one post!) and the real-life sea tragedy behind his famous poem, "The Wreck of the Deutschland." I can practically hear the sustained, awkward silence... and yet somehow, against all odds and expectations, this is both a gripping account of a disaster at sea (some written scenes will powerfully remind you of some of the better moments of James Cameron's Titanic) AND a penetrating, profound exploration of a poet/priest struggling with the difficult question of how to best use his creative gifts and yet live out his calling as a servant of God. A combination like that makes this a book unlike 95% of novels ever written, and the clear, elegant prose also sets it apart. Hansen is a gifted and insightful writer who deserves to be better known. If you want to learn more about the book, I recommend Mutt's concise review, "Suffering the Storm," from earlier on this blog.
This week the New York Times published an illuminating article about the archives of John Updike, which I would recommend to anyone interested in the craft of writing. Of particular note is the way it reveals his revision practices, and how he went about editing and improving his own prose. I'm nowhere near the biggest Updike fan in the world (though I do admire many of his short stories, especially earlier ones such as "You'll Never Know, Dear, How Much I Love You"), but his productivity and precision as a writer are the stuff of legend, and it's fascinating to get a glimpse of his development and practices over the decades of a celebrated career.
Utterly random item of the day: you know what the symbols for the U.S. dollar, the euro, the English pound and the Japanese yen are... what about the Indian rupee? Give up? That's because there's never been one! But that's about to change, interestingly... what does this have to do with books, you ask? Absolutely nothing, but I thought it was mildly interesting.
I'm just about to finish Arthur Koestler's chilling novel Darkness at Noon, which may be the single most effective rendering of the brutality and cold logic of totalitarianism ever put to the printed page... and, book nerd that I am, I noticed recently that it means that I will have read all but one of the top 10 novels in the Modern Library's 100 Best Novels of All Time list. How many of them have you taken on? (The one I haven't gotten to yet? Joseph Heller's Catch-22.)

A Hen, A Lion, A Passenger, & A Pachyderm

2010-06-24T10:03:00.007-04:00

A tale of imagination by Mutt Ploughman.

ALTHOUGH I have lived in a number of other places, my life began in the city of Chicago, in the shadow of elevated trains. My family left there when I was still young, and I have not often returned, so it feels inauthentic to identify myself as a Chicagoan. Yet, though a tree’s branches may sprawl out high and far, its roots stay put. So perhaps my trunk still remains, cooling in that same shadow.
Also, both of my parents were raised there. Their answer to the question Where are you from? has less ambiguity than mine. They were married in 1965 and set themselves up in an apartment on the west side in 1966, just as my big sister Sandra was born. I came along in 1970. Then we moved away, in 1977.
So, am I from Chicago or not? Beats me. But the question seems important, because Chicago, as I have seen, and as this story will show, is not a typical American city. It sits over another place, a kind of reservoir, like the mossy stones of an ancient well. I want to know if I can claim some of that magic history for my own. Perhaps telling the story now, as I have done only once before, will reveal the answer.

*

My mother used to take my sister and I on walks through the neighborhood around where we lived, west of the city. I know all those streets in my memory. They were arranged in perfect squares, lined with sidewalks, street lamps of gothic black metal, and huge oak and elm trees along either side that were old enough for their boughs to form church-like ribs over the cars that processed underneath.
Indeed, the whole neighborhood has a cathedral-like feel to me in retrospect. The sun would lance in downward shafts through those branches in bursts of illumination, as through stained glass. And each time you rounded a corner to walk up another straight-edged avenue it felt as though you were approaching a mystery.
She’d spent her entire life there, my mother, and she loved those streets with all her heart, all her mind, and all her soul. But even then I think she knew that she would soon depart from them and not return again but as a visitor. This may explain why it seems in my memory as though we were walking every single day, the three of us, but that can’t be true. Sandra would have been in school a lot of the time for one, being four years older than me. Plus for 50% of the year the weather wouldn’t have allowed it. Yet it seems like there were thousands of those walks – like it was all we did. I found out later that for a long time we only had one family car, so that could account for some of it.
Of course I have a father, but didn’t see him much: he was at work all the time in those days. I knew by then that he was a scientist. I remember being so proud of that, without even fully grasping what it meant. I knew he had to make heavy use of his brain, and I knew it was funny to mention that because the human brain was what he was studying. You have to use your brain to learn about your brain, he would say to me. What I had absolutely zero notion of at the time, of course, but found out decades later, was that he was a research chemist, and during those very years he was involved in a massive grant-funded study. The subject? The effects of L.S.D. on human cognitive processes.
He worked at the University of Chicago. The word I would use to describe him during that time is not Tall or Warm or Stern or even Intimidating. The word I would use is Gone.

*

Autumn, 1975. I think all we needed that day was milk. Or that’s all I can really remember, anyway. I don’t think it was a Saturday, yet Sandra was with us, so who knows. It might have been Columbus Day. It might have been one of those ‘teacher meetings’ days, where the parent doesn’t realize it’s coming up, in spite of repeated warnings, and finds themselves at home with all their children and no plan. On days like that, one way or another, you gotta get out of the house.
Either way my mother had resolved to take a walk with the two of us, and my father was customarily absent. Within walking distance of our house was a corner convenience store, and it was towards this destination that we embarked. It wasn’t a cold day, but in Chicago, autumn afternoons are chilly and windy enough to require some sort of parka. I didn’t need a lot of encouragement to wear my Bears jacket with the hood – my favorite item of clothing in the world. I never paid much attention to Sandra, but for whatever reason I remember that day she had two barrettes in her long and straight brown hair, parted down the middle; the barrettes had these red ribbons with colorful beads on them hanging down on either side. I can also see my mother as vividly in my mind’s eye as any of the other sights that have remained with me from that particular day.
She had thick, brown hair, wavy, cut to about shoulder length at the time. She had always been slight of frame, short, but her body seemed to exude energy; she was one of those rather small women that seem to compensate for their lack of physical presence with superhuman tirelessness and a form that was rarely at rest. She flounced along those concrete sidewalks at a clip I couldn’t keep up with.
The one thing I can visualize most clearly in hindsight is the poncho she wore. She kept it for years and years, but at that time it was new. My father had gone on a business trip to Mexico that year, and he had brought her home this handmade garment that she really seemed to adore. It had Technicolor autumn tones – red, brown, orange, yellow – in a wild tangle of crooked stripes. The poncho seemed wonderfully suited for that time of the year, draped over my mother’s frame to repel the strafing winds. It was like she had the season itself thrown protectively over her shoulders.
We set off briskly, and I settled into my well-worn retinue of hurdling the cracks in the sidewalk, beaning the lampposts with small stones, and picking up sticks in an infinite quest to locate the perfect sword. Sandra ambled ahead, at pains to put space between herself and her pipsqueak brother, lest she be spotted by one of her friends or even a remote acquaintance from school. My mother was jabbering, asking questions.
She spent a great deal of time with us already, but these walks seemed to be the times when she would make a concentrated effort to genuinely connect with us. Of course, at that time, it wasn’t her I longed to connect with, it was my father. She seemed to know that this wouldn’t happen, and perhaps the conversation she was always trying to engage us in came from her feelings about that.
What are you going to do with it when you find it? she asked that day.
Find what?
The right stick.
I’m not looking for the right stick. I’m looking for a sword.
When you find the right sword, then. What will you do with it?
Stab me, probably, Sandra offered from ahead.
I dunno. Cut things. It’s just a game I like to play sometimes.
How are things going with Miss Richlick? She shifted the subject, agonizingly, to my kindergarten teacher.
Good.
Do you like her?
Yeah. She’s nice.
Do you still like the reading unit?
Yeah. I got in trouble for reading ahead two chapters.
Well, not every child in the class reads as well as you do.
I know. I just wanted to know what would happen next.
Don’t we all.

