1

Bernard Malamud
The Magic Barrel
Not long ago there lived in uptown New York, in a small,
almost meager room, though crowded with books, Leo Finkle, a
rabbinical student in the Yeshivah University. Finkle, after six
years of study, was to be ordained in June and had been advised
by an acquaintance that he might find it easier to win himself a
congregation if he were married. Since he had no present
prospects of marriage, after two tormented days of turning it over
in his mind, he called in Pinye Salzman, a marriage broker
whose two-line advertisement he had read in the Forward.
The matchmaker appeared one night out of the dark fourthfloor hallway of the graystone rooming house where Finkle
lived, grasping a black, strapped portfolio that had been worn
thin with use. Salzman, who had been long in the business, was
of slight but dignified build, wearing an old hat, and an overcoat
too short and tight for him. He smelled frankly of fish, which he
loved to eat, and although he was missing a few teeth, his
presence was not displeasing, because of an amiable manner
curiously contrasted with mournful eyes. His voice, his lips, his
wisp of beard, his bony fingers were animated, but give him a
moment of repose and his mild blue eyes revealed a depth of
sadness, a characteristic that put Leo a little at ease although the
situation, for him, was inherently tense.
He at once informed Salzman why he had asked him to come,
explaining that his home was in Cleveland, and that but for his
parents, who had married comparatively late in life, he was alone
in the world. He had for six years devoted himself almost
entirely to his studies, as a result of which, understandably, he
had found himself without time for a social life and the company
of young women. Therefore he thought it the better part of trial
and error of embarrassing fumbling to call in an experienced
person to advise him on these matters. He remarked in passing
that the function of the marriage broker was ancient and
honorable, highly approved in the Jewish community, because it
made practical the necessary without hindering joy. Moreover,
his own parents had been brought together by a matchmaker.
They had made, if not a financially profitable marriage since
neither had possessed any worldly goods to speak of at least a
successful one in the sense of their everlasting devotion to each
other. Salzman listened in embarrassed surprise, sensing a sort of

apology. Later, however, he experienced a glow of pride in his

work, an emotion that had left him years ago, and he heartily
approved of Finkle.
The two went to their business. Leo had led Salzman to the
only clear place in the room, a table near a window that
overlooked the lamp-lit city. He seated himself at the
matchmakers side but facing him, attempting by an act of will to
suppress the unpleasant tickle in his throat. Salzman eagerly
unstrapped his portfolio and removed a loose rubber band from a
thin packet of much-handled cards. As he flipped through them, a
gesture and sound that physically hurt Leo, the student pretended
not to see and gazed steadfastly out the window. Although it was
still February, winter was on its last legs, signs of which he had
for the first time in years begun to notice. He now observed the
round white moon, moving high in the sky through a cloud
menagerie, and watched with half-open mouth as it penetrated a
huge hen, and dropped out of her like an egg laying itself.
Salzman, though pretending through eye-glasses he had just
slipped on, to be engaged in scanning the writing on the cards,
stole occasional glances at the young mans distinguished face,
noting with pleasure the long, severe scholars nose, brown eyes
heavy with learning, sensitive yet ascetic lips, and a certain,
almost hollow quality of the dark cheeks. He gazed around at
shelves upon shelves of books and let out a soft, contented sigh.
When Leos eyes fell upon the cards, he counted six spread out
in Salzmans hand.
So few? he asked in disappointment.
You wouldnt believe me how much cards I got in my
office, Salzman replied. The drawers are already filled to the
top, so I keep them now in a barrel, but is every girl good for a
new rabbi?
Leo blushed at this, regretting all he had revealed of himself in
a curriculum vitae he had sent to Salzman. He had thought it best
to acquaint him with his strict standards and specifications, but in
having done so, felt he had told the marriage broker more than
was absolutely necessary.
He hesitantly inquired, Do you keep photographs of your
clients on file?
First comes family, amount of dowry, also what kind of
promises, Salzman replied, unbuttoning his tight coat and
settling himself in the chair. After comes pictures, rabbi.
Call me Mr. Finkle. Im not yet a rabbi.
Salzman said he would, but instead called him doctor, which
he changed to rabbi when Leo was not listening too attentively.
Salzman adjusted his horn-rimmed spectacles, gently cleared
his throat and read in an eager voice the contents of the top card:
Sophie P. Twenty-four years. Widow one year. No children.
Educated high school and two years college. Father promises
eight thousand dollars. Has wonderful wholesale business. Also
real estate. On the mothers side comes teachers, also one actor.
Well known on Second Avenue.
Leo gazed up in surprise. Did you say a widow?
A widow dont mean spoiled, rabbi. She lived with her
husband maybe four months. He was a sick boy she made a
mistake to marry him.
Marrying a widow has never entered my mind.
This is because you have no experience. A widow, especially
if she is young and healthy like this girl, is a wonderful person to
marry. She will be thankful to you the rest of her life. Believe
me, if I was looking now for a bride, I would marry a widow.
Leo reflected, then shook his head.
Salzman hunched his shoulders in an almost imperceptible
gesture of disappointment. He placed the card down on the
wooden table and began to read another:
Lily H. High school teacher. Regular. Not a substitute. Has
savings and new Dodge car. Lived in Paris one year. Father is
successful dentist thirty-five years. Interested in professional
man. Well Americanized family. Wonderful opportunity.

I knew her personally, said Salzman. I wish you could see

this girl. She is a doll. Also very intelligent. All day you could
talk to her about books and theyater and what not. She also
knows current events.
I dont believe you mentioned her age?
Her age? Salzman said, raising his brows. Her age is thirtytwo years.
Leo said after a while, Im afraid that seems a little too old.
Salzman let out a laugh. So how old are you, rabbi?
Twenty-seven.
So what is the difference, tell me, between twenty-seven and
thirty-two? My own wife is seven years older than me. So what
did I suffer? Nothing. If Rothschilds daughter wants to marry
you, would you say on account her age, no?
Yes, Leo said dryly.
Salzman shook off the no in the eyes. Five years dont mean
a thing. I give you my word that when you will live with her for
one week you will forget her age. What does it mean five years
that she lived more and knows more than somebody who is
younger? On this girl, God bless her, years are not wasted. Each
one that it comes makes better the bargain.
What subject does she teach in high school?
Languages. If you heard the way she speaks French, you will
think it is music. I am in the business twenty-five years, and I
recommend her with my whole heart. Believe me, I know what
Im talking, rabbi.
Whats on the next card? Leo said abruptly.
Salzman reluctantly turned up the third card:
Ruth K. Nineteen years. Honor student. Father offers
thirteen thousand cash to the right bridegroom. He is a medical
doctor. Stomach specialist with marvelous practice. Brother in
law owns garment business. Particular people.
Salzman looked as if he had read his trump card.
Did you say nineteen? Leo asked with interest.
On the dot.
Is she attractive? He blushed. Pretty?
Salzman kissed his finger tips. A little doll. On this I give you
my word. Let me call the father tonight and you will see what
means pretty.
But Leo was troubled. Youre sure shes that young?
This I am positive. The father will show you the birth
certificate.
Are you positive there isnt something wrong with her? Leo
insisted.
Who says there is wrong?
I dont understand why an American girl her age should go to
a marriage broker.
A smile spread over Salzmans face.
So for the same reason you went, she comes.
Leo flushed. I am passed for time.
Salzman, realizing he had been tactless, quickly explained.
The father came, not her. He wants she should have the best, so
he looks around himself. When we will locate the right boy he
will introduce him and encourage. This makes a better marriage
than if a young girl without experience takes for herself. I dont
have to tell you this.
But dont you think this young girl believes in love? Leo
spoke uneasily.
Salzman was about was about to guffaw but caught himself
and said soberly, Love comes with the right person, not before.
Leo parted dry lips but did not speak. Noticing that Salzman
had snatched a glance at the next card, he cleverly asked, How
is her health?
Perfect, Salzman said, breathing with difficulty. Of course,
she is a little lame on her right foot from an auto accident that it

happened to her when she was twelve years, but nobody notices
on account she is so brilliant and also beautiful.
Leo got up heavily and went to the window. He felt curiously
bitter and upbraided himself for having called in the marriage
broker. Finally, he shook his head.
Why not? Salzman persisted, the pitch of his voice rising.
Because I detest stomach specialists.
So what do you care what is his business? After you marry
her do you need him? Who says he must come every Friday
night in your house?
Ashamed of the way the talk was going, Leo dismissed
Salzman, who went home with heavy, melancholy eyes.
Though he had felt only relief at the marriage brokers
departure, Leo was in low spirits the next day. He explained it as
rising from Salzmans failure to produce a suitable bride for him.
He did not care for his type of clientele. But when Leo found
himself hesitating whether to seek out another matchmaker, one
more polished than Pinye, he wondered if it could be
protestations to the contrary, and although he honored his father
and mother that he did not, in essence, care for the
matchmaking institution? This thought he quickly put out of
mind yet found himself still upset. All day he ran around the
woods missed an important appointment, forgot to give out his
laundry, walked out of a Broadway cafeteria without paying and
had to run back with the ticket in his hand; had even not
recognized his landlady in the street when she passed with a
friend and courteously called out, A good evening to you,
Doctor Finkle. By nightfall, however, he had regained sufficient
calm to sink his nose into a book and there found peace from his
thoughts.
Almost at once there came a knock on the door. Before Leo
could say enter, Salzman, commercial cupid, was standing in the
room. His face was gray and meager, his expression hungry, and
he looked as if he would expire on his feet. Yet the marriage
broker managed, by some trick of the muscles to display a broad
smile.
So good evening. I am invited?
Leo nodded, disturbed to see him again, yet unwilling to ask
the man to leave.
Beaming still, Salzman laid his portfolio on the table. Rabbi,
I got for you tonight good news.
Ive asked you not to call me rabbi. Im still a student.
Your worries are finished. I have for you a first-class bride.
Leave me in peace concerning this subject. Leo pretended
lack of interest.
The world will dance at your wedding.
Please, Mr. Salzman, no more.
But first must come back my strength, Salzman said weakly.
He fumbled with the portfolio straps and took out of the leather
case an oily paper bag, from which he extracted a hard, seeded
roll and a small, smoked white fish. With a quick emotion of his
hand he stripped the fish out of its skin and began ravenously to
chew. All day in a rush, he muttered.
Leo watched him eat.
A sliced tomato you have maybe? Salzman hesitantly
inquired.
No.
The marriage broker shut his eyes and ate. When he had
finished he carefully cleaned up the crumbs and rolled up the
remains of the fish, in the paper bag. His spectacled eyes roamed
the room until he discovered, amid some piles of books, a oneburner gas stove. Lifting his hat he humbly asked, A glass of tea
you got, rabbi?
Conscience-stricken, Leo rose and brewed the tea. He served it
with a chunk of lemon and two cubes of lump sugar, delighting
Salzman.
After he had drunk his tea, Salzmans strength and good spirits
were restored.

So tell me rabbi, he said amiably, you considered some

more the three clients I mentioned yesterday?
There was no need to consider.
Why not?
None of them suits me.
What then suits you?
Leo let it pass because he could give only a confused answer.
Without waiting for a reply, Salzman asked, You remember
this girl I talked to you the high school teacher?
Age thirty-two?
But surprisingly, Salzmans face lit in a smile. Age twentynine.
Leo shot him a look. Reduced from thirty-two?
A mistake, Salzman avowed. I talked today with the
dentist. He took me to his safety deposit box and showed me the
birth certificate. She was twenty-nine years last August. They
made her a party in the mountains where she went for her
vacation. When her father spoke to me the first time I forgot to
write the age and I told you thirty-two, but now I remember this
was a different client, a widow.
The same one you told me about? I thought she was twentyfour?
A different. Am I responsible that the world is filled with
widows?
No, but Im not interested in them, nor for that matter, in
school teachers.
Salzman pulled his clasped hand to his breast. Looking at the
ceiling he devoutly exclaimed, Yiddishe kinder, what can I say
to somebody that he is not interested in high school teachers? So
what then you are interested?
Leo flushed but controlled himself.
In what else will you be interested, Salzman went on, if
you not interested in this fine girl that she speaks four languages
and has personally in the bank ten thousand dollars? Also her
father guarantees further twelve thousand. Also she has a new
car, wonderful clothes, talks on all subjects, and she will give
you a first-class home and children. How near do we come in our
life to paradise?
If shes so wonderful, why wasnt she married ten years ago?
Why? said Salzman with a heavy laugh. Why? Because
she is partikiler. This is why. She wants the best.
Leo was silent, amused at how he had entangled himself. But
Salzman had arouse his interest in Lily H., and he began
seriously to consider calling on her. When the marriage broker
observed how intently Leos mind was at work on the facts he
had supplied, he felt certain they would soon come to an
agreement.
Late Saturday afternoon, conscious of Salzman, Leo Finkle
walked with Lily Hirschorn along Riverside Drive. He walked
briskly and erectly, wearing with distinction the black fedora he
had that morning taken with trepidation out of the dusty hat box
on his closet shelf, and the heavy black Saturday coat he had
throughly whisked clean. Leo also owned a walking stick, a
present from a distant relative, but quickly put temptation aside
and did not use it. Lily, petite and not unpretty, had on something
signifying the approach of spring. She was au courant,
animatedly, with all sorts of subjects, and he weighed her words
and found her surprisingly sound score another for Salzman,
whom he uneasily sensed to be somewhere around, hiding
perhaps high in a tree along the street, flashing the lady signals
with a pocket mirror; or perhaps a cloven-hoofed Pan, piping
nuptial ditties as he danced his invisible way before them,
strewing wild buds on the walk and purple grapes in their path,
symbolizing fruit of a union, though there was of course still
none.
Lily startled Leo by remarking, I was thinking of Mr.
Salzman, a curious figure, wouldnt you say?
Not certain what to answer, he nodded.

She bravely went on, blushing, I for one am grateful for his
introducing us. Arent you?
He courteously replied, I am.
I mean, she said with a little laugh and it was all in good
taste, to at least gave the effect of being not in bad do you
mind that we came together so?
He was not displeased with her honesty, recognizing that she
meant to set the relationship aright, and understanding that it
took a certain amount of experience in life, and courage, to want
to do it quite that way. One had to have some sort of past to make
that kind of beginning.
He said that he did not mind. Salzmans function was
traditional and honorable valuable for what it might achieve,
which, he pointed out, was frequently nothing.
Lily agreed with a sigh. They walked on for a while and she
said after a long silence, again with a nervous laugh, Would you
mind if I asked you something a little bit personal? Frankly, I
find the subject fascinating. Although Leo shrugged, she went
on half embarrassedly, How was it that you came to your
calling? I mean was it a sudden passionate inspiration?
Leo, after a time, slowly replied, I was always interested in
the Law.
You saw revealed in it the presence of the Highest?
He nodded and changed the subject. I understand that you
spent a little time in Paris, Miss Hirschorn?
Oh, did Mr. Salzman tell you, Rabbi Finkle? Leo winced but
she went on, It was ages ago and almost forgotten. I remember I
had to return for my sisters wedding.
And Lily would not be put off. When, she asked in a
trembly voice, did you become enamored of God?
He stared at her. Then it came to him that she was talking not
about Leo Finkle, but of a total stranger, some mystical figure,
perhaps even passionate prophet that Salzman had dreamed up
for her no relation to the living or dead. Leo trembled with rage
and weakness. The trickster had obviously sold her a bill of
goods, just as he had him, whod expected to become acquainted
with a young lady of twenty-nine, only to behold, the moment he
laid eyes upon her strained and anxious face, a woman past
thirty-five and aging rapidly. Only his self control had kept him
this long in her presence.
I am not, he said gravely, a talented religious person. and
in seeking words to go on, found himself possessed by shame
and fear. I think, he said in a strained manner, that I came to
God not because I love Him, but because I did not.
This confession he spoke harshly because its unexpectedness
shook him.
Lily wilted. Leo saw a profusion of loaves of bread go flying
like ducks high over his head, not unlike the winged loaves by
which he had counted himself to sleep last night. Mercifully,
then, it snowed, which he would not put past Salzmans
machinations.

