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
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Duke Altum's Best Films of the Year - 2010 (with one cheat)
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
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
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Don't Cross the Streams
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
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
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Returning to Port
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.
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.
Friday, December 03, 2010
We interrupt this blog for a little genre movie madness: A casual John Carpenter retrospective
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.
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.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
LITERARY DISCUSSIONS #2: "Car Crash While Hitchhiking" by Denis Johnson
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.]
*******
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.]
Friday, October 08, 2010
A few thoughts on Mario Vargas Llosa
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?
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?
Tuesday, October 05, 2010
The Races
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
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
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