*

It was called The White Hen. I never knew why, and didn’t become aware until sometime later that it was a chain and that more of them existed elsewhere. I thought there was only one, and that the name was a tangled mystery for me personally to unravel. But I never did.
I can see that white silhouetted figure on the lit up sign rising high above the corner, like some kind of sentry at the gates of the world of wild fowl. It was painted in profile, facing towards its left, my right, over the top of the store towards the back. It seemed to point the visitor towards the door. Who knew a hen could look so dignified? Weren’t they girls? This one struck me as a proud hen, and otherwise I never would have had much occasion to consider whether a hen had anything to be proud about. In fact I would never have taken hens into any consideration whatsoever, not being from a rural area. I hadn’t even known what a hen was before we started going to that store.
The White Hen faced a busy avenue, congested with heavy traffic no matter what time of day. But behind it was a different story. There was a small parking lot with a dumpster, and behind that, my all-time favorite outdoor spot: a playground. These days I get the feeling that every park is an elaborately engineered, exorbitant affair – with six or seven big lakes, a fitness trail, volleyball and tennis courts, lawn bowling lanes, parking for pregnant mothers, a place to land a helicopter, and so on. Back in the 70s, they seemed to be stuffed in wherever they would fit, no matter how illogical the spot. All you really needed was a set of monkey bars, a couple of swings, and a slide or two.
This park, which I considered my own personal stomping grounds – even though it was always overrun with kids, sometimes tough ones – had those things, as well as a tether ball pole, some of those metal horses mounted on thick springs that you could buck back and forth on, a see-saw, a steel merry-go-round that creaked agreeably as you rode it in circles, and a drinking fountain. I’ll get to that last item.
I can’t bring this park back from the annals of my memory without mentioning the steep grass hill behind it, the kind you could roll or sled down, as long as you didn’t climb all the way to the top. Because what was positioned on top of the hill was most definitely off-limits for children. My father had told me once to stay away from the tracks of the El train because of something he called ‘the third rail’. If you stepped on that particular rail you would get zapped by a massive bolt of electricity, like lightning, and probably die. This is why as long as we had been coming to this park I never really went close to the top of the hill. But I knew it was a stop on the El, because you could see and hear, of course, the trains speeding by as you rambled through the park below. Like most small boys, I never got tired of the spectacle of big metal cars whizzing by at dangerous speeds. They were a large part of why I loved that park in the first place.
I never knew what she did in there, aside from buying whatever it was we’d come for. Meet a neighbor? Talk to the guy behind the counter? Read the newspaper? Maybe even smoke a cigarette? But my mother always gave me time to play. Parental oversight, even though we were living on the outskirts of the third largest city in America, was a little more relaxed than it is today. When my sister was with us she would keep an eye on me, in an extremely half-ass manner, until my mom came back. Even if we didn’t have Sandra, my mom still sent me back there to run around. It wasn’t fenced in or anything, and God only knows who was coming through that park or what transactions were taking place. And yet, nothing untoward ever happened. To me, it was just a place for kids to play, with an El train stop on top of the hill.
From time to time a train would come to a screeching halt and disgorge a stream of weary-looking passengers, men and women with shopping bags and briefcases, dressed in nursing outfits, hard hats, suits and ties. They all seemed to get off in a hangdog manner and trudge off towards their separate homes without saying anything to one another. It seemed to me like the exact opposite of the way in which my friends and I disembarked from the school bus. It came across as a none-too-subtle discouragement from ever reaching the age of adulthood.
On the particular day I’m talking about – and in one sense, it’s the only one from my Chicago days worth remembering – we were dispatched to the back of the store as usual, and Sandra, none too pleased with anything happening that day and especially with the prospect of baby-sitting for me, grabbed my hood, yanked my neck and head back abusively, and growled, Don’t. Go. Anywhere. Meaning, stay in the park. I wriggled free from her grasp.
Release me, tyrant! I shouted, using a line I had come across in a book. Hadn’t she figured out yet that there was nowhere else I wanted to go? Sometimes Sandra was just plain dumb.
She then set out to separate herself from me, showing me her back, her long hair, and the clicking beads. I watched her go without misgivings. She’d post herself on a bench somewhere if she couldn’t find kids her age, and I was free to explore whatever I wanted.
I’ll admit that I was, and still am, a bit of a loner. Being by myself has never been troublesome. I ignored the other kids that were hanging around in that park whenever I visited. They usually seemed iffy anyway, as I alluded to earlier, and as far as I was concerned, there were better things to do than to get amoeba’d into one of those globules of city kids.
The reason why I loved going to that park behind The White Hen in the first place, though of course I would not have explained it this way at the time, was that it was an ideal grounds for both my body and my mind to run around simultaneously. Even back then, I loved having the space and time to let both of them romp around uninhibited. The playground seemed to provide the right backdrop for creativity and imagination to take over the helm of my existence, and I loved that about it.
There were countless props and triggers in the park that could generate make-believe scenarios. The monkey bars were a castle; the metal horses my cavalry; the tetherball tower a monolith; the sloping grass hill the untamed landscape that fell within my realm; the El train a cosmic transport, or a huge metal serpent, or a dragon; the disembarking passengers invading hordes.
And then there was the lion.

*

I never knew what it was about it, but I knew in the very bottom of my gut, from the first moment I set eyes on it, that there was something else to it. It wasn’t only an artificial lion, and it certainly wasn’t just a drinking fountain. Over the years since this well-remembered day I have wondered whose brainchild it was to make a large plastic or fiberglass lion’s head, paint it red for some reason with a brown mane and yellow eyes, and plop it over the top of a standard-issue city drinking fountain. So that in order to take a drink you had to approach the thing, stomp on a foot pedal sticking out from the base of the lion’s neck like an arrow, and then shove your head straight into the beast’s jaws. Oh, and if you were going to do it at all, you may as well make it the fiercest, meanest-looking fake lion imaginable, with oversized white teeth bearing down on the vulnerable flesh of a young child’s neck, and an aspect of eternal malice on its painted face.
Because today I happen to have small children myself, I know that at the age of five, or thereabouts, they’re getting big enough to read and explore and go to kindergarten and all of that, but they’re still young enough to have unrestrained terrors of certain things. The lion in that playground, for me, was such a terror. It was located to one side, fortunately, isolated in a kind of imaginary ring of doom, as though it had wandered in off of some killing plain in the realm I’d created and decided to station itself there to watch. One day, I was sure that the thing would simply come alive and attack, even though it was only a head and neck; it would attack disembodied, thereby making the inevitable about ten times scarier in my imagination.
Sandra released me from her clawed grip and wandered off, and I kept to the right side, avoiding the beast on my far left. I didn’t want to even look at it unless I had to. Eventually it might come to the point where I would require a drink, but I found that if I didn’t go too crazy in the time I had, especially during the fall, I could get by without one.
I don’t entirely remember what I did first. In my memory I see only a smattering of other kids there. Sandra, near the swings, had engaged in conversation with three boys that seemed to be older, but she was on her own on that score. Surely she would not want me to interfere, to start hacking protectively at the boys with that stick/sword I had never found……I think I sat for a while on the creaky merry-go-round, the cold metal no doubt freezing my buttcheeks right through the corduroys. But unless you have a grownup there or a bigger kid to set the thing to spinning, all you can really do is sit there, or maybe alter your position slightly with one of your feet. You may as well sit on one of the benches, or somewhere else……
Owing to that semi-contemplative side that I brought up before, I was capable of occupying myself longer than most kids simply by finding a quiet but interesting place to sit and mull things over. I don’t know if this made me an introvert or anti-social or what; if you put those questions to my wife today she would say Yes, and yes. To me, however, it just means I like to look and listen and think. It doesn’t feel anti-anything. Whatever you call it, this quality was as true of me at age five as it will be at fifty-five. That’s why it’s no surprise that I ended up seated about halfway up the sloping grass hill, towards the El stop, looking down at the park with my back towards the rails. The hill was steep enough that it gave you a kind of towering perspective, at least to my perception, and that was agreeable. It spoon-fed the imaginative process I so loved to engage.
Here sits the King, aloft on his Judgment Seat, surveying the breadth of his lands, when suddenly—
The lunatic screech of metallic brakes behind and above me shattered whatever waking dream I was having. I had my elbows on my knees, and was painstakingly pulling apart a dead maple leaf that crumbled to flakes in my chapped and dirty fingers when the train arrived. For some reason I hesitated before looking over my shoulder to see the train. I figured it was disgorging passengers into the autumn gusts, a displacement of moody people from one corner of the city to the next, like some depressing riff on cross-pollination. Yet I remained fixated on the destruction of the maple leaf. I can still see that desiccated thing in my fingertips, piffling away to nothing.
Then I heard the whistle blast, screaming out across the city, as the cars slowly propelled themselves forward, blue sparks crackling between wires, steel wheels grinding on the rails. No longer able to hold back, I turned around, over my right shoulder. I watched the train pulling away, but instead of the usual stream of melancholy workers heading towards parking lots or sidewalks, chased by the wind, I saw only one figure: a very tall man. But he was not walking away. Standing on the top of the slope, somehow on my side of the tracks, he was staring straight at me.
Once the train was completely gone, he stepped off in my direction down the hill.