He was infuriated with the marriage broker and swore he

would throw him out of the room the minute he reappeared. But
Salzman did not come that night, and when Leos anger had
subsided, an unaccountable despair grew in its place. At first he
thought this was caused by his disappointment in Lily, but before
long it became evident that he had involved himself with
Salzman without a true knowledge of his own intent. He
gradually realized with an emptiness that seized him with six
hands that he had called in the broker to find him a bride
because he was incapable of doing it himself. This terrifying
insight he had derived as a result of his meeting and conversation
with Lily Hirschorn. Her probing questions had somehow
irritated him into revealing to himself more than her the true
nature of his relationship to God, and from that it had come upon

him, with shocking force, that apart from his parents, he had
never loved anyone. Or perhaps it went the other way, that he did
not love God so well as he might, because he had not loved man.
It seemed to Leo that his whole life stood starkly revealed and he
saw himself for the first time as he truly was unloved and
loveless. This bitter but somehow not fully unexpected revelation
brought him to a point to panic, controlled only by extraordinary
effort. He covered his face with his hands and cried.
The week that followed was the worst of his life. He did not
eat and lost weight. His beard darkened and grew ragged. He
stopped attending seminars and almost never opened a book. He
seriously considered leaving the Yeshiva, although he was deeply
troubled at the thought of the loss of all his years of study saw
them like pages torn from a book, strewn over the city and at
the devastating effect of this decision upon his parents. But he
had lived without knowledge of himself, and never in the Five
Books and all the Commentaries mea culpa had the truth
been revealed to him. He did not know where to turn, and in all
this desolating loneliness there was no to whom, although he
often thought of Lily but not once could bring himself to go
downstairs and make the call. He became touchy and irritable,
especially with his landlady, who asked him all manner of
personal questions; on the other hand sensing his own
disagreeableness, he waylaid her on the stairs and apologized
abjectly, until mortified, she ran from him. Out of this, however,
he drew the consolation that he was a Jew and that a Jew
suffered. But generally, as the long and terrible week drew to a
close, he regained his composure and some idea of purpose in
life to go on as planned. Although he was imperfect, the ideal
was not. As for his quest of a bride, the thought of continuing
afflicted him with anxiety and heartburn, yet perhaps with this
new knowledge of himself he would be more successful than in
the past. Perhaps love would now come to him and a bride to that
love. And for this sanctified seeking who needed a Salzman?
The marriage broker, a skeleton with haunted eyes, returned
that very night. He looked, withal, the picture of frustrated
expectancy as if he had steadfastly waited the week at Miss
Lily Hirschorns side for a telephone call that never came.
Casually coughing, Salzman came immediately to the point:
So how did you like her?
Leos anger rose and he could not refrain from chiding the
matchmaker: Why did you lie to me, Salzman?
Salzmans pale face went dead white, the world had snowed
on him.
Did you not state that she was twenty-nine? Leo insisted.
I give you my word
She was thirty-five, if a day. At least thirty-five.
Of this dont be too sure. Her father told me
Never mind. The worst of it was that you lied to her.
How did I lie to her, tell me?
You told her things abut me that werent true. You made out
to be more, consequently less than I am. She had in mind a
totally different person, a sort of semi-mystical Wonder Rabbi.
All I said, you was a religious man.
I can imagine.
Salzman sighed. This is my weakness that I have, he
confessed. My wife says to me I shouldnt be a salesman, but
when I have two fine people that they would be wonderful to be
married, I am so happy that I talk too much. He smiled wanly.
This is why Salzman is a poor man.
Leos anger left him. Well, Salzman, Im afraid thats all.
The marriage broker fastened hungry eyes on him.
You dont want any more a bride?
I do, said Leo, but I have decided to seek her in a different
way. I am no longer interested in an arranged marriage. To be
frank, I now admit the necessity of premarital love. That is, I
want to be in love with the one I marry.

Love? said Salzman, astounded. After a moment he

remarked For us, our love is our life, not for the ladies. In the
ghetto they
I know, I know, said Leo. Ive thought of it often. Love, I
have said to myself, should be a by-product of living and
worship rather than its own end. Yet for myself I find it
necessary to establish the level of my need and fulfill it.
Salzman shrugged but answered, Listen, rabbi, if you want
love, this I can find for you also. I have such beautiful clients
that you will love them the minute your eyes will see them.
Leo smiled unhappily. Im afraid you dont understand.
But Salzman hastily unstrapped his portfolio and withdrew a
manila packet from it.
Pictures, he said, quickly laying the envelope on the table.
Leo called after him to take the pictures away, but as if on the
wings of the wind, Salzman had disappeared.
March came. Leo had returned to his regular routine. Although
he felt not quite himself yet lacked energy he was making
plans for a more active social life. Of course it would cost
something, but he was an expert in cutting corners; and when
there were no corners left he would make circles rounder. All the
while Salzmans pictures had lain on the table, gathering dust.
Occasionally as Leo sat studying, or enjoying a cup of tea, his
eyes fell on the manila envelope, but he never opened it.
The days went by and no social life to speak of developed with
a member of the opposite sex it was difficult, given the
circumstances of his situation. One morning Leo toiled up the
stairs to his room and stared out the window at the city. Although
the day was bright his view of it was dark. For some time he
watched the people in the street below hurrying along and then
turned with a heavy heart to his little room. On the table was the
packet. With a sudden relentless gesture he tore it open. For a
half-hour he stood by the table in a state of excitement,
examining the photographs of the ladies Salzman had included.
Finally, with a deep sigh he put them down. There were six, of
varying degree of attractiveness, but look at them along enough
and they all became Lily Hirschorn: all past their prime, all
starved behind bright smiles, not a true personality in the lot.
Life, despite their frantic yoohooings, had passed them by; they
were pictures in a brief case that stank of fish. After a while,
however, as Leo attempted to return the photographs into the
envelope, he found in it another, a snapshot of the type taken by
a machine for a quarter. He gazed at it a moment and let out a
cry.
Her face deeply moved him. Why, he could at first not say. It
gave him the impression of youth spring flowers, yet age a
sense of having been used to the bone, wasted; this came from
the eyes, which were hauntingly familiar, yet absolutely strange.
He had a vivid impression that he had met her before, but try as
he might he could not place her although he could almost recall
her name, as he had read it in her own handwriting. No, this
couldnt be; he would have remembered her. It was not, he
affirmed, that she had an extraordinary beauty no, though her
face was attractive enough; it was that something about her
moved him. Feature for feature, even some of the ladies of the
photographs could do better; but she lapsed forth to this heart
had lived, or wanted to more than just wanted, perhaps
regretted how she had lived had somehow deeply suffered: it
could be seen in the depths of those reluctant eyes, and from the
way the light enclosed and shone from her, and within her,
opening realms of possibility: this was her own. Her he desired.
His head ached and eyes narrowed with the intensity of his
gazing, then as if an obscure fog had blown up in the mind, he
experienced fear of her and was aware that he had received an
impression, somehow, of evil. He shuddered, saying softly, it is
thus with us all. Leo brewed some tea in a small pot and sat
sipping it without sugar, to calm himself. But before he had
finished drinking, again with excitement he examined the face

and found it good: good for Leo Finkle. Only such a one could
understand him and help him seek whatever he was seeking. She
might, perhaps, love him. How she had happened to be among
the discards in Salzmans barrel he could never guess, but he
knew he must urgently go find her.
Leo rushed downstairs, grabbed up the Bronx telephone book,
and searched for Salzmans home address. He was not listed, nor
was his office. Neither was he in the Manhattan book. But Leo
remembered having written down the address on a slip of paper
after he had read Salzmans advertisement in the personals
column of the Forward. He ran up to his room and tore through
his papers, without luck. It was exasperating. Just when he
needed the matchmaker he was nowhere to be found. Fortunately
Leo remembered to look in his wallet. There on a card he found
his name written and a Bronx address. No phone number was
listed, the reason Leo now recalled he had originally
communicated with Salzman by letter. He got on his coat, put a
hat on over his skull cap and hurried to the subway station. All
the way to the far end of the Bronx he sat on the edge of his seat.
He was more than once tempted to take out the picture and see if
the girls face was as he remembered it, but he refrained,
allowing the snapshot to remain in his inside coat pocket, content
to have her so close. When the train pulled into the station he
was waiting at the door and bolted out. He quickly located the
street Salzman had advertised.
The building he sought was less than a block from the subway,
but it was not an office building, nor even a loft, nor a store in
which one could rent office space. It was a very old tenement
house. Leo found Salzmans name in pencil on a soiled tag under
the bell and climbed three dark flights to his apartment. When he
knocked, the door was opened by a think, asthmatic, gray-haired
woman in felt slippers.
Yes? she said, expecting nothing. She listened without
listening. He could have sworn he had seen her, too, before but
knew it was an illusion.
Salzman does he live here? Pinye Salzman, he said, the
matchmaker?
She stared at him a long minute. Of course.
He felt embarrassed. Is he in?
No. Her mouth, thought left open, offered nothing more.
The matter is urgent. Can you tell me where his office is?
In the air. She pointed upward.
You mean he has no office? Leo asked.
In his socks.
He peered into the apartment. It was sunless and dingy, one
large room divided by a half-open curtain, beyond which he
could see a sagging metal bed. The near side of the room was
crowded with rickety chairs, old bureaus, a three-legged table,
racks of cooking utensils, and all the apparatus of a kitchen. But
there was no sign of Salzman or his magic barrel, probably also a
figment of the imagination. An odor of frying fish made weak to
the knees.
Where is he? he insisted. Ive got to see your husband.
At length she answered, So who knows where he is? Every
time he thinks a new thought he runs to a different place. Go
home, he will find you.
Tell him Leo Finkle.
She gave no sign she had heard.
He walked downstairs, depressed.
But Salzman, breathless, stood waiting at his door.
Leo was astounded and overjoyed. How did you get here
before me?
I rushed.
Come inside.
They entered. Leo fixed tea, and a sardine sandwich for
Salzman. As they were drinking he reached behind him for the
packet of pictures and handed them to the marriage broker.

Salzman put down his glass and said expectantly, You found
somebody you like?
Not among these.
The marriage broker turned away.
Here is the one I want. Leo held forth the snapshot.
Salzman slipped on his glasses and took the picture into his
trembling hand. He turned ghastly and let out a groan.
Whats the matter? cried Leo.
Excuse me. Was an accident this picture. She isnt for you?
Salzman frantically shoved the manila packet into his
portfolio. He thrust the snapshot into his pocket and fled down
the stairs.
Leo, after momentary paralysis, gave chase and cornered the
marriage broker in the vestibule. The landlady made hysterical
out cries but neither of them listened.
Give me back the picture, Salzman.
No. The pain in his eyes was terrible.
Tell me who she is then.
This I cant tell you. Excuse me.
He made to depart, but Leo, forgetting himself, seized the
matchmaker by his tight coat and shook him frenziedly.
Please, sighed Salzman. Please.
Leo ashamedly let him go. Tell me who she is, he begged.
Its very important to me to know.
She is not for you. She is a wild one wild, without shame.
This is not a bride for a rabbi.
What do you mean wild?
Like an animal. Like a dog. For her to be poor was a sin. This
is why to me she is dead now.
In Gods name, what do you mean?
Her I cant introduce to you, Salzman cried.
Why are you so excited?
Why, he asks, Salzman said, bursting into tear. This is my
baby, my Stella, she should burn in hell.
Leo hurried up to bed and hid under the covers. Under the
covers he thought his life through. Although he soon fell asleep
he could not sleep her out of his mind. He woke, beating his
breast. Though he prayed to be rid of her, his prayers went
unanswered. Through days of torment he endlessly struggled not
to love her; fearing success, he escaped it. He then concluded to
convert her to goodness, himself to God. The idea alternately
nauseated and exalted him.
He perhaps did not know that he had come to a final decision
until he encountered Salzman in a Broadway cafeteria. He was
sitting alone at a rear table, sucking the bony remains of a fish.
The marriage broker appeared haggard, and transparent to the
point of vanishing.
Salzman looked up at first without recognizing him. Leo had
grown a pointed beard and his eyes were weighted with wisdom.
Salzman, he said, love has at last come to my heart.
Who can love from a picture? mocked the marriage broker.
It is not impossible.
If you can love her, then you can love anybody. Let me show
you some new clients that they just sent me their photographs.
One is a little doll.
Just her I want, Leo murmured.
Dont be a fool, doctor Dont bother with her.
Put me in touch with her, Salzman, Leo said humbly.
Perhaps I can be of service.
Salzman had stopped eating and Leo understood with emotion
that it was now arranged.
Leaving the cafeteria, he was, however, afflicted by a
tormenting suspicion that Salzman had planned it all to happen
this way.

Leo was informed by better that she would meet him on a

certain corner, and she was there one spring night, waiting under
a street lamp. He appeared carrying a small bouquet of violets
and rosebuds. Stella stood by the lamp post, smoking. She wore
white with red shoes, which fitted his expectations, although in a
troubled moment he had imagined the dress red, and only the
shoes white. She waited uneasily and shyly. From afar he saw
that her eyes clearly her fathers were filled with desperate
innocence. He pictured, in her, his own redemption. Violins and
lit candles revolved in the sky. Leo ran forward with flowers outthrust.
Around the corner, Salzman, leaning against a wall, chanted
prayers for the dead.
1958

On The Magic Barrel

Introduction
Bernard Malamud's short story, "The Magic Barrel," was first
published in the Partisan Review in 1954, and reprinted in 1958
in Malamud's first volume of short fiction. This tale of a
rabbinical student's misadventures with a marriage broker was
quite well received in the 1950s, and Malamud's collection of
short stories,The Magic Barrel, won the National Book Award
for fiction in 1959.
As Malamud attained a reputation as a respected novelist in the
1960s and 1970s, his short stories were widely anthologized and
attracted considerable attention from literary students and
scholars.
A writer in the Jewish-American tradition, Malamud wrote
stories that explore issues and themes central to the Jewish
community. A love story with a surprising outcome, "The Magic
Barrel" traces a young man's struggle to come to terms with his
identity and poses the religious question of how peopleJews
and others may come to love God. Is human love, the story
asks, a necessary first step to loving God? Malamud's "The
Magic Barrel" is a story remarkable for its economy, using just a
few strokes to create compelling and complex characters.

The Magic Barrel Summary | Detailed Summary

On a cold day in February, Leo Finkle, a 27-year-old rabbinical
student at New York's Yeshivah University, is sitting in his small
apartment regretting the fact that he decided to call in a
matchmaker to help him find a wife. However, Finkle knows that
he needs to find a wife if he wants to get an appointment as a
rabbi after he graduates, so he patiently waits for Pinye Salzman
to arrive and, hopefully, arrange a suitable match for him.
Pinye Salzman arrives and cuts a not displeasing figure with his
dignified air and wizened looks. However, he is also missing
teeth and he smells distinctly of fish, which he eats constantly, so
he is not entirely pleasant either. However, more importantly, he
carries a binder holding pictures of eligible Jewish women with
him, and Finkle hopes that it holds a woman for him.
To explain himself, Finkle tells Salzman that he is a student too
wrapped up in his studies to have a proper social life and, but for
his parents in Cleveland, he is quite alone. Thus, with few female
prospects in his life, he has called in a marriage broker, which

Finkle considers a very honored position in the Jewish

community, to make "practical the necessary without hindering
the joy." (2) Salzman, of course, is quite pleased with the kind
words that Finkle offers him, and Salzman opens his binder to
offer pictures and descriptions of some women that are looking
to marry.
Unfortunately, Finkle looks at the pictures, hears Salzman's
descriptions and decides that none of these women is for him.
One is too old, one is a widow, another's father is a stomach
specialist and none of them really entices Finkle. Of course,
Salzman argues and tells him that these are all fine women who
would make him very happy, but Finkle disapproves of all of
them and, in frustration, sends Salzman away.
The next day, Leo Finkle is pondering his decision not to see any
of the women that Salzman offered and wonders whether he
made the right choice. However, Salzman appears at his door
that very same night and says that Lily Hirschorn, a 32-year-old
woman that he mentioned the previous day, is actually only 29
and, therefore, not too old for Finkle. Of course, Finkle is
immediately suspicious and suspects that Salzman is lying in
order to make him meet the woman, but Finkle decides to pay
her a visit anyway.
Leo Finkle and Lily Hirschorn's evening together is unfortuntely,
a disaster. Not only is Lily at least 35 years old, but also she
seems to have an idea that Finkle is some sort of eminently holy
man who can see into the mind of God. Though Finkle is
comfortable with her at first, Lily turns the conversation to
Finkle's studies with a clear expectation that he will help her see
into his understanding of divine truths. Obviously, Salzman built
up Finkle as some sort of mystic or prophet, and Finkle cannot
provide her with any of the answers that she is looking for. In
fact, when Lily asks Finkle why he learned to love God, Finkle
hears himself say, "I came to God not because I loved Him, but
because I did not." (12) This is not the answer Lily is looking for
and the evening ends in disappointment for both of them.
The next day, Leo Finkle is furious at Salzman for lying to both
him and Lily. However, the more Finkle thinks about it, the more
he realizes that he is furious at himself. After all, he should be
able to meet women on his own, but his complete inability to
have a real social life and his total ineptitude with women has
forced him to speak with a marriage broker in order to find a
wife. However, the thing that really angers Finkle is the
realization that he is studying to be a rabbi because he does not
love God, which he only came to understand when he was
speaking with Lily Hirschorn. Furthermore, Finkle has never
loved anybody, except for his parents, and no one has ever loved
him. Thus, he finds himself unloved, loveless and very, very
lonely.
Over the next two weeks, Finkle neglects his studies and neglects
to take care of his self as he begins to do some serious soulsearching. Though he considers dropping out of the Yeshivah, he
does finally determine that he should continue his studies and
finish school, as planned. However, he still needs to find a wife,
but he is not going to use Salzman to do it for him.
The night that Finkle decides he does not needs Salzman, the
matchmaker himself appears with a new batch of photographs.
Of course, Salzman first asks about Lily, but Finkle accuses
Salzman of lying to both him and Lily. Salzman apologizes
profusely and offers explanations, but Finkle tells him that he is
in search of love, not a convenient marriage partner. Of course,

Salzman offers him an envelope of photos to look at, but Finkle

wants nothing to do with it. However, before Finkle can give the
photos back to him, Salzman rushes out the door.
The month turns to March and Finkle makes plans to have a real
social life so that he can fall in love. However, it never
materializes and Finkle realizes that he is simply not in a
situation that allows him to go out and meet women. After all, he
is a poor university student who studies diligently and he has
neither the time nor the funds to spend on evenings out. Thus, as
he comes to grips with his plight, he opens Salzman's envelope
of pictures.
As Finkle looks through the pictures, he realizes that there is
nobody in there who interests him. They are all tired old women
who are past their prime, just like Lily Hirschorn, and Finkle,
frustrated, puts the pictures back into the envelope. However, as
Finkle puts the pictures back in, a small picture that he had not
noticed falls out.
When Finkle sees the picture, he realizes that he has found the
woman he is looking for. She is young, beautiful and alive in a
way that he cannot describe. Though she looks familiar, Finkle
knows that he would have remembered meeting such a woman
and, therefore, they must have never met. However, he knows
that he must meet this mystery woman and he immediately runs
out to talk to Salzman.
When Finkle arrives at Salzman's home, his wife informs Finkle
that her husband is out. However, Finkle leaves a message telling
Salzman to come over. Then, surprisingly, Salzman is waiting at
Finkle's door when he returns.
After Finkle provides Salzman with tea and a sardine sandwich,
he shows Salzman the picture and says that he wants to meet that
particular woman. However, Salzman is shocked and refuses,
though he does not explain why at first. When Finkle presses
Salzman to let him meet the woman that Salzman says that the
picture is of his daughter Stella, and she is dead to him and she
should rot in hell.
After Salzman leaves, Finkle is so shocked by the revelation that
he hides in bed, trying to get Stella out of his mind.
Unfortunately, he cannot. For days, he is tortured with longing
for her, though he tries to beat his feelings down and forget the
image of the woman he loves. However, instead of destroying his
feelings, he decides that it is up to him to convert her to goodness
and bring her back to God. Thus, when Finkle meets Salzman in
a cafeteria in the Bronx, he convinces Salzman to arrange a
meeting and let him try to help Stella.
Finally, the night arrives that Finkle is to finally meet Stella.
They are to meet on a corner under a streetlight and Finkle brings
a bouquet of flowers for her. Then, when Finkle sees her in
person, he runs toward this shy, yet confident woman that he has
loved since he saw her picture. However, just around the corner,
Pinye Salzman chants prayers for the dead.