*

A giant was coming down the grassy slope. I was riveted to the cold ground. I wanted to escape but I couldn’t stand. I turned my torso back around quickly to see if anyone else was observing his approach, but the number of kids had diminished even more by that point, and Sandra was still talking to the boys with her back to me. Not paying any attention. This guy could march right down the hill and abduct me for all she seemed to care.
Twisting back around so that I faced awkwardly up the slope again, I got a better view of the approaching figure. He was like no stranger I had ever encountered. Immensely tall, much more so than my father; I knew he had to have been over six feet. This man was very thin and seemed almost rubbery, to judge by his delicate, loping strides down the incline.
What he was wearing greatly contributed to how slender and how high his form seemed to reach into the air. On top of his narrow head was a vertical, black, stovetop hat, which I only recognized from having endured a little learning unit in my pre-K class on American presidents, mainly Washington and Abraham Lincoln. For the moment I thought the man was Abraham Lincoln, for after all, this was Illinois. Was he still alive? But that impression changed after I could see the man’s face a few moments later.
He also wore a body-length, tattered brown overcoat, cut like a suit jacket towards the top, with a high waist and wide lapels, but slowly broadening out towards the bottom like a dress. The hem was ringed with a mangy-looking fringe of what appeared to be some sort of animal fur. This coat extended all the way down to the man’s ankles, and billowed loosely around his feet as he walked, over black shoes that tapered to an almost sharp point. It looked like he had been wearing that coat for a very long time, like I was hoping to do with my Bears coat (sadly, I no longer fit into it less than three months later). I noticed that small circles of the same fur enclosed the wrists also, like fuzzy handcuffs.
The closer the man came to me the odder he looked, and the more terrified and simultaneously ossified I became. I saw that he wore a brightly colored vest underneath the coat, with rainbow stripes running lengthwise, buttoned up neatly; below that was a lavender shirt, believe it or not, with ruffles leading straight up to his cleanly shaven but chicken-like neck. I know nothing about fashion or clothing, but I did have a big sister who seemed to have an inexplicable fixation, as many girls do, with how well one article of clothing matches another. This guy clearly did not share the same weird proclivity. Even I could tell that the clothes he was wearing did nothing to complement each other. He looked both dapper and utterly ridiculous at the same time.
As he approached, and it was clear there would be no protective intervention from elsewhere, I found the courage to look up. When I did I encountered a face that could only be described as hatchet-shaped. It was like watching the blade-like hull of a warship drift brazenly into your personal space. Except for the man’s wild, jet-black, curled moustache, which one usually didn’t find underneath a ship’s figurehead. He had long, thin lips, which the moustache did not obscure, that when I first saw them were flattened broadly in a wide, inviting grin.
Time seemed to suspend, and the surrounding noises stopped, or maybe they all merged somehow into one steady tone, a chord, ringing out over everything. Yet I could also hear the wind, the ever-present wind, the perpetual rush of air. The giant-man seemed to descend the hill in three to four long, bow-legged strides. Suddenly he was standing right in front of me, still seated on the grassy slope, looking up the long, absurdly draped flagpole of him. The man bent down at the waist, his ship’s-prow nose and the bridge above it carving its way to the point that I almost thought it would ram into mine. It stopped just short, so that the man could inquire:
Boy, have you seen an elephant near here?
A wizard, I thought. A magician. The only possible explanation for who this man could be. My throat froze and my vocal chords flat-out vanished. I stared up at him. He waited. The man had wrinkled skin, parchment-like, but his eyes were the most unusual green-blue shade I had ever seen. They bore deeply into my own and dragged up from within me a memory, some moment when I had spied a shade of the exact same color. Then it came to me. A few months earlier my family had spent two days at a hotel right alongside Lake Michigan. This man’s eyes were the exact same color as the water, the way it looked from our hotel balcony. My mom had called Sandra and I out to look at it as the sun was falling one night. But I had forgotten about that.
The man still waited for my answer. I tried to remember what he had asked. My voice suddenly returned, sort of.
I’m not supposed to, you know, talk to people like you.
You’ve never met a person like me, said the man, leaning back to an upright stance. His voice was dry and wistful. He sounded old, but it was hard to tell exactly how old he might have been.
Well. People I don’t know, I said.
Yes, but we do it anyway, don’t we. Your sister’s doing it.
Yeah, but she’s not supposed to.
Don’t you want to know how I know she is your sister, boy? Aren’t you curious? The man dragged out that last word to twice its length, again drawing his face nearer to mine.
I didn’t know what to say, so I shrugged my shoulders. He was starting to scare me, if you want to know the truth. He reminded me of something…..
The man leaned back again, standing upright.
Hmmm, he said. I hope you’re a more curious boy than that. I think you are a more curious boy than that. I think I’ve just startled you, is all. You haven’t seen me before.
I shook my head.
Yet I’ve been around for so long – right here in Chicago. A really, really long time.
Again I couldn’t think of a reply. I felt like had been there a long time too. But I was pretty sure he was talking about a longer period.
How long? I asked.
Too long.
Who are you?
Just a passenger.
But … but … what’s your name? What do I call you?
Oh, you know, said the man. How about Passenger. I’m James T. Passenger. And I’m at your service.
He suddenly reached up, plucked the stovetop hat off his cylindrical skull, and executed a long, graceful bow. It seemed like something he had done before, perhaps lots of times.
Oh. Okay. Well … I’m …
Not to worry, boy. I know who you are. Which is good, because I always will, after today, know who you are. More importantly, you will know me. There won’t be another day when you don’t.
I was not sure what was happening, for I felt intrigued and confused at the same time; scared out of my wits and yet enthralled. I did the only thing I could think, which was to twist around, stand up, and look for my mother. But she wasn’t there.
Ah. Thanks for reminding me, said the strange man. She’s not done yet, boy. But there’s not much time. So, have you seen one or not? He stepped up next to me, on the side of the hill.
Seen what? I almost whispered.
What was going to happen? For some reason, although I didn’t want to, I turned slowly to look at his face, where I found his eyes boring directly into mine once again.
An elephant. A huge, white, unmistakable elephant.
Around us, the kids that were still left kept right on playing. Sandra had finally moved away from, or more likely had been dismissed by, the older boys, and I could recognize her bunched over brooding posture from five miles off. She wasn’t even facing away from us anymore, but she was in her own world. She didn’t see either one of us on the hill.
I haven’t seen any elephants, I said. I don’t think they live around here. But I did see a lion.
I never did know why I said that. I knew the man wasn’t talking about an artificial elephant. That seemed clear. Yet, for whatever odd reason, he terrified me in the exact same way that lion did – the drinking fountain. I never felt that I was in physical danger. It was a terror more difficult to name, or to explain away. Like a dreadful anticipation of something you think may be coming, but you just aren’t sure of. Something that could happen, that maybe should have happened, but by some inconceivable calculus of chance and conditions, hasn’t happened yet.
In any case, as soon as I said that, the man’s lake-eyes widened, and for a moment that water, or at least the color of it, seemed to flood out over everything in the world. But then he was in front of me, dry, his face near to mine yet again, asking me a question in one drawn-out word:
Where?
I pointed past his upper arm to an area behind him, towards where that lion held its empty court, waiting patiently for victims. But I wouldn’t look at it. For my fear of that lion, and of James T. Passenger, had reached their apex, together, at that very moment. Whatever is happening here, thought I, it doesn’t include me, it has nothing to do with me.
But of course it had everything to do with me.

*

Next thing I knew, I was trying to make a getaway. I had my back turned to Passenger. In another instant I would have taken off at a sprint, forgetting my sister. But I was too slow, and the stranger’s long hand with its talon-like fingers outstretched had grabbed the hood of my Bears jacket. The very same way Sandra had! Could it be possible that she had cooked this guy up somehow, elaborately, to bump me off? If so, at the very least, Sandra was more inventive than I had previously given her credit for.
Are you sure you have not seen an elephant? asked the stranger.
The iron-like grip guided me, not particularly harshly, backwards, until I took the not-very-subtle hint and turned around. He stepped to one side, and there was the lion, the fountain, mostly at a profile to where we were stationed. But that was not all I saw. The breath flew right out of my lungs. For reaching out of the lion’s wide open jaws – slowly, waving around in the air, as though feeling for something not seen – was a massive white trunk. An elephant’s trunk.

*

I knew it, he was saying. Suddenly his hand was on my shoulder lightly, protectively. Like a father’s.
As soon as I set eyes on you from the window of that train, I knew it. I don’t know how I knew, but there was something about you that told me instantly that you would be able to see. That you are one of those who can perceive what so many others cannot.
I stared at the elephant’s trunk, just waving around, from inside the drinking fountain. How could that be? How many times had I stuck my own head into those same jaws? Had I ever seen a hole, a tunnel … a passage? No. But my eyes were seeing, obviously, what this man’s were.
Yet, the other kids, the adults walking by … no one was making any noise, or saying anything. No one acted like the trunk was even visible! Let alone the weird-looking man towering over the innocent five-year-old on the side of the hill! It seemed as though only selected people could see these events. Where that left me was something I didn’t really have time to consider.
I could not remove my eyes from that waving appendage. Now that the shock of seeing it had sunk in a little, I wondered what the thing was doing, why it was sticking up out of there in the first place. What was it hoping to find? Where did it come from? Would it grab hold of, or injure, the next child that approached, looking for a drink?
I felt the man place one hand on either of my shoulders, so he could gently turn me away from that wildest of visions and talk to me face-to-face, mano a mano.
Boy, he said, leaning over so he could look at me closely once again, his eyes twinkling with a rejuvenated energy and excitement I hadn’t seen there before. You have no idea how long I’ve waited for this. How long I have searched for it!
What is that thing? I asked.
An elephant. As I’ve been saying all along. I finally tracked it down. Or it tracked me down.
What’s it doing?
Looking for me, just as I am looking for it. Its job is to carry me across.
Across what?
I will try to tell you, he said.

*

You may not understand all of this now, but that’s okay.
Believe it or not – and I put it that way because it’s the truth, whether anyone believes it or whether they don’t – a long time ago, there were a lot of people around here that were like me. There was, right here in this city, a great big gathering of people from all over the world, with all kinds of events and exhibits, entertainments, tents, carnival rides, crazy inventions, food stands, even wild animals. People came from near and far to share their culture, their experiences, to see how other people lived, and, most importantly, to share stories. It was glorious. It lasted for weeks and weeks. So many people gathered together at once, interacting, sharing, learning from each other.
Along the way, while all this was happening, something took place. Something amazing! With so many people visiting it at once, so many cross-currents of stories, so much energy and information and memories together at one huge event, the city of Chicago created its own great big imaginary world – its own place that people could visit in their minds, in their hearts. It’s a little hard to explain. It’s as though everyone in the city combined their ideas and creativity together and came up with an alternate universe. Then they put a lot of things in that world: all kinds of people and animals and fantastic machines and vehicles. I am one of them – a man, yes, but constructed of the memories, ideas, and imaginings of a million different people. That’s why I seem so oddly assembled.
I stared at him, completely dumbfounded. Yes, I was having a tough time understanding. But then again, somewhere inside of me – this is a feeling I can remember so clearly, and that I have tried to recapture for my entire life – there was a small light glowing, gathering heat, trying hard to catch fire. In a way that I could not put a finger on yet, what he was saying made perfect sense.
For a while, the man continued, all of us, the creations of this city’s imagining, lived here, together. Adjacent to your world, but accessible to nearly everyone. Over time, though, something terrible took place. Other human events occurred, awful ones, which tore people’s minds away from the stories they’d created. There were wars, great crime waves, fires, bouts of destructive weather, political battles. It all led to one simple but devastating tragedy: the city began to forget. It became disconnected from its own experience. It lost its stories. And its humanity soon followed.
Those of us who were living in that sideshow world, the alternate place, became separated, and gradually began to fade into nothing, one by one. There was a great agony of confusion. We no longer belonged anywhere. We wandered for years in darkness, looking for each other. We tried to reach people in your world, talk to you, but it was as though no one could see or hear us anymore.
You folks changed. Everyone began to look and act differently. Only rarely, on occasion, would someone be able to see us or recognize us. But by then so much time had passed and so many other events had happened that our world had been dismantled, disbanded. Some of us were still alive, still around, but there was no longer one place for us to go.
Along the way, I heard somewhere, I don’t remember where, rumblings that a new place had been created for those of us who were still left. Whether it was created by the same people, their children and grandchildren, or by one singular imagination that had not been around here before, I have never known. I’m hoping to find out – today, in fact.
There were rumors among my kind, those of us who could still be found, of a creature, a carrier – a white elephant. If you could find the elephant, it would carry you into that new place. There you could find out who was responsible for the place and why it had been created. Who it was, singular or plural, that had saved us from being irretrievably lost and forgotten.
Thus, I began to search for the elephant, so that it could carry me there. Only the white elephant knew where to find the passage through. I hunted high and low for years and years. And now, through you, I have found it.

*

Time to go, he said.
Can I go with you?
No. It’s not the right place for you. But you can visit. In fact, you will need to. However, you will have to find your own passage. You have a lot of searching and exploring to do.
Will I need the white elephant?
I don’t know the answer to that.
Will I ever see you again?
I don’t know the answer to that either.
And with that, the stranger turned on his heel and started off towards the lion. The wind threw leaves at his ankles and danced with the fringe of his overcoat. I watched his back as he walked away, in a state of wonder. Suddenly, he turned around again.
Oh. One more thing. Someday, I don’t know when, you will discover the courage to tell this story. As soon as you do, I tell you now, someone will be there to say it isn’t true. Don’t believe it. You know better.
He turned again and walked off.
When he got to the fountain, with the white trunk still flailing around, he positioned himself directly in front of the lion’s open maw. Out of nowhere, clouds rumbled thickly overhead. He did not touch the trunk, but it seemed to sense his presence. He leaned forward at the waist one more time and whispered something.
Then, very deliberately, he looked at me one final time. The elephant’s trunk slowly, painstakingly, encircled the man’s waist. The stranger removed the stovetop hat and tipped it in my direction. I held up my hand.
Next, in one shocking, rapid motion, defying everything I understood to be possible, the trunk simply whisked the man into the lion’s jaws. All of him. The hat, clutched in his long fingers, vanished last.

*

Last year, when I was having a hard time, I acted in opposition to my better judgment – it just sort of happened – and told this story aloud for the first time, to my former therapist. She listened closely, then nodded with a curt smile.
Well, she said.
Well what?
There’s obviously only one explanation for that.
Really. What is it?
Well, naturally. Your father was studying L.S.D.? Obviously you got into it somehow. Tell me, did he bring it home often? Was he an addict?
I feel sorry for her, truthfully. For such people will never understand. And it’s so simple. Unless you are willing to pursue the world within the wonder, the wonder within the world will never pursue you.
(c) 2010 by Jude Joseph Lovell

Reflections on Melville's Short Fiction

2010-06-10T09:37:00.003-04:00

The "Melville, Pennsylvania" Project

Here we are at middle distance, more or less, in the Melville, Pennsylvania project, and appropriately enough it seems to be a point of transition. Although I do have one more novel to read – 1847’s Omoo, a copy of which I only came across after the project started – for the most part Melville’s novels are behind me now, and I have moved on to other genres of his writing.

In the second chapter, if you will, of his career, Melville dabbled in shorter works of fiction and poetry. The poetry I am only now beginning to wade into, which is a daunting prospect for me on a number of levels. But I have now read most if not all of his surviving shorter fiction works, and it is his writing in this format upon which I now offer some rather subjective and probably under-cooked thoughts.

I usually find ways to cite Melville’s own words in my reflections, so readers can assess the strength of his writing “from the horse’s mouth." In this situation, for me, there seem to be too many good examples, and from wildly divergent tales; it seems more effective to nudge readers in the direction of these shorter works in general, rather than cite lines or passages. Not all of his stories are readily available in any store, but many of them are collected in various editions with his most famous short work, called Billy Budd, Sailor (which merits a separate reflection here in the future). For the record, I will list here the name of the stories I intend to discuss, at least in broad terms:

“Bartleby, the Scrivener”
“Cock-a-doodle-doo!”
“The Encantadas”
“The Two Temples”
“The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids”
“The Bell-Tower”
“Benito Cereno”
“The ‘Gees”
“I and My Chimney”
“The Piazza”

One thing the reader may notice about the above list is that, for a major American writer, it’s not very long. Melville wrote only a limited amount of short pieces, and with a few minor exceptions, he wrote them in one particular period of his career – from around 1852, after the novel Pierre came out and failed roundly, up until around 1857 or so, when he published The Confidence-Man. After that, he made a trip to Europe and the holy land, and came back a changed man and a different writer. Thereupon he entered into a phase where he worked primarily on poetry, and then a kind of prose-poetry mixture, right up through the post-humously published novella Billy Budd.

It may be a little surprising for me to say that I believe Melville’s short stories – considering there aren’t very many – are among his finest works. The most broadly understood notion concerning his short pieces is that he wrote them for financial reasons, for quick paychecks, following the tremendous drubbing both commercially and critically he suffered with the publication of Pierre. And by most accounts it seemed to have been a smart move, because at the time stories of this nature paid pretty well. Melville wrote them for only two magazines, Putnam’s and Harper’s. The arrangement appears to have been mutually beneficial.

Probably the most famous of Herman Melville’s shorter stories is “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street”, and it’s also one of the strangest, although you can make a fairly solid argument that they’re all pretty enigmatic. As the subtitle indicates, the story is set in the financial district of New York City. It concerns a law office that hires the titular character, who appears out of nowhere off the street, to join their small staff as a “scrivener”, or a copyist – in the days before Xerox machines, of course, someone had to produce copies of all legal documentation by hand.

Everything starts off well, with the new employee copying documents at a mighty clip, but soon Bartleby begins to show alarming signs of some kind of mental disturbance. He never leaves the office – ever – and after a while, he starts refusing any task his employer assigns him to, offering the now-famous rejoinder “I would prefer not to” whenever he’s asked to do something.