Characters
Leo Finkle
Leo Finkle has spent the last six years studying to become a
rabbi at New Yorks Yeshivah University. Because he believes
that he will have a better chance of getting employment with a

congregation if he is married, Leo consults a professional

matchmaker. Leo is a cold person; he comes to realize that he
did not love God so well as he might, because he had not loved
man. When Finkle falls in love with Salzmans daughter, Stella,
the rabbinical student must confront his own emotional failings.
Lily Hirschorn
Lily Hirschorn is introduced to Leo Finkle, the rabbinical
student, by Pinye Salzman, the matchmaker. She is a
schoolteacher, comes from a good family, converses on many
topics, and Leo considers her not unpretty. It soon becomes
clear, however, that the match between them will not work.
Pinye Salzman
Leo consults Pinye Salzman, who is a professional matchmaker.
Salzman is an elderly man who lives in great poverty. He is
unkempt in appearance and smells of fish. While Salzman works
to bring couples together, Leo has reason to believe that the
matchmaker, or commercial cupid, is occasionally dishonest
about the age and financial status of his clients. Salzman seems
greatly dismayed when Leo falls in love with Stella. Yet Leo
begins to suspect that Pinye, whom he thinks of as a trickster,
had planned it all to happen this way.
Stella Salzman
Stella Salzman is the daughter of Pinye Salzman, the
matchmaker. Salzman has disowned his daughter, evidently
because she has committed some grave act of disobedience.
When Leo, who has fallen in love with Stella, asks her father
where he might find her, the matchmaker replies: She is a wild
one wild, without shame. This is not a bride for a rabbi.
When he finally meets Stella she is smoking, leaning against a
lamp post in the classic stance of the prostitute, but Leo believes
he sees in her eyes a desperate innocence.

Themes
Identity
Malamuds Leo Finkle is a character trying to figure out who he
really is. Having spent the last six years of his life deep in study
for ordination as a rabbi, he is an isolated and passionless man,
disconnected from human emotion. When Lily Hirschorn asks
him how he came to discover his calling as a rabbi, Leo responds
with embarrassment: I am not a talented religious person. . . . I
think . . . that I came to God, not because I loved him, but
because I did not. In other words, Leo hopes that by becoming a
rabbi he might learn to love himself and the people around him.
Leo is in despair after his conversation with Lily because . . . he
saw himself for the first time as he truly was unloved and
loveless.
As he realizes the truth about himself, he becomes desperate to
change. Leo determines to reform himself and renew his life. Leo
continues to search for a bride, but without the matchmakers
help: . . . he regained his composure and some idea of purpose
in life: to go on as planned. Although he was imperfect, the ideal
was not. The ideal, in this case, is love. Leo comes to believe
that through love the love he feels when he first sees the
photograph of Stella Salzman he may begin his life anew, and
forge an identity based on something more positive. When at last
he meets Stella he

pictured, in her, his own redemption. That redemption, the

storys ending leads us to hope, will be Leos discovery through
Stella of an identity based on love.
God and Religion
Central to Malamuds The Magic Barrel is the idea that to love
God, one must love man first. Finkle is uncomfortable with
Lilys questions because they make him realize the true nature
of his relationship to God. He comes to realize that he did not
love God as well as he might, because he had not loved man. In
spite of the zeal with which he has pursued his rabbinical studies,
Leos approach to God, as the narrative reveals, is one of cold,
analytical formalism. Unable fully to love Gods creatures, Leo
Finkle cannot fully love God.
Once again, the agent of change in Leos life seems to be Stella
Salzman. The text strongly implies that by loving Stella, by
believing in her, Leo will be able to come to God. Just before his
meeting with Stella, Leo concluded to convert her to goodness,
him to God. To love Stella, it seems, will be Leos true
ordination, his true rite of passage to the love of God.
Topics for Further Study

When did Jewish people settle in large numbers in New

York City? Describe the Jewish communities in New
York City or in another large American city. In what
way can The Magic Barrel be read as a story about
the descendants of immigrants?
In chapter twenty of the Book of Exodus in the Bible,
Moses sets forth the Ten Commandments to the
Israelites. Do the characters in The Magic Barrel
follow the Commandments? What does this say about
them?
What does the story suggest about the relation between
love and self-knowledge? What must Leo Finkle learn
about himself before he is truly able to love?

Style
Point of View
Point of view is a term that describes who tells a story, or
through whose eyes we see the events of a narrative. The point of
view in Malamuds The Magic Barrel is third person limited.
In the third person limited point of view, the narrator is not a
character in the story, but someone outside of it who refers to the
characters as he, she, and they. This outside narrator,
however, is not omniscient, but is limited to the perceptions of
one of the characters in the story. The narrator of the story views
the events of the story through the eyes of Leo Finkle even
though it is not Leo telling the story.

Symbolism
Symbolism is a literary device that uses an action, a person, a
thing, or an image to stand for something else. In Malamuds
The Magic Barrel the coming of spring plays an important
symbolic role. The story begins in February, when winter was
on its last legs, and ends one spring night as Leo approaches
Stella Salzman under a street lamp. The storys progression from
winter to spring is an effective symbol for the emotional rebirth
that Leo undergoes as he struggles to grow as a human being.
Idiom
Idiom may be defined as a specialized vocabulary used by a
particular group, or a manner of expression peculiar to a given
people. In other words, different groups of people speak in
different ways. While the narrator and most of the characters in
The Magic Barrel speak standard English, Pinye Salzman, the
matchmaker, speaks Yiddish. Written in Hebrew characters and
based on the grammar of medieval German, Yiddish was the
common language of many European Jewish communities. A
Russian Jew at the turn of the century (Malamuds father, for
example) might read the Torah in Hebrew, speak to his gentile
neighbors in Russian, and conduct the affairs of his business and
household in Yiddish.
Since World War II, Yiddish has become less prevalent in Europe
and in the immigrant Jewish communities of North America. In
another generation, it may totally die out. Many of Malamuds
characters, however, still use the idiom. When Salzman asks Leo,
A glass tea you got, rabbi?; when he exclaims, what can I say
to somebody that he is not interested in school teachers?; and
when he laments, This is my baby, my Stella, she should burn in
hell, the reader hears an idiomatic version of English seasoned
with the cadences of Yiddish speech.

Historical Context
Malamuds The Magic Barrel was first published by
the Partisan Review in 1954 and reprinted as the title story in
Malamuds first volume of short fiction in 1958. The period
between those two dates was an eventful time in American
history. In 1954 the United States Supreme Court unanimously
rejected the concept of segregation in the case of Brown v. Board
of Education, which found that the practice of maintaining
separate classrooms or separate schools for black and white
students was unconstitutional.
In the same year Senator Joseph McCarthy was censured by the
Senate for having unjustly accused hundreds of Americans of
being communists. In 1957 the Soviet Union launched Sputnik,
the first satellite to successfully orbit the earth, sparking concern
that the Soviets would take control of space.
While the text of The Magic Barrel is almost entirely free of
topical or historical references that might allow readers to place
the events of the story at a particular date, one detail establishes
Leos encounter with Salzman as taking place roughly at the time
of the storys publication in the mid-fifties. Finkle is about to
complete his six-year course of study to become a rabbi at New
York Citys Yeshivah University. Yeshivah, in Hebrew, means a
place of study. Yeshivah University is the oldest and most
distinguished Jewish institution of higher learning in the United
States. While its history goes back to 1886, the school was not
named Yeshivah until 1945, when its charter was revised. At the
end of the traditional six years of study to become a rabbi, then,

Leo would probably be considering marriage sometime early in

the 1950s.
By consulting a professional matchmaker to find a bride, Leo is
acting more like his immigrant grandparents than an American
Jew of the 1950s. In Yiddish, the secular language of many
European and American Jewish communities, the word for
matchmaker is shadchen (pronounced shod-hun). Before the
seventeenth century, the shadchen was a highly respected person,
responsible for the perpetuation of the Jewish people through
arranged marriages. As European Jewish communities grew
larger and as modern secular notions of romantic love became
pervasive, professional matchmakers became less scrupulous in
their dealings and were frequently the objects of satire and
derision. Indeed a wealth of humor at the expense of
the shadchen developed during the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries; representative is the remark of the Yiddish writer
Sholom Aleichem
(1859-1916),
who
quipped
that
the shadchen was best defined as a dealer in livestock.
Regardless, the shadchen tradition survived Jewish immigration
to the United States. In his history of Jewish immigrant life on
New York Citys lower east side, World of our Fathers, Irving
Howe describes the typicalshadchen as similar to Malamuds
Pinye Salzman: Affecting an ecclesiastic bearing, the
matchmaker wore a somber black suit with a half-frock effect, a
silk yarmulke (skullcap), a full beard. The matchmaker,
according to Howe, customarily received 5 percent of the
dowry in addition to a flat fee, neither one nor both enough to
make him rich. Pinye Salzman is in many ways, then, a
stereotypical figure who has stepped from the world of Jewish
oral humor into the pages of Malamuds story. Leo, in seeking
the shadchens help in the 1950s, reveals himself not only as a
formal, but as a very old fashioned young man.

says Kaddish, the traditional Jewish prayer for the dead, he is

commemorating the death of the old Leo who was incapable of
love. But he is also celebrating Leos birth into a new life.
Both Richard Reynolds and Bates Hoffer offer interpretations of
The Magic Barrel based on specific Jewish religious traditions.
Reynoldss focus is on the role of Kaddish, maintaining that
Salzman hopes that Leo will bring Stella, the prodigal
daughter, back to a moral life. In that case, reciting
the Kaddish is particularly appropriate given the ancient prayers
emphasis on resurrection. Hoffer compares the five-part structure
of the story to the Torah (the first five books of the Old
Testament, the sacred text of Judaism) and claims that Leo has
broken a majority of the ten commandments.
Finally Carmen Cramer maintains that Leos story is a journey of
emotional maturity. Rather, The Magic Barrel chronicles the
rabbinical students Americanization, his gradual assimilation
into American culture. Cramer asserts that Finkle possesses few
of the typical American traits decisiveness, emotionality,
action-orientation but he melts into the American pot by the
end of Bernard Malamuds polished piece of writing. . . .
Compare & Contrast

1990s: Through intermarriage and assimilation, many

people in the Jewish community believe that Jewish
culture is endangered. Unfortunately, discrimination
still exists in the United States, but many groups fight
misinformation and discrimination against Jews.

Critical Overview
When Malamuds The Magic Barrel first appeared in Partisan
Review in 1954, it provided a colorful glimpse into the world of
American Jews. Fours years later, after his second novel, The
Assistant, had been enthusiastically received, Malamud reprinted
The Magic Barrel as the title story in a collection of his short
fiction. The collection sold well, and was praised by reviewers
for its honesty, irony, and acute perception of the moral
dilemmas of American Jews. It won the National Book Award for
fiction in 1959.
Between the publication of the collection in 1958 and his death
in 1986, Bernard Malamud became one of Americas most
respected writers of fiction, publishing six more novels and
numerous collections of short fiction. Malamuds writing has
been the subject of critical debate for three decades. Writing in
1966, Sidney Richman examines the emotional sterility of the
protagonist Leo Finkle. According to Richman, . . . Finkle
knows the word but not the spirit; and he makes it clear that in a
secret part of his heart he knows it.
Theodore C. Miller, in 1972, compares The Magic Barrel to
Hawthornes The Scarlet Letter, pointing out that both stories
explore the love of the minister and the whore. Unlike
Hawthornes minister, Arthur Dimmesdale, however, Malamuds
rabbinical student, Finkle, comes to accept Stella for the reason
that he accepts universal guilt. Miller also contends that
Salzman has arranged the love affair between Leo and Stella
because he wishes to initiate Leo Finkle into the existential
nature of love. When at the end of the story Salzman

1950s: Decades of immigration from Eastern and

Western Europe have led to a considerable Jewish
population in the United States. Strong and vibrant
Jewish communities thrive in many American cities. Yet
discrimination against the Jewish people exists.

1950s: The Jewish matchmaker, also known as the

shadchen, performs a vital function within the
community. Arranged marriage, although losing
popularity among Jewish families, is still a viable
option for young Jewish men and women of age.
1990s: Matchmaking is considered an antiquated
tradition. It is mainly used in orthodox Jewish
communities, as other networking opportunities allow
Jewish men and women to meet and find possible
marriage partners.

Criticism
Freud invokes the concept of reaction formation: a thing consumed
(or almost consumed) by its opposite. The third casket and the third
daughter have been transformed into the prizes. Yet, says Freud,
lead seems dull as compared to gold and silver just as Cordelia
lavishes no praise on her father and then dies. According to
Freud, her deathall deathis the underlying wager of such
interpretive choices. To return to its mythic origins, Shakespeare's
story harkens back to the bifurcation of woman as the goddess of
love and the goddess of death. Cordelia and that leaden casket
appear to be what man desires most: the unconditional love of a
woman (his mother), but they are both imbued with the
destruction that mother earth brings. Cordelia's death thus is not

her own; it is the dream image of Lear's own death; "the silent
Goddess of Death, will take him into her arms."

THE THEME OF THE THREE CASKETS

I

Two scenes from Shakespeare, one from a comedy and the other
from a tragedy, have lately given me occasion for posing and solving a
small problem.
The first of these scenes is the suitors' choice between the three
caskets in The Merchant of Venice. The fair and wise Portia is bound
at her father's bidding to take as her husband only that one of her
suitors who chooses the right casket from among the three before him.
The three caskets are of gold, silver and lead: the right casket is the
one that contains her portrait. Two suitors have already departed
unsuccessful: they have chosen gold and silver. Bassanio, the third,
decides in favour of lead; thereby he wins the bride, whose
affection was already his before the trial of fortune. Each of the
suitors gives reasons for his choice in a speech in which he praises
the metal he prefers and depreciates the other two. The most difficult
task thus falls to the share of the fortunate third suitor; what he finds
to say in glorification of lead as against gold and silver is little and has
a forced ring. If in psycho-analytic practice we were confronted with
such a speech, we should suspect that there were concealed motives
behind the unsatisfying reasons produced.
Shakespeare did not himself invent this oracle of the choice of a
casket; he took it from a tale in the Gesra fiomanorum,1 in which a
girl has to make the same choice to win the Emperor's son.2 Here
too the third metal, lead, is the bringer of fortune. It is not hard to
guess that we have here an ancient theme, which requires to be
interpreted, accounted for and traced back to its origin. A first
conjecture as to the meaning of this choice between gold, silver
and lead is quickly confirmed by a statement of Stuck-en's,3 who has
made a study of the same material over a wide field. He writes: "The
identity of Portia's three suitors is clear from their choice: the Prince
of Morocco chooses the gold caskethe is the sun; the Prince of
Arragon chooses the silver caskethe is the moon; Bassanio
chooses the leaden caskethe is the star youth." In support of this
explanation he cites an episode from the Esto nian folk-epic
"Kalewipoeg," in which the three suitors appear undisguisedly as the
sun, moon and star youths (the last being "the Pole-star's eldest boy")
and once again the bride falls to the lot of the third.
Thus our little problem has led us to an astral myth! The only
pity is that with this explanation we are not at the end of the matter.
The question is not exhausted, for we do not share the belief of
some investigators that myths were read in the heavens and brought
down to earth; we are more inclined to judge with Otto Rank4 that they
were projected on to the heavens after having arisen elsewhere under
purely human conditions. It is in this human content that our
interest lies.
Let us look once more at our material. In the Estonian epic, just
as in the tale from the Gesta Romanorum, the subject is a girl
choosing between the three suitors; in the scene from The Merchant
of Venice the subject is apparently the same, but at the same time
something appears in it that is in the nature of an inversion of the
theme: a man chooses between threecaskets. If what we were
concerned with were a dream, it would occur to us at once that
caskets are also women, symbols of what is essential in woman,
and therefore of a woman herself like coffers, boxes, cases, baskets,
and so on.5 If we boldly assume that there are symbolic substitutions
of the same kind in myths as well, then the casket scene in The
Merchant of Venice really becomes the inversion we suspected. With
a wave of the wand, as though we were in a fairy tale, we have

stripped the astral garment from our theme; and now we see that the
theme is a human one, a man's choice between three women.
This same content, however, is to be found in another scene of
Shakespeare's, in one of his most powerfully moving dramas; not the
choice of a bride this time, yet linked by many hidden similarities
to the choice of the casket in The Merchant of Venice. The old King
Lear resolves to divide his kingdom while he is still alive among his
three daughters, in proportion to the amount of love that each of them
expresses for him. The two elder ones, Goneril and Regan, exhaust
themselves in asseverations and laudations of their love for him; the
third, Cordelia, refuses to do so. He should have recognized the
unassuming, speechless love of his third daughter and rewarded it,
but he does not recognize it. He disowns Cordelia, and divides the
kingdom between the other two, to his own and the general ruin. Is
not this once more the scene of a choice between three women, of
whom the youngest is the best, the most excellent one?
There will at once occur to us other scenes from myths, fairy tales
and literature, with the same situation as their content. The shepherd
Paris has to choose between three goddesses, of whom he declares
the third to be the most beautiful. Cinderella, again, is a youngest
daughter, who is preferred by the prince to her two elder sisters.
Psyche, in Apuleius's story, is the youngest and fairest of three
sisters. Psyche is, on the one hand, revered as Aphrodite in human
form; on the other, she is treated by that goddess as Cinderella was
treated by her stepmother and is set the task of sorting a heap of
mixed seeds, which she accomplishes with the help of small creatures
(doves in the case of Cinderella, ants in the case of Psyche). 6 Anyone
who cared to make a wider survey of the material would
undoubtedly discover other versions of the same theme preserving
the same essential features.
Let us be content with Cordelia, Aphrodite, Cinderella and Psyche. In
all the stories the three women, of whom the third is the most
excellent one, must surely be regarded as in some way alike if they
are represented as sisters. (We must not be led astray by the fact
that Lear's choice is between three daughters; this may mean nothing
more than that he has to be represented as an old man. An old man
cannot very well choose between three women in any other way.
Thus they become his daughters.)
But who are these three sisters and why must the choice fall on
the third? If we could answer this question, we should be in possession
of the interpretation we are seeking. We have once already made use
of an application of psycho-analytic technique, when we explained
the three caskets symbolically as three women. If we have the
courage to proceed in the same way, we shall be setting foot on a
path which will lead us first to something unexpected and
incomprehensible, but which will perhaps, by a devious route,
bring us to a goal.
It must strike us that this excellent third woman has in several
instances certain peculiar qualities besides her beauty. They are
qualities that seem to be tending towards some kind of unity; we
must certainly not expect to find them equally well marked in every
example. Cordelia makes herself unrecognizable, inconspicuous like
lead, she remains dumb, she "loves and is silent." 7 Cinderella hides
so that she cannot be found. We may perhaps be allowed to equate
concealment and dumbness. These would of course be only two
instances out of the five we have picked out. But there is an intimation
of the same thing to be found, curiously enough, in two other cases.
We have decided to compare Cordelia, with her obstinate refusal, to
lead. In Bassanio's short speech while he is choosing the casket,
he says of lead (without in any way leading up to the remark):
Thy paleness8 moves me more than eloquence.
That is to say: "Thy plainness moves me more than the blatant nature
of the other two." Gold and silver are "loud"; lead is dumb in
fact like Cordelia, who "loves and is silent."9
In the ancient Greek accounts of the Judgement of Paris, nothing is
said of any such reticence on the part of Aphrodite. Each of the

three goddesses speaks to the youth and tries to win him by

promises. But, oddly enough, in a quite modern handling of the
same scene this characteristic of the third one which has struck us
makes its appearance again. In the libretto of Offenbach's La Belle
Helene, Paris, after telling of the solicitations of the other two
goddesses, describes Aphrodite's behaviour in this competition tor
the beauty-prize:
La troisieme, ah! la troisieme . . .
La troisieme ne dit rien.
EiJe eut le prix tout de meme . . .10
If we decide to regard the peculiarities of our "third one" as
concentrated in her "dumbness," then psycho-analysis will tell us
that in dreams dumbness is a common representation of death.11
More than ten years ago a highly intelligent man told me a dream
which he wanted to use as evidence of the telepathic nature of
dreams. In it he saw an absent friend from whom he had received no
news for a very long time, and reproached him energetically for his
silence. The friend made no reply. It afterwards turned out that he
had met his death by suicide at about the time of the dream. Let us
leave the problem of telepathy on one side:12 there seems, however,
not to be any doubt that here the dumbness in the dream represented
death. Hiding and being unfindablea thing which confronts the
prince in the fairy tale of Cinderella three times, is another
unmistakable symbol of death in dreams; so, too, is a marked
pallor, of which the "paleness" of the lead in one reading of
Shakespeare's text is a reminder.13 It would be very much easier for us to
transpose these interpretations from the language of dreams to be
mode of expression used in the myth that is now under consideration
if we could make it seem probable that dumbness must be interpreted
as a sign of being dead in productions other than dreams.
At this point I will single out the ninth story in Grimm's Fairy
Tales, which bears the title "The Twelve Brothers."14 A king and a
queen have twelve children, all boys. The king declares that if the
thirteenth child is a girl, the boys will have to die. In expectation of her
birth he has twelve coffins made. With their mother's help the twelve
sons take refuge in a hidden wood, and swear death to any girl
they may meet. A girl is born, grows up, and learns one day from her
mother that she has had twelve brothers. She decides to seek them out,
and in the wood she finds the youngest; he recognizes her, but is
anxious to hide her on account of the brothers' oath. The sister says:
"I will gladly die, if by so doing I can save my twelve brothers." The
brothers welcome her affectionately, however, and she stays with them
and looks after their house for them. In a little garden beside the
house grow twelve lilies. The girl picks them and gives one to each
brother. At that moment the brothers are changed into ravens, and
disappear, together with the house and garden. (Ravens are spiritbirds; the killing of the twelve brothers by their sister is represented
by the picking of the flowers, just as it is at the beginning of the story
by the coffins and the disappearance of the brothers.) The girl, who
is once more ready to save her brothers from death, is now told that as
a condition she must be dumb for seven years, and not speak a single
word. She submits to the test, which brings her herself into mortal
danger. She herself, that is, dies for her brothers, as she promised to
do before she met them. By remaining dumb she succeeds at last in
setting the ravens free.
In the story of "The Six Swans"15 the brothers who are changed into
birds are set free in exactly the same waythey are restored to life
by their sister's dumbness. The girl has made a firm resolve to free
her brothers, "even if it should cost her her life"; and once again (being
the wife of the king) she risks her own life because she refuses to
give up her dumbness in order to defend herself against evil
accusations.
It would certainly be possible to collect further evidence from
fairy tales that dumbness is to be understood as representing death.
These indications would lead us to conclude that the third one of the
sisters between whom the choice is made is a dead woman. But she

may be something else as wellnamely, Death itself, the Goddess of

Death. Thanks to a displacement that is far from infrequent, the
qualities that a deity imparts to men are ascribed to the deity himself.
Such a displacement will surprise us least of all in relation to the
Goddess of Death, since in modern versions and representations,
which these stories would thus be forestalling, Death itself is nothing
other than a dead man.
But if the third of the sisters is the Goddess of Death, the sisters are
known to us. They are the Fates, the Moerae, the Parcae or the Norns,
the third of whom is called Atropos, the inexorable.

II
We will for the time being put aside the task of inserting the
interpretation that we have found into our myth, and listen to what
the mythologists have to teach us about the role and origin of the
Fates.16
The earliest Greek mythology (in Homer) only knew a single
Molpa, personifying inevitable fate. The further development of this
one Moera into a company of three (or less often two) sistergoddesses probably came about on the basis of other divine figures to
which the Moerae were closely relatedthe Graces and the Horae
[the Seasons].
The Horae were originally goddesses of the waters of the sky,
dispensing rain and dew, and of the clouds from which rain falls;
and, since the clouds were conceived of as something that has been
spun, it came about that these goddesses were looked upon as
spinners, an attribute that then became attached to the Moerae. In the
sun-favoured Mediterranean lands it is the rain on which the fertility of
the soil depends, and thus the Horae became vegetation goddesses.
The beauty of flowers and the abundance of fruit was their doing,
and they were accredited with a wealth of agreeable and charming
traits. They became the divine representatives of the Seasons, and it is
possibly owing to this connection that there were three of them, if the
sacred nature of the number three is not a sufficient explanation. For
the peoples of antiquity at first distinguished only three seasons:
winter, spring and summer. Autumn was only added in late GraecoRoman times, after which the Horae were often represented in art as
four in number.
The Horae retained their relation to time. Later they presided over
the times of day, as they did at first over the times of the year; and at
last their name came to be merely a designation of the hours (heure,
ora). The Norns of German mythology are akin to the Horae and the
Moerae and exhibit this time-signification in their names.17 It was
inevitable, however, that a deeper view should come to be taken of the
essential nature of these deities, and that their essence should be
transposed on to the regularity with which the seasons change. The
Horae thus became the guardians of natural law and of the divine
Order which causes the same thing to recur in Nature in an
unalterable sequence.
This discovery of Nature reacted on the conception of human life.
The nature-myth changed into a human myth: the weather-goddesses
became goddesses of Fate. But this aspect of the Horae found
expression only in the Moerae, who watch over the necessary
ordering of human life as inexorably as do the Horae over the
regular order of nature. The ineluctable severity of Law and its
relation to death and dissolution, which had been avoided in the
charming figures of the Horae, were now stamped upon the Moerae,
as though men had only perceived the full seriousness of natural law
when they had to submit their own selves to it.
The names of the three spinners, too, have been significantly
explained by mythologists. Lachesis, the name of the second, seems to
denote "the accidental that is included in the regularity of destiny"18
or, as we should say, "experience"; just as Atropos stands for "the

ineluctable"Death. Clotho would then be left to mean the innate

disposition with its fateful implications.
But now it is time to return to the theme which we are trying to
interpretthe theme of the choice between three sisters. We shall be
deeply disappointed to discover how unintelligible the situations
under review become and what contradictions of their apparent
content result, if we apply to them the interpretation that we have
found. On our supposition the third of the sisters is the Goddess of
Death, Death itself. But in the Judgement of Paris she is the
Goddess of Love, in the tale of Apuleius she is someone comparable
to the goddess for her beauty, in The Merchant of Venice she is the
fairest and wisest of women, in King Lear she is the one loyal
daughter. We may ask whether there can be a more complete
contradiction. Perhaps, improbable though it may seem, there is a
still more complete one lying close at hand. Indeed, there certainly
is; since, whenever our theme occurs, the choice between the
women is free, and yet it falls on death. For, after all, no one chooses
death, and it is only by a fatality that one falls a victim to it.
However, contradictions of a certain kindreplacements by the
precise oppositeoffer no serious difficulty to the work of analytic
interpretation. We shall not appeal here to the fact that contraries
are so often represented by one and the same element in the modes
of expression used by the unconscious, as for instance in dreams.19
But we shall remember that there are motive forces in mental life
which bring about replacement by the opposite in the form of what is
known as reaction-formation; and it is precisely in the revelation of
such hidden forces as these that we look for the reward of this
enquiry. The Moerae were created as a result of a discovery that
warned man that he too is a part of nature and therefore subject to
the immutable law of death. Something in man was bound to
struggle against this subjection, for it is only with extreme
unwillingness that he gives up his claim to an exceptional position.
Man, as we know, makes use of his imaginative activity in order to
satisfy the wishes that reality does not satisfy. So his imagination
rebelled against the recognition of the truth embodied in the myth
of the Moerae, and constructed instead the myth derived from it, in
which the Goddess of Death was replaced by the Goddess of Love
and by what was equivalent to her in human shape. The third of the
sisters was no longer Death; she was the fairest, best, most desirable
and most lovable of women. Nor was this substitution in any way
technically difficult: it was prepared for by an ancient ambivalence,
it was carried out along a primaeval line of connection which could
not long have been forgotten. The Goddess of Love herself, who
now took the place of the Goddess of Death, had once been identical
with her. Even the Greek Aphrodite had not wholly relinquished
her connection with the underworld, although she had long
surrendered her chthonic role to other divine figures, to Persephone,
or to the tri-form Artemis-Hecate. The great Mother-goddesses of the
oriental peoples, however, all seem to have been both creators and
destroyersboth goddesses of life and fertility and goddesses of
death. Thus the replacement by a wishful opposite in our theme harks
back to a primaeval identity.
The same consideration answers the question how the feature of a
choice came into the myth of the three sisters. Here again there has
been a wishful reversal. Choice stands in the place of necessity, of
destiny. In this way man overcomes death, which he has recognized
intellectually. No greater triumph of wish-fulfilment is conceivable. A
choice is made where in reality there is obedience to a compulsion;
and what is chosen is not a figure of terror, but the fairest and most
desirable of women.
On closer inspection we observe, to be sure, that the original myth is
not so thoroughly distorted that traces of it do not show through and
betray its presence. The free choice between the three sisters is,
properly speaking, no free choice, for it must necessarily fall on
the third if every kind of evil is not to come about, as it does in King
Lear. The fairest and best of women, who has taken the place of the
Death-goddess, has kept certain characteristics that border on the

uncanny, so that from them we have been able to guess at what lies
beneath.20
So far we have been following out the myth and its transformation, and
it is to be hoped that we have correctly indicated the hidden causes
of the transformation. We may now turn our interest to the way in
which the dramatist has made use of the theme. We get an
impression that a reduction of the theme to the original myth is
being carried out in his work, so that we once more have a sense of
the moving significance which had been weakened by the distortion.
It is by means of this reduction of the distortion, this partial return to
the original, that the dramatist achieves his more profound effect
upon us.
To avoid misunderstandings, I should like to say that it is not my
purpose to deny that King Lear's dramatic story is intended to
inculcate two wise lessons: that one should not give up one's
possessions and rights during one's lifetime, and that one must guard
against accepting flattery at its face value. These and similar
warnings are undoubtedly brought out by the play; but it seems to me
quite impossible to explain the overpowering effect of King Lear from
the impression that such a train of thought would produce, or to
suppose that the dramatist's personal motives did not go beyond the
intention of teaching these lessons. It is suggested, too, that his
purpose was to present the tragedy of ingratitude, the sting of which
he may well have felt in his own heart, and that the effect of the play
rests on the purely formal element of its artistic presentation; but
this cannot, so it seems to me, take the place of the understanding
brought to us by the explanation we have reached of the theme of
the choice between the three sisters.
Lear is an old man. It is for this reason, as we have already
said, that the three sisters appear as his daughters. The relationship
of a father to his children, which might be a fruitful source of many
dramatic situations, is not turned to further account in the play. But
Lear is not only an old man: he is a dying man. In this way the
extraordinary premiss of the division of his inheritance loses all
its strangeness. But the doomed man is not willing to renounce the
love of women; he insists on hearing how much he is loved.
Let us now recall the moving final scene, one of the culminating
points of tragedy in modern drama. Lear carries Cordelia's dead
body on to the stage. Cordelia is Death. If we reverse the situation
it becomes intelligible and familiar to us. She is the Death-goddess
who, like the Valkyrie in German mythology, carries away the dead
hero from the battlefield. Eternal wisdom, clothed in the primaeval
myth, bids the old man renounce love, choose death and make
friends with the necessity of dying.
The dramatist brings us nearer to the ancient theme by
representing the man who makes the choice between the three
sisters as aged and dying. The regressive revision which he has thus
applied to the myth, distorted as it was by wishful transformation,
allows us enough glimpses of its original meaning to enable us
perhaps to reach as well a superficial allegorical interpretation of
the three female figures in the theme. We might argue that what is
represented here are the three inevitable relations that a man has
with a womanthe woman who bears him, the woman who is his
mate and the woman who destroys him; or that they are the three
forms taken by the figure of the mother in the course of a man's life
the mother herself, the beloved one who is chosen after her
pattern, and lastly the Mother Earth who receives him once more.
But it is in vain that an old man yearns for the love of woman as
he had it first from his mother; the third of the Fates alone, the silent
Goddess of Death, will take him into her arms.