As the story continues, Melville skillfully creates tension and a gloomy, foreboding atmosphere. However, in a technique that must have frustrated readers at the time (and today too), he deliberately fails to supply satisfactory answers to the questions the story suggests. Bartleby seems to come further unhinged as the story extends itself, and ends up, notably, in the same prison in Manhattan that Melville’s Pierre Glendenning finds himself in in the conclusion of that novel – aptly known as “the Tombs”. “Bartleby” is creepy, atmospheric, evocative of a lost time, and challenging to the reader’s imagination all at once. I think those qualities are virtues, and the story is beautifully written as most of Melville’s work is. But for readers who enjoy having loose ends resolved, novels such as Redburn or even Moby-Dick would be a more satisfactory choice.

“Bartleby” is also one of Melville’s longest “short” works, nearly a novella. The other almost novella-length short piece (aside from Billy Budd) is “Benito Cereno”, which hearkens back in some ways to Melville’s sea adventures, and is considered another of his best short stories. This entertaining and mysterious tale is set on the high seas, specifically off the South American coast – yet the two ships involved in the tale never sail anywhere during the story itself.

Here, an American whaling vessel sails into port on the coast of Chile and makes contact with a second ship that seems unusually battered and broken. The American captain boards the ship to offer assistance, only to find that most of the passengers are black slaves, and the Captain, a Spaniard, appears sullen and uncooperative towards the American skipper’s efforts to help. While these overtures continue, the whaling captain notices strange behaviors among the remaining occupants of the ship, and begins to suspect that more is afoot than meets the eye. He’s correct. There has been a violent slave revolt, and the Spanish captain, Benito Cereno, is really a prisoner. The story ends with a series of depositions as the ensuing events are pieced together, investigation-style, after the fact.

“Benito Cereno” capitalizes on many of Melville’s best qualities, and should be celebrated more than I have heard it so. It’s a cracking adventure, almost like a pirate story, but it’s also a mystery, and a rumination on death and violence. The prose is majestic yet fast-paced. If the story is backwards racially in some places, Melville seemed to approach racial matters with a duality common to liberal-minded white people of that time: he abhorred the concept of slavery, was an abolitionist on principle, and yet didn’t seem to fully embrace descendents of Africa as equal to himself or his own race, judging by his own use of language. Some stereotypical observations and descriptions in this story would justly offend the modern palate. These should be expected if not endorsed.

Beyond these more famous of Melville’s tales, the remainder of the small but impressive catalogue offers plenty of surprises for those who expect more sea-tales or tropical yarns. “Cock-a-doodle-doo!”, a story that couldn’t possibly fit anywhere into today’s literary landscape, is a robust, almost mythological tale of a preternaturally majestic rooster, whose very call seems to summon the gods from Olympus. “The Lightning-Rod Man”, one of my personal favorites of the group, contains early manifestations of themes Melville would explore in greater depth in the novel The Confidence-Man, inasmuch as it depicts someone trying to snow another person into some of their money. In this story, set on a tropical island resembling the South Pacific, a stranger attempts to hock lightning rods as a form of primitive homeowner’s insurance to a customer who isn’t buying.

Melville’s appetite for innovation, both with genre and with narrative structure, were also on display during this pivotal period. His remarkable story “The Bell-Tower” contains by far the earliest manifestation in literature that I know of what we might commonly refer to today as a robot – a mysterious tale concerning the erection of a Biblically-proportioned stone tower and what is revealed to be an artificially constructed metal creature that can animate itself on top of the monolith. (Keep in mind, this is 1853 we’re talking about.) In “The Two Temples” and “The Paradise of Bachelors…”, Melville experiments with structure in a format he called “diptych”, where the stories describe two similar events with the same characters but in different environments. Instead of being opposites, the two segments of these stories are more like panels laid alongside each other. Finally, in stories like “The Encantadas”, containing a number of small anecdotes concerning life on an exotic group of Pacific islands, Melville further refined a prose-poetry hybrid style of writing, which he had not only used once before, in the 1848 novel Mardi, but that also characterized some of his last works, including John Marr and Other Sailors and Billy Budd.

On a personal note, as an aspiring fiction writer, the short story is gaining ground as an ideal vehicle for further refining my own prose style as well as increasing my range and versatility. Although I have never felt entirely comfortable in the form, and always have imagined myself a novelist in gestation, the challenge of the short story format has exhibited an almost irresistible appeal. Novels, as much as I love them, have recently seemed beyond the reach of my stamina and perhaps my intellectual resources; while poems, as much as I admire them, require a far greater command of language and a more refined sense of observation than I have. Stories have challenged me greatly in my 20 years of creative writing, and even though I have yet to succeed in publishing my own, my uppermost intention is to continue up that hill.

All this is a long way to get around to stating that I find Melville’s short pieces fascinating and inspiring, and I would recommend them to readers who may be interested in experiencing some of his work but daunted by something as mammoth as, say, Moby-Dick. Read “Bartleby the Scrivener” or “Benito Cereno”, and you will acquire a sense of Melville’s great mastery of descriptive prose as well as his bottomless capacity for wonder at the natural world and the human animal. But you will also get cracking good stories, filled with insights and inquiries, the kind that transcend their own time and place, and bring together generations from across the vast landscape of literature.

Reflections on The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade

2010-05-19T09:26:00.003-04:00

“Melville, Pennsylvania” Project – Book VII

Whose “masquerade”? This was the first thing that came to my mind upon seeing the subtitle for Book VII of this project, Herman Melville’s The Confidence-Man, his last full-length novel. And even having read the book, I’m not at all sure of the answer.

This book is not the most entertaining of Herman Melville’s novels; I doubt many who have read it would disagree. But it is one of the most intriguing, in terms of what his designs were – what he was trying to say or accomplish – before more or less riding off into the sunset, in terms of fiction writing, for the next 20 years.

The Confidence-Man barely qualifies as a novel at all; some critics have argued that it flat-out is not. It has no discernable plot; thin pastiches for characters; and leads to no “resolution” by any reasonable definition of the term. The general situation of the novel, let’s say, is that a gallery of characters have been thrown together on a steamboat that is descending down the Mississippi River. It makes stops along the way, like a bus, to drop people off and bring on new passengers. The people on the boat, mostly white men, meet and converse with one another; the book consists of a long series of those conversations, which Melville allows us to eavesdrop on, while offering little explanation or back story.

It seems that every one of the passengers has something to sell or try to push on others in some way. One man is an “herb doctor” trying to sell what we might call “organic” remedies today. Another is a self-described philosopher who advocates the “principles” and thinking of a kind of 19th century Tony Robbins/guru type of figure. Another tries to interest the passengers in an almost utopian American village that is being established in the farther reaches of “Indian country”. (Interestingly, a similar “frontier” village is described in Charles Dickens’ Martin Chuzzlewit, his only novel to feature scenes set in the United States, published in the 1840s.)

As I have already indicated, the structure and execution of The Confidence-Man doesn’t make for a very engrossing or fast-paced read. It’s hard to think of a long string of dialogues as storytelling, especially when relatively little has been done to flesh out the characters who are speaking. So what is really going on in this book? The most interesting question to me is not what happens or how entertaining is it, but what was the motive? What was Melville trying to achieve, or say, or both, when he offered this book to the public?

I can’t say I have an answer to those questions. This is probably the novel I am most interested in reading more about in my upcoming exploration of Melville biography and criticism. I am looking forward to gaining more insights into what he was looking to accomplish when he wrote The Confidence-Man. Especially coming on the heels of three novels in a row that were not well received by the American public – Moby Dick, Pierre, and Israel Potter. Though they’re all wildly different, and each of them has merits, as I have argued here, none of them was embraced by readers on the whole. You would think that Melville might return to his “roots” and write another sea tale or adventure story (he finally did much later with "Billy Budd, Sailor"), but something instead compelled him to produce this baffling conglomeration of dialogues in which a microcosm of America, or at least male America, is almost literally being sold down the river towards a destiny that is never quite reached.

The lack of distinction between the “characters” aboard the Fidele, the ironically-named vessel floating down the Mississippi here, doesn’t seem accidental. Most likely driven by his own late experience, Melville appears to be making the point that men disguise their true natures and motives from one another, as if the whole earth and our experience of it are much like the “masquerade” of the subtitle. Everyone wears a mask, perpetually. Consider the following passage from the middle of the novel, lifted from one of the various conversations:

What are you? What am I? Nobody knows who anybody is. The data which life furnishes, towards furnishing a true estimate of any human being, are as insufficient to that end as in geometry one side given would be to determine the triangle.

I admit that I struggled reading this book, not finding it very palatable to my own tastes, but at the same time I thought there was much about it that was impressive. It seems well ahead of its time once again, as many other of Melville’s novels eventually proved to be – the dialogue-heavy technique was repeated later by many prominent writers, including Hemingway and Joyce; and the very notion today of the “con artist” or “hustler” seems predicated by this novel. An entire genre of novels, films, and television shows - those dealing with con artists in general - seems to owe a debt to Melville. There are also smaller moments where the author seems prescient, including one exchange where a character seems to be advocating homeopathic medicine.

Furthermore, the nearly constant references to a virtual encyclopedia of mythology, Scripture, American and English literature, philosophy, history, art, and music that Melville employed with breath-taking frequency and variety are, it seems to me, a feat unequaled by any other novelist in our history. Plenty of people are well-read; plenty of novelists seem to know a lot about a lot of things; but no one in our literary landscape touches Melville as far as making far-flung reference to the widest spread of cultural information. I remember being blown away by the range of vocabulary alone from 1848’s Mardi, which also makes voluminous reference to a myriad of other things. And Melville was not even thirty when that earlier book was published.

Nonetheless, the question(s) that lingers(-ed) with me after reading Melville’s last novel is: where was Melville, in terms of his mental state, and his view towards his fellow man? Is The Confidence-Man the work of a bitter, jaded artist, who’s best work had been rejected by readers and critics, whom here throws up his hands and declares that no one can ever know anyone else, and everyone in the United States is being sold down the river by someone or something? Or, is it more of a great artist’s effort to hold a mirror up to the nation, letting it know that we were headed somewhere ambiguous, somewhere unknown, but ominous and murky in nature??

In the novel’s enigmatic coda, an old man is guided by another figure slowly towards an area of the vessel that is described as darkened, shadowy, and nondescript. Who is that man? Is it the author? Is it the title character? Is it each of us, a personification of America itself?

The Confidence-Man is the work of a mature writer, precisely crafted, sometimes hilariously funny, girded with a dizzying knowledge of culture and the world at large, but also inscribed in a moment of tremendous change. The United States was transforming rapidly, heading for Civil War and the Industrial Revolution after that. Melville, a great student of human nature and civilization across the globe and across time, must have been fearful of what he was seeing.

The notion of “confidence” as another way to say “trust” is repeatedly explored in these dialogues; it’s difficult for me to believe that Melville held much of that nebulous commodity left in escrow to invest in the onrushing future.

Reflections on Israel Potter

2010-05-06T10:23:00.007-04:00

“Melville, Pennsylvania” Project – Book VI

In earlier reflections on Melville’s 1852 literary pile-up, Pierre, or the Ambiguities, I argued that it was a novel in which Melville underwent a painful metamorphosis, transforming himself into a different kind of writer altogether. If someone (other than me!) were reading his novels in chronological order by publication, and found themselves in agreement with that thesis up through Pierre, their opinion would be unlikely to change once they read Melville’s last two novels – Israel Potter: His Fifty Years of Exile (1855) and The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade (1857). Both of these later works are entirely different from Pierre, as they are from one another. In addition, all three novels bear almost zero resemblance to anything Melville wrote prior to 1852. It was not until his last creative work, the novella Billy Budd, Sailor, which he was still working on at his death in 1891, that Melville returned to the open sea of his earlier days.

The present reflections are concerned with Potter, the second of that oddball triad of novels produced in the 1850s, after the critical and popular dismissal of Melville’s masterpiece, Moby-Dick (1851). Israel Potter is marked by a few distinctions from the rest of Herman Melville’s canon that are worth noting right out of the gate. It is the only historical novel Melville wrote, set during and in the years after the American Revolutionary War. It is the only novel he based directly on external source material, which in this case was an 1824 manuscript, published but quickly forgotten, by the real-life Israel Potter. This individual actually did fight with distinction at Bunker Hill and ended up living for a very long time in England after that. Lastly, Israel Potter is the shortest of Melville’s novels, and seems to have been composed with some restraint – which is indeed significant, coming as it did in the wake of Pierre, a difficult novel in nearly every sense.

The simple fact that Melville was able to change course like that when writing Israel Potter, and to such dramatic effect, is to me demonstrative of his great versatility and rigorous craftsmanship. It’s one thing to grasp the idea that your earlier writing might have been too verbose and ornate for most people to digest, but it’s quite another to turn around a deliver a novel that scales those qualities back while still managing to satisfy readers with its intelligence and originality. This is no small feat. Israel Potter is impressive on the level of pure craft. It features shorter chapters, cleaner prose, a more linear narrative focus, and a more assured sense of pace. All of these work in the novel’s favor, and probably have a lot to do with the fact that, while it still sold poorly as most of Melville’s mid- and later-career books did, Potter received generally favorable critical notices.

Part of the reason the novel seems to retain its focus throughout may be because of the fact that it was based on an actual life, as I alluded to earlier. Melville seems to nod towards this in Chapter 19, when he refrains from providing details of a naval battle he has referenced in the narrative: “Elsewhere than here the reader must go who seeks an elaborate version of the fight ….. The writer is but brought to mention the battle, because he must needs follow, in all events, the fortunes of the humble adventurer whose life he records.”

The real-life Israel Potter was born to “reputable” parents, as his own manuscript states, in New Hampshire in the 1740s. He left home early after a fallout with those parents over his attention to one of their neighbors’ daughters. Neither his own mother and father nor the young girls’ guardians approved of him as a suitor for the girl, so he skipped town to take command of his fortunes. He worked for others as a farmhand for a while, until he had earned enough money to buy a plot of land, where the enterprising youngster built his own cabin and hunted his own food most of the year. After a few years of self-sufficiency, Potter returned home to reunite with his parents, who received him warmly, having thought he was dead (!). Yet he received the same treatment as before from his beloved’s father. This time Potter left for good, served for some years on a whaling voyage, and, when the call was issued for young men to participate in the revolution, took up his arms in patriotic service.

In Melville’s novel, Potter finds himself fighting at Bunker Hill, the first major engagement of the revolution. Acquitting himself honorably in combat, he is subsequently chosen to be a sailor on an American vessel, because of his prior experience and the minor problem of having almost zero men available for a national navy. When the ship he is assigned to is attacked and set on fire, Israel is picked up by a British frigate and carried to England in shackles – from whence he will not return for more than half a century.

The rest of the novel details Potter’s oddball adventures in England – and sometimes France – working in a series of off-hand jobs and experiencing various trials and tribulations. Along the way, Melville uses the novelist’s creative license to manipulate events so that Israel Potter’s path crosses with a number of identifiable figures from that time period. We see Potter employed in King George III’s botanical gardens as a kind of landscaper, leading inevitably to a colorful encounter with the monarch himself, who, discovering Potter’s American identity, assures him rather benevolently that he will not be “troubled” as long as he is in the king’s employ. Potter then becomes a secret courier for Benjamin Franklin, whom he visits in France and engages in lively dialogue, before obtaining a piece of intelligence to convey back to England inside of a false boot heel. Later, he is thrown into battle engagements with both John Paul Jones, the celebrated American naval commander, and Ethan Allen, both of whom come off as belligerent, spirited characters.

In Melville’s practiced hands, these vaunted figures are amusing and vivid; he has done the research and preparation necessary to understand the essential nature of these men and to make them spring alive right off the page. Jones in particular is vigorously drawn, and carries a pirate-sized chip on his epauletted shoulder into the battle sequences. Again Potter fights bravely and capably alongside him, but never seems to come out ahead in this story, for all of his self-sacrifice.

Indeed, for as the novel carries on and Potter ages, we learn that his one great desire is only to return to America and apply for a pension there. While he continues to seek passage to the United States and gets repeatedly denied for one reason or another, Potter falls into poverty while attempting to raise a family of, eventually, ten children. Before the novel ends, nine of them will precede him to the grave. Finally, with his lone surviving son, Potter is granted permission to return home, as an elderly man, only to endure the hardships of a miserable sea passage to his own country.

Returning, at long last, to his home soil, Potter finds his old land overgrown, the structures he grew up in long burned, and any remaining relatives far removed from New Hampshire. He does, however, experience the satisfaction of taking his one remaining son on a battlefield tour of the sites of his honorable service. Applying for a pension, Potter longs only to live out his remaining days with the graces and gratitude of the United States. Tragically, however, the application is denied by Congress on a legal technicality, and Israel Potter dies a poor man, neglected by his own country.

Israel Potter is one of Melville’s most accessible works, with its manageable length, numerous fast-paced set-pieces, and entertaining amalgamation of fiction and U.S. national history. There were times when I felt the novel could almost work for young adult audiences – with a character named Potter, this seemed sensible for some reason. I’ve read children’s books to my daughters where the author has invented a character – sometimes it’s a pet – who is a kind of eyewitness or a shadowing companion to a true-life figure of historical significance. If this seems an oft-used template, as I suspect it is, it may boil down to yet another innovation that Melville was well out in front of. No matter how you look at it as a narrative technique, it gave Melville the opportunity to flesh out individuals whose names and accomplishments were already known to educated Americans.

Then again, this is a Herman Melville novel, and Melville generally didn’t appear to seek a juvenile audience for his writings. The narrative is peppered here and there with shocking violence, for it is a wartime story after all. On one occasion in the midst of battle, Potter seizes the wrist of an arm that he thinks is attempting to undercut him at the ankles; only to find it is only an arm, with a sword still in the gripping hand. Because of the narrative’s close communion with the brutal reality of war and its ultimately tragic and inhumane conclusion, where one man who has paid so dearly for the benefit of his fellow citizens is denied the consolation of his country, Israel Potter travels beyond the specter of pure entertainment to something of greater profundity.