NOTES
1. [A mediaeval collection of stories of unknown authorship.]
Trans.

2.
3.

Brandes (1896).
Stucken (1907, 655).

4. Rank (1909, 8 ff.).

5. [See The Interpretation of Dreams (1900a), Standard Ed., 5,
354.]Trans.
6. I have to thank Dr. Otto Rank for calling my attention to
these similarities. [Cf. a reference to this in Chapter XII of Group
Psychology (1921c), Standard Ed., 18,136.]Trans.
7. [From an aside of Cordelia's, Act I, Scene 1.]Trans.
8. "Plainness" according to another reading.
9. In Schlegel's translation this allusion is quite lost: indeed, it
is given the opposite meaning: "Dein schlichtes VVesen spricht
beredt mich an." ["Thy plainness speaks to me with eloquence."]
Trans.
10.
[Literally: "The third one, ah! the third one . . . the third
one said nothing. She won the prize all the same."The
quotation is from Act I, Scene 7, of Meilhac and Halevy's
libretto. In the German version used by Freud "the third one"
"blieb stumm""remained dumb."]Trans.
11. In Stekel's Sprache des Traumes, too, dumbness is
mentioned among the "death" symbols (1911a, 351). [Cf. The
Interpretation of Dreams (1900a), Standard Ed., 5, 357.] Trans.
12. [Cf. Freud's later paper on "Dreams and Telepathy"
(1922a).]Trans.
13.

Stekel (1911a), loc. cit.

14. ["Die zwolf Briider." Grimm, 1918, 1, 42.]Trans.

15. ["Die sechs Schwane." Grimm, 1918, 1, 217 (No. 49).]
Trans.
16. What follows is taken from Roscher's lexicon [18841937], under the relevant headings.

on one side, the mute love of Cordelia on the other. Although

Freud initially draws on Shakespeare as his source for the choice
between caskets; he ends up relying on myths that deal with the
choice a woman must make between three pretenders, but which
is inverted (as in the case of the choice between the three caskets
and in the logic of the dream) into the choice a man makes
between three caskets, that is, three women.
This leads Freud to evoke other scenes that turn on the number
three in myths, folklore and literature, for instance constellations
of three sisters where the choice always fall upon the third one
who is the most unique. Freud identifies this uniqueness of the
third as her "muteness," and then recalls how muteness in
psychic life is typically a representation of death. The third
daughter, seen from this perspective, may be viewed as Death,
the Goddess of Death. The sisters appear, consequently, as the
three daughters of Fateaccording to mythological tradition, the
three Moirai,
Parcae,
or Norns.
Freud's detour through
mythology makes the goddesses of fate represent the inexorable
Law of Nature, and thus of the passing of time and the
ineluctability of death as well.
Returning to the choice between three sisters, Freud seeks
to soften any resultant contradictions between this detour
through mythology and the specific choice itself by reminding us
that fantasy activity typically inverts what is disagreeable into its
contrary. Fatality, the inexorability of death, is transformed into a
free choice. InKing Lear the old man appears at the end carrying
the dead Cordelia in his arms. Freud refers the powerful effect
this produces to the latent message transpiring behind the
manifest representation of the scene: in fact it is Cordelia,
Goddess of Death, who carries the dead king off the battlefield.

17. [Their names may be rendered: "What was," "What is,"

"What shall be."]Trans.
18. Roscher [ibid.], quotingPreller, ed. Robert (1894).
19. [Cf. The Interpretation of Dreams (1900a), Standard Ed.,
4, 318.]Trans.
20. The Psyche of Apuleius's story has kept many traits that
remind us of her relation with death. Her wedding is celebrated
like a funeral, she has to descend into the underworld, and
afterwards she sinks into a deathlike sleep (Otto Rank).On the
significance of Psyche as goddess of the spring and as "Bride of
Death," cf. Zinzow (1881).In another of Grimm's Tales ("The
Goose-girl at the Fountain" ["Die Gansehirtin am Brunnen,"
1918, 2, 300], No. 179) there is, as in "Cinderella," an alternation
between the beautiful and the ugly aspect of the third sister, in
which one may no doubt see an indication of her double nature
before and after the substitution. This third daughter is
repudiated by her father, after a test which is almost the same as
the one in King Lear. Like her sisters, she has to declare how
fond she is of their father, but can find no expression for her love
but a comparison with salt. (Kindly communicated by Dr. Hanns
Sachs.)
On "The Theme of the Three Caskets"
In "The Theme of the Three Caskets," Sigmund Freud presents a
wealth of extremely complex thoughts in just a few short pages.
At the beginning are two scenes from Shakespeare, in which the
number three plays an essential role: First, the choice
of three pretenders to Portia's hand between threemetal caskets
in The Merchant of Venice; and second, in King Lear the dying
King's partition of his kingdom between his three daughters,
according to the love they show for him. In both these two plots,
the humblest thing is shown to be the most precious: plain lead

Although a minor work, this magisterial essay demonstrates

concretely, even in its use of free association, thefecundity of the

analytical method when applied to literature, myths, and folklore;

while at the same time illustrating the laws of psychical
functioning, such as the inversion of a wish into its opposite.
In a letter to Sndor Ferenczi dated July 9, 1913, Freud revealed
that the "subjective condition" he was in when writing this essay
was occasioned by the fact that his third child, Anna, was
beginning to occupy a very unique place in his life.
Source Citation
Freud, Sigmund. (1913f). Das Motiv der Kstchenwahl. Imago 2,
257-266; GW, 10, 24-37; The theme of the three caskets. SE, 12:
291-301.
Bibliography
Freud, Sigmund, and Ferenczi, Sndor (1992-2000). The
correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Sndor Ferenczi. (Eva
Brabant, Ernst Falzeder, and Patrizia Giampieri-Deutsch, Eds.;
Peter T. Hoffer, Trans.).; Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of
Harvard University Press.

Benjamin Goluboff
Goluboff has taught English at Lake Forest College in Lake
Forest, Illinois. In the following essay, he places the story within
the context of Jewish fiction of the 1950s and focuses on the
theme of intergenerational relations.
Consequently, Finkles transformed character would suggest
that, unlike their ancestors, the younger generation is open to
passion, to change, and to new beginnings exempt from the
influence of tradition.
Publishing The Magic Barrel in 1954, Bernard Malamud was
at the beginning of his career, and near the beginning of a brief
and remarkable period in the history of Jewish-American
writing. For perhaps a decade, from the mid-1950s to the mid1960s, the American literary imagination seemed to have been
captured by a series of books by and about Jews. In 1953 Saul
Bellow published The Adventures of Augie March, a story of
tragicomic misadventures set in Chicagos Jewish immigrant
milieu. In 1957 Malamud brought out his second novel, The
Assistant, the tale of an impoverished Brooklyn grocer who
becomes a kind of Jewish everyman. 1959 saw the literary debut
of Philip Roth, whose Goodbye, Columbus was the account of a
doomed love affair between two Jewish young people divided by
social class.
Goodbye Columbus won the prestigious National Book Award
for fiction in 1960, as Bellows Augie March had done in 1954,
and as Malamuds collection of short stories, The Magic
Barrel, had in 1959. Equally distinguished Jewish-American
writers such as Norman Mailer, Joseph Heller, and Chaim
Potok attracted attention on the literary scene during these
years as well.
The novelists who made their reputations during this time didnt
always have Jewish concerns as the focus of their fiction. Still,
for a decade or so, Malamuds fiction seemed to be part of a

movement of the American novel toward the lives and problems

of Jews. Of course, Jewish-American fiction was not invented in
the 1950s; novels by and about American Jews comprised a
tradition of some significance and depth by the time Malamud
began his career. In one important respect in its theme of
change and conflict between generations Malamuds The
Magic Barrel is solidly embedded in the tradition of JewishAmerican fiction.
The first important Jewish-American novel was Mary
Antins The Promised Land of 1912. Born in Russian Poland,
Antin immigrated to Boston as a child in 1894 and became a
social worker in the immigrant neighborhoods of that city. The
Promised Land is based on Antins own immigrant experience,
contrasting the poverty and persecution of Jewish life in Eastern
Europe with the freedom and economic opportunity available to
immigrants in the United States.
The vision of America is not so happy, however, in The Rise of
David Levinsky by Abraham Cahan (1917). Cahan was a Russian
immigrant who found success in America as an editor and
journalist. (He edited the The Jewish Daily Forward, the Yiddish
newspaper in which Leo Finkle reads Pinye Salzmans ad.) Like
his creator, David Levinsky encounters an America where
opportunity is purchased at great sacrifice. As David rises in
New Yorks garment industry, his success costs him love and
personal integrity. Most of all, Davids success results in his
betrayal of those Jewish spiritual traditions that had sustained his
ancestors in Russia. David ends the novel as a representative of
an immigrant generation that has lost the integrity of its
ancestors.
The theme of change and conflict among generations appears
powerfully in Anzia Yezierskas 1925 novel Bread Givers.
Yezierskas novel dramatizes the conflict between Sara
Smolinsky, a lively young Jewish woman, and her dictatorial
father, a Russian immigrant Rabbi. Rabbi Smolinsky has devoted
his life to study of the Torah, and insists that his daughters work
to support him as he continues his studies in America. Sara
dreams of receiving a secular American education and becoming
a teacher, but to do so she must defy the will of her father: More
and more I began to see that father, in his innocent craziness to
hold up the Light of the Law to his children, was a tyrant more
terrible than the Tsar from Russia. Sara eventually realizes her
dream, becoming a teacher in the New York Public Schools, but
only at the price of breaking off her relationship with her father.
When the two reconcile at the end of the novel, it is because Sara
has come to recognize that the drive and will that allowed her to
finish her education came from her father.
As Leo Finkle and Pinye Salzman pursue each other through the
pages of Malamuds The Magic Barrel, the theme of
generational conflict presents itself with rich ambivalence. Its as
clear from his profession an arranger of marriages in the way
traditional to nineteenth-century European Jewish communities
as it is from his Yiddish-inflected speech that Pinye Salzman
is the storys representative of an older generation of immigrant
Jews. Leo Finkle, born in Cleveland and bearing a gentile given
name, as clearly embodies a younger population perhaps
those second- or third-generation American Jews who came to
maturity in the 1950s. Whats less clear, however, is with which
of the two generations the story encourages us to empathize.
Who has moral authority in the story, old Salzman or young
Finkle?
It is tempting to read the story as favoring youth, especially in
light of the emotional transformation that Leo Finkle undergoes.

Leo enters the story as a cold and passionless young man. He

requires a bride not because he is in love, but because he is about
to be ordained as a rabbi and believes that he will find a
congregation more readily if he is married. Leo praises
Salzmans profession with chilly formalism; the matchmaker, he
says, makes practical the necessary without hindering joy.
After his date with Lily Hirschorn, Leo comes to recognize and
deplore his own passionlessness. Prompted by the matchmaker,
Lily had expected Finkle to be a man of great human and
spiritual fervor. Leo disappoints her, of course, and sees himself
for the first time as he truly was unloved and loveless.
In the aftermath of this revelation, Leo appears to change. He
tells the matchmaker, I now admit the necessity of premarital
love. That is, I want to be in love with the one I marry.
Salzmans reply to this declaration seems to identify the
matchmaker with the older generation: Love? said Salzman,
astounded. After a moment he remarked, For us, our love is our
life, not for the ladies. In the ghetto they . (Finkle interrupts
here with more about his new resolve to find love on his own.) In
his fragmentary response Salzman seems to say that for the older
generation those who had lived in the Jewish ghettoes of
Europe romantic love was a frivolous luxury. Survival was
what mattered (our life), not the ladies. With that remark,
Salzman appears to inhabit a past whose dangers are no longer
real to any but himself.

frailty and passion superior to that of the formalistic rabbinical

student.
What, then, do we make of the Salzmans saying Kaddish at the
storys conclusion? If his plan has been all along to educate Leo
in the necessity of passion, then it would be inconsistent with
that plan for Salzman to mourn just when he has succeeded in
bringing the lovers together. Critic Theodore C. Miller has
suggested a persuasive way out of this dilemma: . . . if Salzman
has planned the whole episode, then the matchmaker through
his Kaddish is commemorating the death of the old Leo who was
incapable of love. But he is also celebrating Leos birth into a
new life. Viewed in this way, the matchmakers prayer of
mourning celebrates the success of his plan for Leo and Stella,
the Yiddishe kinder (Jewish children).
Because Malamuds The Magic Barrel is a work of art and not
a sociological study of inter-generational relations, it must
remain a matter of interpretation whether the story privileges the
older or younger generation. Because its central interpretive
question involves this judgment between two generations,
however, The Magic Barrel is a story solidly grounded in the
tradition of Jewish-American fiction.
Source: Benjamin Goluboff, Overview of The Magic Barrel,
for Short Stories for Students, The Gale Group, 2000.

Finkles transformation is complete when he falls in love with

the photograph of Salzmans daughter, Stella, left accidentally
among pictures of the matchmakers other clients. Loving this
fallen woman, and loving her only on the basis of her
photograph, is just the passionate leap of faith of which Leo has
been previously incapable. His eyes now weighted with
wisdom, Leo has learned at last the redemptive nature of
passion.
Old Salzman, however, is more inflexibly than ever rooted in
tradition. He considers his daughter dead because of her
mysterious sin, and even Finkles newfound passion for her cant
restore Stella to the living in her fathers eyes. In the storys
mysterious final section, Finkle rushes to Stella with a bouquet
of flowers while: Around the comer, Salzman, leaning against a
wall, chanted prayers for the dead.
If we interpret Salzmans Kaddish the traditional Jewish
prayer for the dead as being for his daughter, then as
representative of the older generation Salzman is so committed
to tradition that he sees only death where life had just begun.
Consequently, Finkles transformed character would suggest that,
unlike their ancestors, the younger generation is open to passion,
to change, and to new beginnings exempt from the influence of
tradition.
One problem with this interpretation is that the story more than
once suggests that Finkles sudden passion for Stella might not
have been an accident, that it might have been planned by the
wily Salzman. Finkle suspects that the old man is capable of
intrigue. As he walks with Lily Hirschorn, Finkle senses Salzman
to be somewhere around, hiding perhaps high in a tree along the
street, flashing the lady signals with a pocket mirror. . . . Just
before the storys conclusion, when Salzman has finally agreed
to let Finkle meet Stella, Leo is suddenly afflicted by a
tormenting suspicion that Salzman had planned it all to happen
this way. If Leos meeting with Stella is part of the
matchmakers plan, then we would have to attribute to him, and
to the older generation he represents, a knowledge of human

Malamuds Unmagic Barrel

by Gary Sloan
Pinye Salzman, the impoverished marriage broker in Bernard
Malamuds popular story The Magic Barrel, is usually
perceived as an insoluble mixture of the preternatural and the
prosaic, ethereal mentor and plebeian hustler. He is a shaman
and a savant, a prophet and a procurer at the same time (Gunn
83), half criminal, half messenger of God (Richman 119). He
exists in the realm of sheer fantasy and in the earthy sphere
of gefilte fish, dingy tenements, and Broadway cafeterias
(Reynolds 101). He possesses in equal measure the human and
the magical characteristics of the god Pan (Storey 180). He
appears now as a human being, now as possessed of
supernatural powers, but never indubitably either (Dessner,
Revisions 253). He is scheming pimp and holy spirit,
placed on earth to bring Leo Finkle from an arid knowledge of
the law to the perception that he can fulfill the spirit of the law
only by loving in this world (Solotaroff 36). He is the
archetypal Trickster who symbolizes the instinctual and
irrational, driven by the basic needs of sex and hunger (May
94). Marcus Klein removes him from the human sphere

altogether: he is either a magician or a demon and exists

outside all ordinary determinations (279).

Why not Salzman persisted, the pitch of his voice rising.

Because I detest stomach specialists.