This is perhaps best illustrated with an example, with which I conclude. The interesting thing is that it does not even come from the novel itself. The source instead is the book’s satiric Dedication page – from which, as Melville once explained to one of his admirers, the meaning of the entire offering can be “clearly inferred” – an arguable point. In exaggerated prose, perhaps meant to send-up English documentation and language of the time, Melville dedicates the novel not to any human person, but to “His Highness the Bunker Hill Monument”, erected in Boston in the early 1800s to honor those men who fought and died for America.

In words soaked with irony, Melville here seizes the chance to “mingle my hearty congratulations on the recurrence of the anniversary day we celebrate, wishing your Highness many returns of the same, and that each of it’s summer’s suns may shine as brightly on your brow as each winter’s snow shall lightly rest on the grave of Israel Potter.”

Reflections on Pierre

2010-04-26T11:02:00.001-04:00

“Melville, Pennsylvania” Project – Book V

Quick! Raise your hand if you’ve seen that one Star Trek movie from the 80s – I want to say it’s Star Trek III: The Search for Spock – where the titular character (let’s assume I guessed right) has indeed been located on this remote planet, but in a larvaic state, i.e., as a youth. Fear not, for soon enough he will be transformed once again into the wise sage all those Trekkies venerate; otherwise, how will they go on to produce a hundred more sequels? But to do so, the youthful version of Spock must first endure an accelerated growth process, “aging” years in a span of a few hours. He writhes; he agonizes; he screams. But in the end, he has been painfully transformed into a new version. Spock 2.0, one night say.

Here endeth the agonizing-in-its-own-right relation between Star Trek lore and the work of Herman Melville, except to say: the present novel in my year-long project, Pierre, or The Ambiguities, kinda reminds me of that sequence from the aforementioned celluloid gutterball.

If I may now shift the tone of this discourse, the preceeding is one way to introduce the idea that Pierre is what is sometimes called a transitional work. It is an unadulterated “hash”, to use Melville’s own word, of many different themes and styles, thrown together in an odd way. As William C. Spengeman notes in his Introduction to Pierre, Melville is “painfully divesting himself of literary habits that had become like his second skin”. Just like Spock did, in another way, on the big screen! You cannot say that Melville was unwilling to step outside of what we might call today his “comfort zone” when he wrote Pierre.

Melville must have been aware of how disjointed the book would seem to most audiences, as it attempted to appeal to readers of a certain kind of contemporary novel (Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Susanna Rowson’s Charlotte Temple from the late 1700s), yet at the same time seems to be lampooning them with its excessive gloominess and extremely inflated language. But this is the book where Melville transformed into something else, and he seemed willing to play that out on the printed page.

He certainly seemed to pay an exorbitant cost for doing so. Pierre flopped in just about every way an artistic endeavor can. One modern-day critic notes that the book sold only 2,000 copies, and that, thirty-five years after its publication, there were crates of it still in the publishers’ warehouse. You couldn’t give it away, as the saying goes.

Not only did the reading public fail to embrace it, but it was also met with a critical bombardment that very few novelists in our history have had to endure. Some of the criticisms are themselves famous, such as the New York Herald’s lambasting of the novel as “the dream of a distempered stomach, disordered by a hasty supper of half-cooked pork chops”. Other critical assaults took on similar tones: “a dead failure”, a “crazy rigmarole”, a “literary mare’s nest”, “an incoherent hodge-podge”, “objectionable”. How did Melville even pick himself off the canvas after such a drubbing?

Why did the novel get treated so harshly? What about it is that horrible? These were some of my questions going in. And I knew I would have some degree of difficulty answering them with objectivity, because of my overall esteem for Melville, especially coming right off of the extraordinary experience of re-reading Moby-Dick. Indeed, it is impossible for me to look upon Pierre as a terrible book that serves no purpose and is revolting or even offensive. But having said that, after reading it, it is easy to see why very few people enjoyed it or even bothered to read it. Pierre strenuously resists an agreeable reception.

This is a novel, after all, that is written in a dense, ornate prose style, loaded down with exaggerated descriptions and philosophical musings; it is sometimes overwhelmingly dark and gloomy; it attempts to be both a domestic sampling of “ladies fiction” while satirizing the genre at the same time; it traffics in unappetizing subjects such as insanity and incest; it abruptly changes its plot, if it can be said to have one, a little over halfway through the story; it invents characters when it needs them for reasons of coherence (a “life-long” childhood companion of Pierre’s is introduced late while having had zero mention in the first two-thirds of the book); it forks off on strange tangents into quack philosophy or obscure mythology (half a chapter late in the book muses about Encedalus the Titan, “the most potent of all the giants”-!!???); and, if all the preceding is not enough, the whole story ends in a dismal tragedy worthy of William Shakespeare, at least in terms of the body count.

Having spelled all that out (in one egregiously long sentence!), can I recommend Pierre on any grounds? Absolutely. But, unfortunately, I know of very few people who would take me up. My personal response to Pierre is a combination of fascination, admiration, and sympathy. I will take these on in reverse order.

I am sympathetic towards Pierre, coming at it a century and a half later, because of the merciless pounding it took and the difficult circumstances under which Melville wrote the novel – he had a young son and a financial imperative to earn money to protect his family, and the magnificent achievement of Moby-Dick had recently been misunderstood. At least the first part of this situation resonates with me where I now stand; it would be nice to have the second problem!

I am also sympathetic to the book for literary reasons. Melville had to do something different after Moby-Dick. He realized, as all great artists do, that certain moments in one’s career call for a complete re-invention. You cannot just remain in one place creatively and continue to further advance your art.

Melville wasn’t very interested in sitting in one place, even for monetary reasons. He’d already tried that with Redburn and White Jacket, novels he had written quickly and competently, but within a year was dismissing as “mere cakes and ale”. Hadn’t he, furthermore, reached the apex of the adventurous sea-tale with Moby-Dick? Indeed, no one had ever ascended higher.

Melville might have tried to take on a lighter, simpler, or more consumer-friendly tale, but his curiosity and artistic vision would not allow it. For him, writing a novel was an epic quest; a philosophical and spiritual journey. As he expresses in Pierre, “the devouring profundities now opened up in him, consuming all his vigor; would he, he could not now be entertainingly and profitably shallow in some pellucid and merry romance”.

I admire the novel, if not for its clarity of vision or precision, for the courage it took to plunge headlong into such “profundities”, knowing that it would not be well received. Melville took on subjects that were considered quite taboo at the time and was willing to weave them into his story. Not that I can condone incestuous behavior, for example; nor can I understand what compelled Melville to hint so strongly towards it in his novel; but I do respect the guts it took to weave such elements into the book when it would only shock and repel readers. Melville was uncompromising. If he was consumed by fear and darkness, he was a writer with enough fortitude and confidence to enter into and try to demystify those same elements.

Thirdly, and lastly, I find Pierre to be an all-around fascination. What drove Melville, ultimately, to write such a strange, unruly, provocative, and baffling novel? Why did he choose above all else to explore those dark corners and expose them to readers who had no willingness to wallow in such things? In at least one place, Melville, seeming to channel his own thoughts through Pierre as he sits in a chamber trying to write his own novel, wonders about similar matters:

Here surely is a wonderful stillness of eight hours and a half, repeated day after day. In the heart of such silence, surely something is at work. Is it creation, or destruction? Builds Pierre the noble world of a new book? or does the Pale Haggardness unbuild the lungs and life in him?

Later on, the author seems to be aware of how it will all end for both himself and his creation: “His soul’s ship foresaw the inevitable rocks, but resolved to sail on, and make a courageous wreck”.

When Pierre finally lunges to its inevitable conclusion, the thoroughly unhinged man at the heart of the story resolves himself irreversibly to terminate his nightmares in a dramatic explosion of maniacal violence. The feeling one gets reading this tragedy is that Melville has launched himself as from a cliff into some unplumbed abyss, unaware of what lies at bottom, but unwilling to turn his eyes away from the ugliness, the horror, but also, sometimes, the crystalline surface shimmering below – at the very floor of the Mystery.

Reflections on Moby-Dick

2010-04-09T10:54:00.002-04:00

Book IV of the "Melville, Pennsylvania" Project

“The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run.”
– Ahab, Moby-Dick, Chapter XXXVII

“White whale/Holy grail”
– Mastodon, “Blood and Thunder”

To begin: Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, in my opinion, has the greatest, most heart-stopping conclusion of any novel in American literature. It is not even a contest.