Kleins proposition works better inverted: Salzman exists

entirely within ordinary determinations. Everything he does is
explicable in naturalistic terms. Thus approached, the story
becomes more dramatic and ingenious. The happy ending is
no longer assured in advance by elfin sorcery: celestial
ingenuity yields to the human variety. Salzmans magical
powers, like the magic in the barrel, vanish whence they
came: Finkles distracted globe. A naturalistic interpretation is
consistent with Malamuds authorial creed: I would never, he
said in a rare interview, deliberately flatten a character to create
a stereotype.... Most of all Im out to create real and passionate
human beings (Field and Field 16).(1)
The story can be profitably read along the following lines. Even
before he meets Finkle, on the basis of what the student
revealed of himself in a curriculum vitae (Malamud 195), the
broker contemplates a marriage between his daughter, Stella,
and the new client.(2) After he meets the student, the intention
solidifies. Salzman heartily approved of Finkle (194) and let
out a so, contented sigh (195). As commercial Cupid,
Salzman hopes to do to Finkle what Eros does to the lovelorn in
Medieval and Renaissance emblems: put a hood over his head
(hoodwink). If his stratagem works, he will in one swoop save
his daughter and elevate his own social status. From the outset,
Salzman envisions Finkle as son-in-law, persistently calling him
rabbitrying the respected epithet on for sizeand assuming
a proprietary air. To preserve an appearance of occupational
integrity and, more importantly, to buy time to sound his prey,
the broker masks, consummately as it turns out, his predatory
intent.
Salzmans comments about his clients disclose his hidden intent.
The remarks are rife with double entendres and subtexts. His
thespian skills, lavishly on parade throughout the story, are
foretold: On the mothers side comes... one actor (196).
Around Finkle, he is always on: he adjusted his horn-rimmed
spectacles, gently cleared his throat and read in an eager
voice... . He can under- as well as overact. When Finkle spurns
Sophie P., as Salzman secretly wishes, the broker hunched his
shoulders in an almost imperceptible gesture of disappointment
(196). Rather than betoken wizardly locomotion, as some have
thought, his sudden entrances and exits have a patented
theatrical quality. His motives, too, are of ordinary provenance.
Like Ruth K.s parents, he and his wife are particular people
(197) when it comes to a son-in-lay. They are interested in a
professional man, and in his anxiety to reel Finkle in, Salzman
has become, a la Ruth K.s father, a specialist in stomach
disorders (197). If the broker can land his catch, his daughter
will be thankful for the rest of her life (196). In another
passage ostensibly about Ruth K., Salzman obliquely reveals
why he is playing matchmaker for his daughter. We may be
glossed as Salzman and his wife:
He [Ruths father] wants she should have the best, so he looks
around himself. When we will locate the right boy he will
introduce him and encourage. This makes a better marriage than
if a young girl without experience takes for herself. (198)
When a curiously bitter Finkle rejects Ruth K. out of hand, a
sullen Salzman imagines himself father-in-law non grata.
Finally, he [Finkle] shook his head.

So what do you care what is his business After you marry her
do you need him Who says he must come every Friday night in
our house? (199)
To net the slippery student, Salzman must do two things: (1)
insure that Finkle is disenchanted with the regular clients, and
(2) correctly package Stella.
The first task is easily discharged. Destitute of magic powers, the
broker has been unable to ward off the inexorable incursion of
modernity. The matchmaking institution, like the much-handled
cards (194), has become superannuated. Desirable prospects
now fend for themselves. Hence, the broker is poor and ill-fed,
lives in a very old tenement house (210), and constantly
rushes, a hapless luftmensch trying to drum up business. When
Finkle remarked that the function of the marriage broker was
ancient and honorable and that his own parents, brought
together by a matchmaker, had had a successful marriage,
Salzman, machinations already afoot, listened in embarrassed
surprise (194). Finkles respect seems to Salzman as antiquated
as the institution the broker represents (Finkle later admits he
does not really care for it [199]). The praise nevertheless
rekindles an extinguished idealism: Salzman experienced a
glow of pride in his work, an emotion that had left him years
ago (194). Stella and Finkle are, as Salzman might say to his
wife, two fine people that they would be wonderful to be
married (207).
Even at the first meeting, Salzman gets an inkling of the guise in
which Stella must eventually appear. With 25 years in the
business, he readily discerns where Finkles chief interest lies.
Notwithstanding the scholars nose and ascetic lips (195),
the sheltered student seeks a decidedly sublunary love. He wants
a wide field from which to choose: So few, he asks when he
sees Salzman holding but six cards (195). His second question
is, Do you keep photographs of your clients on file, (195). He
has an eye out for someone young, fresh, and sexy, but not too
intimidating.(3) Understandably, he flushes, twice, when
Salzman asks what interests him (198, 201). Sophie P., a 24year-old widow, does not pass muster. She is damaged goods.
Though he will finally agree to meet Lily H., she hasnt a
chance either: she is neither young nor libidinous, and has a
discomfiting idee fixe on holy men. The 19-year-old, pretty
(or so Salzman says) Ruth K. fails to meet the exacting
specifications because she is a little lame on the right foot
(198). Finkle wants a perfect ten.
Finkles finicky standards constitute a daunting challenge for the
matchmaker. Bruised, not beautified by poverty (208), Stellas
only kinship with Cinderella is the phonic one. Finkle needs a
joltlest, caught, he prove not worth the catching. The
proximate agent of shock will be Lily Hirschorn, votary (as
Salzman well knows) of the caricaturally devout. Primed for her
man enamored of God (203), a semi-mystical Wonder
Rabbi (206), Lily will function as gadfly, albeit an unwitting
one. Her balked expectations, Salzman hopes, will induce in
Finkle a guilty conscience. Rightly plumbed, he might lower his
standards a bit.
At his second meeting with Finkle, Salzman again shows no
trace of shamanic disposition. His anxiety is unfeigned. He is an
all-too-mortal schemer in extremis: His face was gray and

meager, his expression hungry, and he looked as if he would

expire on his feet. His histrionic faculty taxed, he manages, by
some trick of the muscles, to display a broad smile (199). By
upping the anteLily is not only wealthy, stylish, and
cultivated, he tells Finkle, but, like him, partikiler (202)
Salzman at last mediates a rendezvous.
When he next sees Finkle, a week later and subsequent to the
rendezvous, the harried broker is a skeleton with haunted eyes
(206). Again, he shows not a sign of sorcerous clairvoyance. He
is painfully ignorant of the status of his gambit. He stalwartly
feigns a nonchalant attitude:
Casually coughing, Salzman came immediately to the point: So
how did you like her?
Leos anger rose and he could not refrain from chiding the
matchmaker: Why did you lie to me, Salzman?
Salzmans pale face went dead white, the world had snowed o
him.(206)
For a perilous moment, Salzman thinks he has been hoisted on
his own petard, hence the apoplectic reaction. When he realizes
Finkle is alluding to Lily, not Stella, he reclaims his histrionic
flair and, with glib avowals of innocence, smoothly parries the
accusations. Finkle is still son-in-law designate: The marriage
broker fastened hungry eyes on him (207). Since Finkle is no
longer interested in an arranged marriage (207), Salzman must
pin his hopes on the cheap snapshot of Stella. In a field of
wilting lilies, Stella may flourish.
When, unable to fend for himself, Finkle turns in last resort to
the pictures the broker has left, he sees women all past their
prime, all starved behind bright smiles, not a true personality in
the lot. Life, despite their yoohooings, had passed them by
(208). In them, perhaps, he glimpses his own future. Then, he
beholds Stella, vibrant youth in a moribund gallery. In his
glandular, revved-up imagination, she smacks of
earthy
sensuality and forbidden fruitowing in part, one surmises, to a
lascivious mien coached by her father. Finkle received an
impression, somehow of evil (209)in the original version,
filth (Dessner, Revisions 259).(4) Later, like Jehovah
marveling at his own creation, he examined the face and found
it good. She alone could understand him and help him seek
whatever he was seeking (209). What he seeks is sexual
gratification, but he remains, consciously at least, ignorant of the
need. In this respect, Salzman (as well as the reader) is well
ahead of him.
When Finkle, via Mrs. Salzman, summons the marriage broker,
Salzman has long been on tenterhooks, the outcome of his ploy
in limbo. Adrenalin pumping, he arrives breathless, having, he
says, rushed (211). When Finkle flashes the snapshot of Stella
and ejaculates, Here is the one I want (211), Salzman puts on,
as one might say, a stellar performance: he slipped on his
glasses and took the picture into his trembling hand. He turned
ghastly and let out a groan (211-12). Knowing that Finkle
bridles at the hard sale, Salzman now refuses to sell. The scene is
unabashed burlesque, even to a chase and a hysterical woman,
with Salzman now the masterful human impresario. Slow on the
uptake, Finkle does not immediately grasp that Stella is
(supposed to be) a sexual dynamo. Salzmans metaphorical
inventiveness is sorely tasked:

She is not for you. She is a wild one-wild, without shame. This
is not a bride for a rabbi.
What do you mean wild?
Like an animal. Like a dog. For her to be poor was a sin. This is
why to me she is dead now.
In Gods name, what do you mean?
Her I cant introduce to you, Salzman cried.
Why are you so excited?
Why, he asks, Salzman said, bursting into tears. This is my
baby, my Stella, she should burn in hell. (212)
Salzman is excited because his ploy is working. He has wrapped
Stella in the perfect garb. In Finkles subconscious, the unholy
litany of sin, hell, wild, and animal reverberates with
aphrodisiac potency. With her impression of youth and spring
flowers (208), Stella embodies, or so Finkle thinks, his
oxymoronic dream girl: the perpetually virginal painted woman.
Later, when he sees her under the street lamp, he imagines in a
troubled moment she has on a red dress instead of a white one.
Consciously, he has adopted the role of savior. An unabashed
slut might be hard to convert...to goodness (213). The virginal
white assuages his austere conscience.
From start to finish, the story is firmly situated on the rock of
human passion, foible, and aspiration. Salzmans lot is not
without pathos. By contrast, Malamuds treatment of Finkle is
unremittingly comic(5)
Finkles condition is throughout
reminiscent of Byrons pubescent Don Juan, befuddled by his
sexual awakening: Now well turn to Juan. / Poor little fellow!
he had no idea / Of his own case, and never hit the true one
(Don Juan, Canto the First, stanza 86).
The narrators diction is occasionally impish: Finkle watches
with half open mouth as the moon penetrates a hen-like
cloud before dropping out like an egg (195). The student is at
last aroused by fantasies of Lily H. and walks erectly to
meet her, discreetly, however, resisting the urge to use his
phallic walking stick (202). Later, he solemnly tells Salzman: I
am no longer interested in an arranged marriage. To be frank, I
now admit the necessity of premarital love. Embarrassed by the
Freudian slipthe euphemism for premarital sexhe quickly
emends: That is, I want to be in love with the one I marry
(207). The last we see of Finkle he is rushing toward Stella with
flowers outthrust (214). The climactically placed verb could
hardly be better.
For some readers, Stella is even more problematic than her
father. Lionel Trilling remarked that one need not believe Stella
is what her father makes her out to bepossibly her sexual life
is marked merely by a freedom of the kind that now morality
scarcely reproves (173). Actually, one need not suppose Stella
has any sexual experience at all. In the final vignette, her eyes
are full of desperate innocence, and she awaits Finkle
uneasily and shyly. The cigarette and red pumps can be
glossed as her thespian fathers contributions, part of the
packaging. This might be Stellas first date.
In the final, often discussed sentence, Salzman, concealed
chaperone, chanted prayers for the dead. The dead are Stella
Salzman and Leo Finkle.(6) The tone is ambivalent. Though

pleased to have landed his professional man, Salzman knows

that marriage can be lethal to romantic illusions. Earlier, when
Finkle opines that Ruth K. believes in love, Salzman can
barely suppress a guffaw (198). Finkles love, he long ago
deduced, is Iagos sect or scion of lust. Knowing marriage
demands sterner stuff, Salzman, pious Jew, naturally seeks the
aid of higher powers, having none of his own.

. The Playfulness of Bernard Malamuds The Magic

Barrel. Essays in Literature 15 (1988): 87-101.

NOTES

Gunn, Giles B. Bernard Malamud and the High Cost of Living.

Adversity and Grace: Studies in Recent American Literature.
Ed. Nathan A. Scott. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1968. 59-85.

1. Asked whether he read criticism of his own works, Malamud

replied: I like imaginative interpretations of my books, whether
I agree with them or not. I enjoy criticism that views the work in
ways I havent anticipatedthat surprises me (15).
2. While several readers echo Finkles suspicion that Salzman
planned it all to happen that way (213), they believe the plan
begins only with the placement of Stellas picture in the
envelope. A few believe it begins earlier, but they adduce the
fact as further evidence of Salzmans supernatural powers of
ordination (See Storey 180; May 95-96; Ochshorn 61-62).
Finkles suspicion may be Malamuds way of alerting readers to
his own narrative strategy.
3. Storey, May, and Dessner (Playfulness) have all commented
on the sexual dimension. It seems to me they do not go far
enough.
4. The story was first published in 1954 in The Parisan Review
and later revised for the 1958 collection The Magic Barrel. In
Revisions, Dessner lists all the differences, most of them
minor, between the versions.
5. In the course of the story, Finkle does not learn as much about
himself as he thinks. Even as he chides himself for egoism, he
wants love to come to him (206), Stella to help him, to find
in her his own redemption (209, 214; italics added). When
Finkle plumes himself on his new self-awareness, the narrative
voice is distantly wry, the mode comic: Never in the Five
Books and all the Commentariesmea culpahad the truth
been revealed to him.... [H]e drew the consolation that he was a
Jew and that a Jew suffered (205). Perhaps with this new
knowledge of himself he would be more successful than in the
past (206). He had grown a pointed beard and his eyes were
weighted with wisdom (213). After Salzman scandalizes Stella,
the treatment of Finkle is pure slapstick:
Leo hurried up to bed and hid under the covers. Under the covers
he thought his life through. Although he soon fell asleep he
could not sleep her out of his mind. He woke, beating his breast.
Though he prayed to be rid of her, his prayers went unanswered.
Through days of torment he endlessly struggled not to love her;
fearing success, he escaped it. (213)
6. Salzmans previous application of the word to Stella (to me
she is dead now) has been often noted. The word is also applied
earlier to Finkle. The devout image Lily has of him has no
relation, the narrator reports, to the living or dead Finkle
(204).
WORKS CITED
Dessner, Lawrence. Malamuds Revisions to The Magic
Barrel. Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 30 (1989):
252-60.

Field, Leslie and Joyce. An Interview with Bernard Malamud.

Bernard Malamud: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Leslie
and Joyce Field. Englewood Cliffs, N: Prentice-Hall, 1975. 817.

Klein, Marcus. After Alienation. Cleveland: World, 1964.

Malamud, Bernard. The Magic Barrel. New York: Farrar, 1958.
May, Charles E. Something Fishy in The Magic Barrel.
Studies in American Fiction 14 (1986): 93-98.
Ochshorn, Kathleen G. The Hearts Essential Landscape:
Bernard Malamuds Hero. American University Studies 24. New
York: Peter Lang, 1990.
Reynolds, Richard. The Magic Barrel: Pinye Salzmans
Kadish. Studies in Short Fiction 10 (1973): 100-02.
Richman, Sidney. Bernard Malamud. New York: Twayne, 1966.
Solotaroff, Robert. Bernard Malamud: A Study of the Short
Fiction. Boston: Twayne, 1989.
Storey, Michael L. Pinye Salzman, Pan and The Magic
Barrel. Studies in Short Fiction 18 (1981): 180-83
Trilling, Lionel. Prefacer to the Experience of Literature. New
York: Harcourt, 1979.
Studies in Short Fiction . Newberry: Winter 1995.
Vol. 32 , Iss. 1; pg. 51 ISSN/ISBN: 00393789 Copyright
Newberry College Winter 1995

2
Raymond Carver

What We Talk About

When We Talk About Love

My friend Mel McGinnis was talking. Mel McGinnis is a

cardiologist, and sometimes that gives him the right.
The four of us were sitting around his kitchen table drinking
gin. Sunlight filled the kitchen from the big window behind the
sink. There were Mel and me and his second wife, Teresa
Terri, we called herand my wife, Laura. We lived in
Albuquerque then. But we were all from somewhere else.
There was an ice bucket on the table. The gin and the tonic
water kept going around, and we somehow got on the subject of
love. Mel thought real love was nothing less than spiritual love.
He said hed spent five years in a seminary before quitting to go
to medical school. He said he still looked back on those years in
the seminary as the most important in his life.
Terri said the man she lived with before she lived with Mel
loved her so much he tried to kill her. Then Terri said, He beat
me up one night. He dragged me around the living room by my
ankles. He kept saying, I love you, I love you, you bitch. He
went on dragging me around the living room. My head kept
knocking on things. Terri looked around the table . What do
you do with love like that?
She was a bone-thin woman with a pretty face, dark eyes, and
brown hair that hung down her back. She liked necklaces made
of turquoise, and long pendant earrings.
My God, dont be silly. Thats not love, and you know it,
Mel said. I dont know what youd call it, but I sure know you
wouldnt call it love.
Say what you want to, but I know it was , Terri said. It
may sound crazy to you, but its true just the same. People are
different, Mel . Sure, sometimes he may have acted crazy. Okay.
But he loved me. In his own way, maybe, but he loved me. There
was love there, Mel . Dont say there wasnt .
Mel let out his breath. He held his glass and turned to Laura
and me. The man threatened to kill me, Mel said. He finished
his drink and reached for the gin bottle. Terris a romantic.
Terris of the Kick-me-so-Ill-know-you-love-me school. Terri,
hon, dont look that way. Mel reached across the table and
touched Terris cheek with his fingers. He grinned at her.

Now he wants to make up, Terri said.

Make up what? Mel said. What is there to make up? I
know what I know. Thats all.
Howd we get started on this subject anyway? Terri said.
She raised her glass and drank from it. Herb always has love on
his mind, she said. Dont you, honey? She smiled, and I
thought that was the last of it.
I just wouldnt call Ed s behavior love. Thats all Im
saying, honey, Mel said. What about you guys? Mel said to
Laura and me. Does that sound like love to you?
Im the wrong person to ask, I said. I didnt even know
the man. Ive only heard his name mentioned in passing. I
wouldnt know. Youd have to know all the particulars. But I
think what youre saying is that love is an absolute.
Mel said, The kind of love Im talking about is. The kind of
love Im talking about, you dont try to kill people.
Laura said , I dont know anything about Ed , or anything
about the situation. But who can judge anyone elses situation?
I touched the back of Lauras hand. She gave me a quick
smile. I picked up Lauras hand. It was warm, the nails polished,
perfectly manicured. I encircled the broad wrist with my fingers,
and I held her.
When I left he drank rat poison, Terri said. She clasped her
arms with her hands. They took him to the hospital in Santa Fe.
Thats where we lived then, about ten miles out. They saved his
life. But his gums went crazy from it. . I mean they pulled away
from his teeth. After that his teeth stood out like fangs. My God,
Terri said. She waited a minute, then let go of her arms and
picked up her glass.
What people wont do! Laura said.
Hes out of the action now, Mel said. Hes dead.
Mel handed me the saucer of limes. I took a section,
squeezed it over my drink, and stirred the ice cubes with my
finger.
It gets worse, Terri said. He shot himself in the mouth.
But he bungled that too. Poor Ed , she said. Terri shook her
head.
Poor Ed nothing, Mel said. He was dangerous.
Mel was forty-five years old. He was tall and rangy with
curly soft hair. His face and arms were brown from the tennis he
played. When he was sober, his gestures, all his movements,
were precise, very careful.
He did love me though, Mel. Grant me that, Terri said.
Thats all Im asking. He didnt love me the way you love me.
Im not saying that. But he loved me. You can grant me that,
cant you?
What do you mean, He bungled it? I said .
Laura leaned forward with her glass. She put her elbows on
the table and held her glass in both hands. She glanced from Mel
to Terri and waited with a look of bewilderment on her open
face, as if amazed that such things happened to people you were
friendly with .
Howd he bungle it when he killed himself? I said .
Ill tell you what happened, Mel said. He took this
twenty-two pistol hed bought to threaten Terri and me with. Oh ,
Im serious, the man was always threatening. You should have
seen the way we lived in those days. Like fugitives. I even
bought a gun myself. Can you believe it? A guy like me? But I
did. I bought one for self-defense and carried it in the glove
compartment. Sometimes Id have to leave the apartment in the
middle of the night. To go to the hospital, you know? Terri and
I werent married then, and my first wife had the house and kids,
the dog, everything, and Terri and I were living in this apartment
here. Sometimes, as I say, Id get a call in the middle of the night
and have to go in to the hospital at two or three in the morning.
Itd be dark out there in the parking lot and Id break into a sweat
before I could even get to my car. I never knew if he was going
to come up out of the shrubbery or from behind a car and start

shooting. I mean, the man was crazy. He was capable of wiring a

bomb, anything. He used to call my service at all hours and say
he needed to talk to the doctor, and when Id return the call hed
say, Son of a bitch, your days are numbered. Little things like
that. It was scary, Im telling you.
I still feel sorry for him, Terri said.
It sounds like a nightmare, Laura said. But what exactly
happened after he shot himself?
Laura is a legal secretary. Wed met in a professional
capacity. Before we knew it, it was a courtship. Shes thirty-five,
three years younger than I am. In addition to being in love, we
like each other and enjoy one anothers company. Shes easy to
be with.
What happened? Laura asked again.
Mel said, He shot himself in the mouth in his room.
Someone heard the shot and told the manager. They came in with
a passkey, saw what had happened, and called an ambulance. I
happened to be there when they brought him, alive, but past
recall . The man lived for three days. His head swelled up to
twice the size of a normal head. Id never seen anything like it,
and I hope I never do again. Terri wanted to go in and sit with
him when she found out about it. We had a fight over it. I didnt
think she should see him like that. I didnt think she should see
him, and I still dont.
Who won the fight? Laura said.
I was in the room with him when he died, Terri said. He
never came up out of it. But I sat with him. He didnt have
anyone else.
He was dangerous, Mel said. If you call that love, you
can have it.
It was love, Terri said. Sure it was abnormal in most
peoples eyes. But he was willing to die for it. He did die for it.
I sure as hell wouldnt call it love, Mel said. I mean, no
one knows what he did it for. Ive seen a lot of suicides, and I
couldnt say anyone ever knew what they did it for .
Mel put his hands behind his neck and tilted his chair back .
Im not interested in that kind of love, he said. If thats love,
you can have it.
Terri said, We were afraid. Mel even made a will out and
wrote to his brother in California who used to be a Green Beret.
Mel told him who to look for if something happened to him
Terri drank from her glass. She said, But Mels rightwe
lived like fugitives. We were afraid. Mel was, werent you,
honey? I even called the police at one point, but they were no
help. They said they couldnt do anything until Ed actually did
something. Isnt that a laugh? Terri said.
She poured the last of the gin into her glass and waggled the
bottle. Mel got up from the table and went to the cupboard. He
took down another bottle.
Well, Nick and I know what love is Laura said. For us, I
mean, Laura said. She bumped my knee with her knee. Youre
supposed to say something now, Laura said, and turned her
smile on me.
For an answer, I took Lauras hand and raised it to my lips. I
made a big production out of kissing her hand. Everyone was
amused.
Were lucky, I said.
You guys, Terri said. Stop that now. Youre making me
sick. Youre still on a honeymoon, for Gods sake . Youre still
gaga, for crying out loud . Just wait. How long have you been
together now? How long has it been? A year? Longer than a
year.
Going on a year and a half, Laura said, flushed and
smiling.
Oh, now , Terri said. Wait a while.
She held her drink and gazed at Laura.
Im only kidding, Terri said.

Mel opened the gin and went around the table with the
bottle.
Here, you guys, he said. Lets have a toast. I want to
propose a toast. A toast to love. To true love, Mel said.
We touched glasses.
To love, we said.
Outside in the backyard, one of the dogs began to bark. The
leaves of the aspen that leaned past the window ticked against
the glass . The afternoon sunlight was like a presence in thise
room, the spacious light of ease and generosity. We could have
been anywhere, somewhere enchanted. We raised our glasses
again and grinned at each other like children who had agreed on
something forbidden .
Ill tell you what real love is, Mel said. I mean, Ill give
you a good example. And then you can draw your own
conclusions. He poured more gin into his glass. He added an
ice cube and a sliver of lime. We waited and sipped our drinks.
Laura and I touched knees again. I put a hand on her warm thigh
and left it there.
What do any of us really know about love? Mel said. It
seems to me were just beginners at love. We say we love each
other and we do, I dont doubt it. I love Terri and Terri loves me,
and you guys love each other too. You know the kind of love Im
talking about now. Physical love, that impulse that drives you to
someone special, as well as love of the other persons being, his
or her essence, as it were . Carnal love and, well, call it
sentimental love, the day-to-day caring about the other person.
But sometimes I have a hard time accounting for the fact that I
must have loved my first wife too. But I did, I know I did. So I
suppose I am like Terri in that regard. Terri and Ed . He
thought about it and then he went on. There was a time when I
thought I loved my first wife more than life itself. But now I hate
her guts. I do. How do you explain that? What happened to that
love? What happened to it, is what Id like to know. I wish
someone could tell me. Then theres Ed . Okay, were back to Ed
. He loves Terri so much he tries to kill her and he winds up
killing himself. Mel stopped talking and swallowed from his
glass . You guys have been together eighteen months and you
love each other. I t shows all over you. You glow with it. But
you both loved other people before you met each other. Youve
both been married before, just like us. And you probably loved
other people before that too, even. Terri and I have been together
five years, been married for four. And the terrible thing, the
terrible thing is, but the good thing, too, the saving grace, you
might say, is that if something happened to one of usexcuse
me for saying thisbut if something happened to one of us
tomorrow, I think the other one, the other person , would grieve
for a while, you know, but then the surviving party would go out
and love again, have someone else soon enough. All this, all of
this love were talking about it would just be a memory. Maybe
not even a memory. Am I wrong? Am I way off base? Because I
want you to set me straight if you think Im wrong. I want to
know. I mean, I dont know anything, and Im the first one to
admit it.
Mel , for Gods sake, Terri said. She reached out and took
hold of his wrist. Are you getting drunk? Honey? Are you
drunk?
Honey, Im just talking, Mel said. All right? I dont have
to be drunk to say what I think . I mean, were all just talking,
right? Mel said. He fixed his eyes on her.
Sweetie , Im not criticizing, Terri said.
She picked up her glass.
Im not on call today, Mel said. Let me remind you of
that. I am not on call .
Mel , we love you, Laura said.
Mel looked at Laura. He looked at her as if he couldnt
place her, as if she was not the woman she was.

Love you too, Laura, Mel said. And you, Nick, love you
too. You know something? Mel said. You guys are our pals,
Mel said.
He picked up his glass.
Mel said, I was going to tell you about something. I mean, I
was going to prove a point. You see, this happened a few
months ago, but its still going on right now, and it ought to
make us feel ashamed when we talk like we know what we re
talking about when we talk about love.
Come on now, Terri said. Dont talk like youre drunk if
youre not drunk.
Just shut up for once in your life, Mel said very quietly.
Will you do me a favor and do that for a minute? So as I was
saying, theres this old couple who had this car wreck out on the
interstate? A kid hit them and they were all torn to shit and
nobody was giving them much chance to pull through.
Terri looked at us and then back at Mel . She seemed
anxious, or maybe thats too strong a word.
Mel was handing the bottle around the table.
I was on call that night, Mel said. It was in May or maybe
it was June. Terri and I had just sat down to dinner when the
hospital called. Thered been this thing out on the interstate.
Drunk kid, teenager, plowed his dads pickup into this camper
with this old couple in it. They were up in their mid-seventies,
that couple. The kid eighteen, nineteen, somethinghe was
DOA. Taken the steering wheel through his sternum. The old
couple, they were alive, you understand. I mean, just barely. But
they had everything. Multiple fractures , internal injuries,
hemorrhaging, contusions, lacerations, the works, and they each
of them had themselves concussions. They were in a bad way,
believe me. And, of course, their age was two strikesagainst
them. Id say she was worse off than he was. Ruptured spleen
along with everything else. Both kneecaps broken. But theyd
been wearing their seatbelts and, God knows, thats what saved
them for the time being.
Folks, this is an advertisement for the National Safety
Council, Terri said. This is your spokesman, Doctor Melvin R.
McGinnis, talking. Terri laughed. Mel, she said, sometimes
youre just too much sometimes. But I love you, hon,ey She
said.
Honey, I love you, Mel said.
He leaned across the table. Terri met him halfway. They
kissed.
Terris right, Mel said as he settled himself again. Get
those seatbelts on . But seriously, they were in some shape,
those oldsters . By the time I got down there, the kid was dead,
as I said. He was off in a corner, laid out on a gurney. I took one
look at the old couple and told the ER nurse to get me a
neurologist and an orthopedic man and a couple of surgeons
down there right away.
He drank from his glass. Ill try to keep this short, he said.
So we took the two of them up to the OR and worked like fuck
on them most of the night They had these incredible reserves,
those two . You see that once in a while. So we did everything
that could be done, and toward morning we re giving them a
fifty-fifty chance, maybe less than that for her . So here they are,
still alive the next morning. So, okay, we move them into the
ICU, which is where they both kept plugging away at it for two
weeks, hitting it better and better on all the scopes. So we
transfer them out to their own room.
Mel stopped talking. Here, he said, lets drink this cheapo
gin the hell up. Then were going to dinner, right? Terri and I
know a new place. Thats where well go, to this new place we
know about. But were not going until we finish up this cut-rate,
lousy gin.
Terri said, We havent actually eaten there yet. But it looks
good. From the outside, you know.

I like food, Mel said. If I had it to do all over again, Id be

a chef, you know? Right, Terri? Mel said.
He laughed. He fingered the ice in his glass.
Terri knows. Terri can tell you. But let me say this. If I could
come back again in a different life, a different time and all, you
know what? Id like to come back as a knight. You were pretty
safe wearing all that armor. It was all right being a knight until
gunpowder and muskets and pistols came along.
Mel would like to ride a horse and carry a lance, Terri
said.
Carry a womans scarf with you everywhere, Laura said.
Or just a woman, Mel said.
Shame on you, Laura said.
Terri said, Suppose you came back as a serf. The serfs didnt
have it so good in those days, Terri said.
The serfs never had it good, Mel said. But I guess even
the knights were vessels to someone. Isnt that the way it
worked? But then everyone is always a vessel to someone else.
Isnt that right? Terri? But what I liked about knights, besides
their ladies, was that they had that suit of armor, you know, and
they couldnt get hurt very easy. No cars in those days, you
know? No drunk teenagers to tear into your ass .
Vassals, Terri said.
What? Mel said.
Vassals, Mel said. They were called vassals , not
vessels .
Vassals, vessels, Mel
said,
what the fucks the
difference? You knew what I meant anyway. All right , Mel
said. So Im not educated. I learned my stuff. Im a heart
surgeon, sure, but Im just a mechanic. I go in and I fuck around
and I fix things. Shit, Mel said.
Modesty doesnt become you, Terri said.
Hes just a humble sawbones , I said. But sometimes they
suffocated in all that armor, Mel . Theyd even have heart attacks
if it got too hot and they were too tired and worn out. I read
somewhere that theyd fall off their horses and not be able to get
up because they were too tired to stand with all that armor on
them. They got trampled by their own horses sometimes.
Thats terrible, Mel said. Thats a terrible image, Nicky. I
guess theyd just lay there and wait until somebody came along
and made a shish kebab out of them.
Some other vessel , Terri said.
Thats right, Mel said. Some vassal would come along
and spear the bastard in the name of love. Or whatever the fuck
it was they fought over in those days.
Same things we fight over these days, Mel said.
Laura said, Nothings changed.
The color was still high in Lauras cheeks. Her eyes were
bright. She brought her glass to her lips.
Mel poured himself another drink. He looked at the label
closely as if studying a long row of numbers . Then he slowly put
the bottle down on the table and reached for the tonic water.
What about the old couple? Laura said. You didnt finish
that story you started.
Laura was having a hard time lighting her cigarette. Her
matches kept going out.
The sunshine inside the room was different now, changing,
getting thinner . But the leaves outside the window were still
shimmering, and I stared at the pattern they made on the panes
and on the Formica counter. They werent the same patterns, of
course.
What about that old couple? I said.
Older but wiser, Terri said.
Mel stared at her.
Terri said, Go on with your story, hon. I was only kidding.
Then what happened?
Terri, sometimes, Mel said.

Please, Mel , Terri said. Dont always be so serious,

sweetie. Cant you take a joke?
Wheres the joke? Mel said.
He held his glass and gazed steadily at his wife .
What happened? Laura said.
Mel fastened his eyes on Laura. He said, Laura, if I didnt
have Terri and if I didnt love her so much, and if Nick wasnt
my best friend, Id fall in love with you. Id carry you off, honey,
He said.
Tell your story, Terri said. Then well go to that new
place, okay ?
Okay, Mel said. Where was I? he said. He stared at the
table and then he began again .
I dropped in to see each of them every day, sometimes
twice a day if I was up doing other calls anyway. C asts and
bandages, head to foot, the both of them. You know, youve seen
it in the movies . Thats just the way they looked, just like in the
movies . Little eye-holes and nose-holes and mouth-holes. And
she had to have her legs slung up on top of it. Well, the husband
was very depressed for the longest while. Even after he found out
that his wife was going to pull through , he was still very
depressed. Not about the accident , though . I mean, the accident
was one thing, but it wasnt everything. Id get up to his mouthhole, you know, and hed say no, it wasnt the accident exactly
but it was because he couldnt see her through his eye-holes. He
said that was what was making him feel so bad. Can you
imagine? Im telling you, the mans heart was breaking because
he couldnt turn his goddamn head and see his goddamn wife.
Mel looked around the table and shook his head at what he
was going to say.
I mean, it was killing the old fart just becayse he couldnt
look at the fucking woman.
We all looked at Mel.
Do you see what Im saying?
Maybe we were a little drunk by then. I know it was hard
keeping things in focus. The light was draining out of the room,
going back through the window where it had come from. Yet
nobody made a move to get up from the table to turn on the
overhead light,
Listen, Mel said . Lets finish this fucking gin. Theres
about enough left here for one shooter all around. Then lets go
eat. Lets go to the new place .
Hes depressed , Terri said. Mel , why dont you take a
pill?
Herb shook his head. Ive taken everything there is.
We all need a pill now and then , I said.
Some people are born needing them , Terri said. She was
using her finger to rub at something on the table. Then she
stopped rubbing.
I think I want to call my kids before we go eat, Mel said.
Is that all right with everybody? Ill call my kids, He said.
Terri said, What if Marjorie answers the phone? You guys,
youve heard us on the subject of Marjorie. Honey, you know
you dont want to talk to Marjorie. Itll make you feel even
worse.
I dont want to talk to Marjorie, Mel said. But I want to
talk to my kids.
There isnt a day goes by that Mel doesnt say he wishes
shed get married again. Or else die, Terri said. For one
thing, Terri said, shes bankrupting us. Mel says its just to
spite him that she wont get married again. She has a boyfriend
who lives with her and the kids , so Mel is supporting the
boyfriend too .
Shes allergic to bees, Mel said. If Im not praying shell
get married again, Im praying shell get herself stung to death
by a swarm of fucking bees.
Shame on you, Laura said.