If you start Moby-Dick, and you have any interest in literature at all, but fail to finish it, you are doing yourself a tremendous disservice. It doesn’t hurt Melville for you not to finish it, since he lies in that “common pool”, to use the novel’s language, where we all are headed. But it does hurt you, in the sense that you willfully leave untapped an entirely unique and profound resource concerning mankind’s eternal struggle with the reality of evil in this world.

People who enjoy literature eventually come to realize the simple truth that the best books are the same ones that demand more from you as a reader. “You get out of it what you put into it” is an unsufferable cliché, yet it’s never more correct than it is here. But even if you cast completely to one side all of the thematic and literary considerations, and the broad legacy of the novel throughout the decades since it appeared, and consider it purely from the standpoint of an entertainment, this book is still far superior to almost any other American novel I can think of. The last 50 pages of the book make everything else, from those techno-thrillers written by Tom Clancy and his literary progeny (that I loved as a very young man) to Stephen King’s latest horror novel to any Harry Potter novel, look like those fat board books that you hand to babies to chew on.

But is Moby-Dick worth the 750-odd page slog to get to the final chase? Is the rest of the book worth the time? What makes the novel on the whole so great? I will try to provide my own answers to these questions.

One of the reasons that the conclusion to the novel works as well as it does is because of that lengthy time you’ve spent with the characters and with the natural world. To address the latter first, Moby-Dick is nothing if not an immersive experience. Melville does not just do a credible job of describing the white whale itself and the sea in which he resides. Famously, in a manner than is practically Darwinian, he examines the entire whale species, smallest to largest. The well-known chapter titled “Cetology” scientifically catalogues every species of whale known to mankind (at least in Melville’s day), although Melville approaches his subject with awe: “To grope down into the bottom of the sea after them; to have one’s hands among the unspeakable foundations, ribs, and very pelvis of the world; this is a fearful thing.”

Melville clearly has a separate, greater fascination for the mighty Sperm whale, for he “lives not complete in any literature. Far above all other hunted whales, his is an unwritten life.” Later in the novel he examines every facet of the inside of Sperm whales as well, from their bones to their teeth to the blubber and innards. When the crew of the Pequod actually hunts and kills a Sperm whale, well before the final encounter with Moby Dick, there are vivid descriptions of the immense work associated with vivisecting the carcass, how it is done, how its oil is drained and stored, how its flesh is hacked from the bones and segmented into steaks, and what becomes of the remainder of the whale’s corpse (food for sharks). The reader can all but smell the slaughter and feel on the soles of their feet the slick planks of the ship’s deck as it runs free with oil, blood, and general “gore”, as Melville calls it.

Melville’s attention to natural details, whether it be animals, the sea itself, lush plants on South Pacific isles, or weather, was always specific, and expressed in rich colors and shapes, from his vibrant first novel (Typee) on. Moby-Dick sometimes recalls the early chapters of that earlier, philosophically-inclined novel Mardi, when the escaped narrator and his companion Jarl drift in small boat for weeks searching for a hospitable coastline, and spend much time dwelling on the varieties of fish they observe and accounting for their collective behaviors. It is abundantly clear in all of Melville’s novels up to and including Moby-Dick that one of the great gifts he was graced with from early on was an extraordinary capacity for observation and mental recollection of what he saw in his career as a sailor.

Beyond the great witness to nature that Moby-Dick represents, which alone makes it well worth the investment, there are the full-blooded and believable characters. Of these, none is greater than Melville’s most famous, most culturally enduring creation, which is not the white whale himself (who actually had at least one real-life antecedent), but Captain Ahab. As Elizabeth Hardwick eloquently argues in her lucid and brief biographical study Herman Melville, there is “nothing to stand with him in our literature before or after”.

What compels a writer to create such a persona? Did Melville base this captain on a real person, perhaps someone he had known or served under? Or did his conception come from a completely alternative process, wherein Melville conceived of the white whale first, realized its significance as a symbol of evil, and needed to construct out of whatever materials he could gather a representative figure, a stand-in for all of us, who could only get more and more crazed as he pursued something that could never be captured, let alone conquered? I don’t know the answers to these questions now. I may never find them, although later I hope to cast at least some light on these mysteries through further reading.

However Melville generated this monumental, maniacal character, once he had done so, Ahab clearly became a channel through which this uniquely brilliant writer and thinker could convey his ideas about revenge, destiny, the fate of man, and the very meaning of our lives. Ahab’s presence in the novel is obscure for more than half of its length. He’s someone people know of by reputation, or allude to only in hushed tones. He doesn’t even show his face on the deck of the Pequod until well after the vessel embarks on its voyage, and when he finally does emerge, one of the first things he does is pass around a pewter chalice and force the crew to join him in a blood oath to pursue and destroy the leviathan, the white whale that is responsible for chewing off his leg:

“Now, three to three, ye stand. Commend the murderous chalices! Bestow them, ye who are now made parties to this insoluble league. Drink, ye harpooners! Drink and swear, ye men that hunt the deathful whaleboat’s bow – Death to Moby Dick!”

Then, of course, as the novel progresses and the ship begins to draw close to the leviathan’s home waters, Ahab makes careful preparations for the final battle. He orders the ship’s blacksmith to create a custom-made, ultra-deadly harpoon. He has the carpenter build him a new leg for the upcoming fight. He bribes the crew with gold, to be awarded to the man whose eyes first alight on Moby Dick (it turns out to be himself). Yet all the while, the closer the inevitable clash draws near, the more Ahab himself seems to writhe in the grip of internal turmoil:

“Rat-tat! So man’s seconds tick! Oh! How immaterial are all materials! What things real are there, but imponderable thoughts….But no. So far gone am I in the dark side of earth, that its other side, the theoretic bright one, seems but uncertain twilight to me.”

More than once, however, Ahab’s loyal but tortured first mate, the Quaker Starbuck, who has long hence perceived the captain’s madness, makes impassioned please to Ahab for his own soul’s sake to give up, turn away, resist the terminal pull of vengeance. But his appeals are in vain, for as Melville writes, “the eternal sap runs up in Ahab’s bones again”. The last time Starbuck tries in desperation to stop him, on the second of three days of the final hunt, Ahab lays out for the first mate the inevitability of his own end: “In this matter of the whale, be the front of thy face to me as the palm of this hand – a lipless, unfeatured blank. Ahab is forever Ahab, man. This whole act’s immutably decreed. ‘Twas rehearsed by thee and me a billion years before this ocean rolled. I am the Fates’ lieutenant; I act under orders.”

This astounding passage opens the entire novel towards the deepest of inquiries: Are we fated to do everything that we do? Are we merely God’s playthings? Can we change anything – and if not, is there any reason to struggle, to dream, to resist, to love, to exist? In this great and thrilling hunt, Herman Melville has created both a staggeringly profound, ageless drama and a fiercely entertaining adventure. It’s an incredible achievement; a literary performance of bottomless bravery and strength.

One has to admire – in spite of the tremendous struggle and the black sins he commits along the way, dispensing with an entire crew of men to service his own twisted end – the awesome courage with which Ahab meets his adversary at very close range at the end of the novel:

“Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee …. Let me then tow to pieces, while still chasing thee, though tied to thee, thou damned whale! Thus, I give up the spear!”

I urge all readers, everywhere, to face down this mighty and worthy novel if they so dare. To conclude, I offer the passage below, lest anyone wonder if Ahab’s adversary, the white whale itself, does not “bring it” to the final throwdown, to use current parlance.

“All their enchanted eyes intent upon the whale, which from side to side strangely vibrating his predestinating head, sent a broad band of overspreading semi-circular foam before him as he rushed. Retribution, swift vengeance, eternal malice were in his whole aspect, and in spite of all that mortal man could do, the solid white buttress of his forehead smote the ship’s starboard bow, till men and timbers reeled. Through the breach, they heard the waters pour, as mountain torrents down a flume.”

Christ is Risen, and Brings the Joy!

2010-04-06T13:42:00.004-04:00

That triumphant refrain echoes through this beautiful Easter poem, brought to my attention by my sister. It was written by St. Nikolai Velimirovich of the Eastern Orthodox Church, who served for a time as Rector of a seminary in Serbia. Since this is the season of Easter and Resurrection, I thought it would be appropriate to post - if nothing else, as a reminder of the great victory over death our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, earned for us all. Happy Easter, one and all...

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Christos Voskrese - Christ is Risen!

People rejoice, nations hear:
Christ is Risen, and brings the joy!
Stars dance, mountains sing:
Christ is Risen, and brings the joy!
Forests murmur, winds hum:
Christ is Risen, and brings the joy!
Seas bow, animals roar:
Christ is Risen, and brings the joy!
Bees swarm, and the birds sing:
Christ is Risen, and brings the joy!

Angels stand, triple the song:
Christ is Risen, and brings the joy!
Sky humble yourself, and elevate the earth:
Christ is Risen, and brings the joy!
Bells chime, and tell to all:
Christ is Risen, and brings the joy!
Glory to you God, everything is possible to You,
Christ is Risen, and brings the joy!