Bzzzzzz, Mel said, turning his fingers into bees and

buzzing them at Terris throat. Then he let his hands drop all the
way to his sides .
Shes vicious, Mel said. Sometimes I think Ill go up
there dressed like a beekeeper. You know, that hat thats like a
helmet with the plate that comes down over your face, the big
gloves, and the padded coat? Ill knock on the door and let
loose a hive of bees in the house. But first Id make sure the
kids were out, of course.
He crossed one leg over the other. Then he put both feet on
the floor and leaned forward, elbows on the table, his chin
cupped in his hands.
Maybe I wont call the kids, after all. Maybe it isnt such a
hot idea. Maybe well just go eat. How does that sound?
Sounds fine to me, I said. Eat or not eat. Or keep drinking.
I could head right on out into the sunset.
What does that mean, honey? Laura said.
It just means what I said, I said . It means I could just
keep going. Thats all it means .
I could eat something myself, Laura said. I dont think
Ive ever been so hungry in my life. Is there something to nibble
on ?
Ill put out some cheese and crackers, Terri said.
But Terri just sat there. She did not get up to get anything.
Mel turned his glass over. He spilled it out on the table.
Gins gone, Mel said.
Terri said, Now what?
I could hear my heart beating. I could hear everyones heart. I
could hear the human noise we sat there making, not one of us
moving, not even when the room went dark. [1981]

Critical Essay on,

What We Talk About
When We Talk About Love
By Liz Brent
Carver is best known for his minimalist writing style, as
embodied in a sparse use of language and paired down prose. He
is also known as a neo-realist, capturing the working class milieu
of blue-collar America with his mundane, naturalistic, everyday
dialogue. Nevertheless, he does make use of figurative language
throughout What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
by exploring its central themes of love, relationships,

communication, and alcoholism. Through the imagery of the

knights armor, the beekeepers protective clothing, the pill and
the word heart, Carver demonstrates that the surface level
conversation of his four characters is only the tip of an emotional
iceberg.
The image of the human heart takes on figurative connotations
in the story, as it is referred to both in the mechanical sense, of
the functioning of the human heart, and the symbolic sense, as
the organ of love. Since the character of Mel dominates the
conversation, much of the figurative language is expressive of
his own feelings about the subject of love. The image of the
human heart takes on figurative connotations in the story, as it
is referred to both in the mechanical sense, of the functioning of
the human heart, and the symbolic sense, as the organ of love.
Mel is a cardiologist, a doctor who operates on peoples hearts.
The opening sentences of the story, in retrospect, play on the
irony of Mel, a heart doctor, claiming to be an expert on matters
of the heart: My friend Mel McGinnis was talking. Mel
McGinnis is a cardiologist, so sometimes that gives him the
right. Mel even describes his own work as that of just a
mechanic, marking the difference between expertise in heart
surgery and knowledge of true love. When he tells the story of
the old couple injured in the near-fatal car accident, the word
heart again takes on a double meaning. Mel concludes his
story, in which the old man and woman are so bandaged up that
they cannot see each other even though their beds are next to
each other in the same hospital room, by stating that the mans
heart was breaking because he couldnt turn his goddamn head
and see his goddamn wife. Mel is using the word heart in the
figurative sense here, but it also refers back to the fact that Mel
himself had been the attending cardiologist for the old couple in
the aftermath of the car accident.
Another central element of figurative speech in this story
revolves around Mels mention that, if he could come back in a
different life, he would want to be a knight. Mels fascination
with the armor worn by a knight is perhaps a heavyhanded image
of Mels need to protect himself emotionally against the ravages
of love. Mel explains that You were pretty safe wearing all that
armor. The image is extended to suggest that Mels protective
emotional armor has failed to protect him against the dangers of
new love: It was all right being a knight until gunpowder and
muskets and pistols came along. Mel goes on to expand upon
his fascination with the protective armor of knights: what I liked
about knights, besides their ladies, was that they had that suit of
armor, you know, and they couldnt get hurt very easy. Mel is
expressing a desire to be protected from getting hurt at an
emotional level in his relationships with others.
At this point, the discussion of the knight turns on a pun that
comes out of Mels misuse of the term vessel when he means
vassal. A vassal is a servant to another, and Mel, using vessel
by accident, attempts to point out that even knights were
subservient to others. The idea of servitude is extended
symbolically when Mel points out, But then everyone is always
a vessel to someone. At this point Terri corrects him, supplying
the proper term, vassal for vessel.
Mels incorrect use of vessel has further figurative implications.
Mel is an alcoholic, and a vessel is an object designed to contain
something, usually in reference to a liquid, as a cup or chalice.
Through this play on words, the connection is made to Mels use
of alcohol, which he drinks out of a vessel, or glass, as his means
of protective armor against emotional injury. Furthermore, a
vessel, such as an empty vessel may be read figuratively to
indicate that everyone is a vessel to be filled with the love, false
or true, of another.

Nick, the narrator, points out to Mel that the armor worn by
knights had its drawbacks. Nicks comment extends the
metaphor of the armor as emotional armor in explaining that
ones emotional defenses, or armor, can end up suffocating the
knight in the name of protecting him from harm:
But sometimes they suffocated in all that armor, Mel. Theyd
even have heart attacks if it got too hot and they were too tired
and worn out.
The image of the heart comes up here, implying that the armor
Mel uses to protect himself from emotional suffering in the name
of love (a heart attack) can be the very cause of his suffering.
In reference to Mels alcoholism, his use of alcohol to protect
himself from heartache may actually lead to a heart attack in
terms of the demise of his marriage and other personal
relationships, as well as some form of heart attack in the sense
that alcoholism can be fatal. (This may seem like a leap of logic,
but, given that this story was written not long after Carver nearly
died from alcoholism and eventually quit drinking, it is not an
unreasonable interpretation.) Mels interest in armor as a means
of protecting himself from love is made clear when he adds that,
were a knight to be made vulnerable by the weight of his armor,
Some vassal would come along and spear the bastard in the
name of love.
The imagery of taking a pill combines several figurative
themes in the story. As Mel becomes more clearly drunk, his
conversation acquires an antagonistic edge.
Hes depressed, Terri said. Mel, why dont you take a pill?
Mel shook his head. Ive taken everything there is. We all need
a pill now and then, I said. Some people are born needing
them, Terri said.
Here, the characters themselves are consciously using the phrase
to take a pill in a figurative sense. But the pill imagery also
echoes with the fact that Mel is a doctor, whose job is, in general
terms, to give people pills to make them feel better. Mels own
pill is clearly alcohol, and his comment that Ive taken
everything there is expresses a deep despair at ever finding a
cure for his personal heartaches.
The figurative language combining the use of alcohol, as
contained in a vessel, or the swallowing of a pill, as administered
by a doctor, as a means of curing the emotional pain caused by
love, is also expressed in Terris explanation that her abusive exhusband, Ed, drank rat poison when she left him. Like Mels
consumption of alcohol, or his figurative need to take a pill,
Eds consumption of rat poison is his own self-destructive
attempt to medicate his own emotional pain in the face of his
love for Terri. Terri explains the effect of the poison; Eds life
was saved at the hospital, but his gums went crazy from it. I
mean they pulled away from his teeth. After that, his teeth stood
out like fangs. The image of Eds teeth turning into fangs
symbolizes the fact that Ed, an extremely violent and abusive
man, is akin to a beast who threatens Terri with his fangs. More
indirectly, there is a suggestion that, just as Eds drinking of rat
poison in an attempt to cure his emotional pain turns him into a
fanged beast, so Mels drinking of alcohol in an attempt to cure
his own emotional pain may be turning him into a beast, posing a
threat of danger to Terri.
Mel later uses the imagery of a beekeepers protective clothing to
express a similar desire for some form of protection from love. In
discussing his ex-wife Marjorie, he explains that she is allergic to
bees, saying that if Im not praying shell get married again, Im

praying shell get herself stung to death by a swarm of f--ing

bees. He then makes what is perhaps his most outwardly
menacing gesture toward his wife: Bzzzzzzz, Mel said, turning
his fingers into bees and buzzing them at Terris throat.
Mels expression of hatred for his ex-wife and his wish that she
would die is used as a thinly veiled expression of a similar hatred
for Terri. The gesture of buzzing his fingers around her neck
combines the figurative image of murder by bee sting into a
more literal physical gesture threateningly aimed at Terris throat.
The armor imagery is echoed here in his description of the
beekeepers protective clothing:
Sometimes I think Ill go there dressed like a beekeeper. You
know, that hat thats like a helmet with the plate that comes down
over your face, the big gloves, and the padded coat? Ill knock on
the door and let loose a hive of bees in the house.
The double implications of the word heart come back into play in
the closing image of the story. As the two couples sit in the dark
in silence, the narrator explains, I could hear my heart beating. I
could hear everyones heart. The narrator uses the literal image
of a silence so profound that he can actually hear the beating of
his own and the others hearts to express a symbolic feeling that
he can hear everyones heart. It is as if the excess of human
emotion aroused by the discussion of true love hums about the
room without any hope of articulate expression between the two
couples. The term vessel, mentioned earlier, is also echoed with
Mels enigmatic gesture in the closing moments of the story,
when he turns his glass of gin upside down on the table. Mel has
emptied his vessel of alcohol, the gins gone, and they are left
with nothing but an ominous feeling of emotional emptiness.
Although Carver is considered a minimalist writer, whose stories
take on meaning more in what is not said than what is said, his
use of figurative language gives depth to his stories by expanding
upon their central themes.
Source: Liz Brent, Critical Essay on What We Talk About
When We Talk About Love, Short Stories for Students, Vol. 12,
The Gale Group, 2001.

Carvers Couples Talk About Love

by Fred Moramarco
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love is one of Ray
Carvers best known stories and the title of one of his major
collections. Carver probably used the story as a title for a
collection because many of his stories express puzzlement about
the odd and battered condition of love in the contemporary
world. He often uses his fiction to explore that condition and
reflect back to us just what it is that we do talk about when we
talk about love. Love, of course, is one of those words that has
been so beaten down in twentieth century discourse, particularly
the rhetoric of advertising and pop culture, that its hard to know
what anyone means by it anymore. T.S. Eliot prefaced his Love
Song of J. Alfred Prufrock with a quotation from Dantes
Inferno, anticipating the hell that the word would suffer in a mass
society where some people, like Erich Segal, who wrote the
immensely popular novel Love Story in the early seventies, think
that love means never having to say youre sorry, and others,
like Bob Dylan, tell us that Love is just a four letter word. We
love our mothers, our Hondas, our baseball teams and movie
stars, as well our favorite ice-cream flavors and pizza toppings.
The word along with a picture of a cherub adorns the #1 selling
U.S. postage stamp, and occurs often in the titles of porno
movies, religious sermons, new age self-help guides, romantic
novels, and tv shows, including The Love Boat, which reminds
us how often the word is used in association with vacations,
leisure time, romantic retreats, sexual liaisons.
Where the word seems to provide most difficulty, however, is in
the area of human relationships, particularly relationships
between men and women. It also provides difficulties in
relationships between men and men as well as women and
women, but Carvers focus, in this story and in most of his work,
is heterosexual love and its complications in late 20th century
America. The story is one of Carvers several multiple couple
stories, where two or more heterosexual couples spend some
time together socializing, usually drinking, often flirting and
almost always miscommunicating. Others of this type include
Feathers, Neighbors, Put Yourself in My Shoes, Whats
in Alaska, Tell the Women Were Going, and After the
Denim, to name only the most prominent in Carvers most
complete collection of short stories, Where Im Calling From.

When Robert Altman made his well-received film, Short Cuts,

adapted from a dozen or so Carver stories, he used the device of
linked, contrasting couples as a unifying factor in the movie,
which shifts perspective from couple to couple as they spend a
typical day in Los Angeles, framed by two archetypal Southern
California events each of the characters experiencespraying
the L.A. Basin from helicopters with pesticides, and a run-of-the
mill 6 point something L.A. earthquake. The genre may
ultimately owe something to a very popular comedic film of the
early seventies called Bob, and Carol, and Ted, and Alice, which
was absolutely shocking when it first appeared, but today is so
old hat that even TV sitcoms have exhausted it.
Carver, however, uses the genre freshly and for very specific
purposes. InNeighbors, it becomes a study in voyeurismhow
one couple, Bill and Arlene Miller, inhabit briefly the lives of
their neighbors, Harriet and Jim Stone, while the Stones are on
vacation and the Millers watch their apartment. The venture
into another couples lives excites the Millers and momentarily
adds sexual energy and vitality to their relationship. But we are
ultimately doomed to live our own lives, not those of others, and
the ending of the story finds the Millers locked out of their
neighbors apartment, clinging to one another as if in a storm:
He tried the knob. It was locked. Then she tried the knob. It
would not turn. Her lips wer parted, and her breathing was hard,
expectant. He opened his arms and she moved into them.
Dont worry, he said into her ear. For Gods sake, dont worry.
They stayed there. They held each other. They leaned into the
door as if against a wind, and braced themselves.
Put Yourself in My Shoes is also about one couple watching
anothers house, but it is less about voyeurism than it is about
clashing and contrary value systems. The story also explores the
ways in which a writer can use the lives of others as a source for
his own work. The Meyers and the Morgans are the two couples
in question here. The Meyers pay a holiday visit to the Morgans
whose home they had rented while the older couple was away in
Europe. The story takes increasingly bizarre turns ultimately
pitting the couples against one another as adversaries. The
Morgans put on a great show of hospitality for the Myers, but
clearly, as the story progresses, something is seething beneath the
surface. Mr. Morgan has been harboring a grudge that the Myers
invaded his house, brought a cat there even though his wife has
asthma and the terms of the lease prohibited it. Further, he
accuses the Myers of vandalizing the Morgans personal
possessions. The Myers are astonished by these accusations, and
leave with the observation that Those people are crazy. But the
storys title implies that it is the writers job to see the world and
events not only from his own perpsective, but to recreate the
world as others see it as well. Meyers is one of very few Carver
protagonists who is a writer, and as a writer he takes others
possessions and identity with very few qualms.
Whats in Alaska contrasts two couples with much more in
common than the Morgans and the Myers. The story revolves
around Jack and Marys visit to the house of their friends Carl
and Helen to get stoned. It is implied, through various slips of the
tongue, facilitated by liberal use of marijuana, that Carl and
Mary may be having an affair with one another. The story
examines that pivotal point in a marriage where one of the
partners realizes that the other has been cheating. This moment is
symbolized by the entrance of Carl and Helens housecat with a
dead mouse in its jaws. It is a kind of objective correlative for
the future of the relationship, a future that looks bleak and that
Mary, particularly, does not want to face. On the way home she
tells Jack, When we get home, Jack, I want to be fucked, talked

to, diverted. Divert me Jack. I need to be diverted tonight (8384)

After the Denim uses the two-couple motif to contrast
generations. James and Edith Packer meet their younger doubles
dressed in denim at a Bingo game. The denim suggests the
casual, relaxed attitude toward life embodied in the younger
couples actions. The Packers life is ritualized, settled, while the
younger couple is open to possibilities and assertive. The Packers
feel displaced by the couple because they occupy the Packers
usual parking spot and bingo seats. James particularly feels
increasing animosity toward the couple in denim because they
seem oblivious to the passage of time and the ravages of age. He
finds himself wanting to straighten them out. If only they had
to sit with him in the waiting room! Hed set those floozies
straight! Hed tell them what was waiting for you after the denim
and the earrings, after touching each other and cheating at
games (77). In this story Carver faces the reality that, as John
Irving put it in The World According to Garp, we are all
terminal cases, and even enduring relationships like that of the
Packers, end in death and loss.
In Feathers, the uneasy relationship between the narrator, Jack,
and his wife, Fran is contrasted with the easy and obvious
expressions of love between Bud and Olla, the couple whose
home they visit. Jack and Bud are working buddies, but shortly
after Buds wife, Olla, gives birth to a child, he invites his friend
and his wife to their home for dinner. Jack and Fran are a very
different kind of couple than Bud and Olla. They live reclusive
lives, scarcely venturing from their apartment after returning
from work. Accepting a dinner invitation to Bud and Ollas home
is a major event in their lives, but they have little social grace
and hardly know how to act in a social situation. The warmth and
love expressed in Bud and Ollas housesymbolized by a
peacock Bud bought for his wife, a plaster mold of Ollas
crooked teeth that sits atop the TV (Bud paid for her teeth to be
straightenedsomething she always wanted to doand she
keeps the mold out to remind her of his kindness), and most of
all the ugly baby that they express deep affection for. So
affected are Fran and Jack by their visit to Bud and Ollas place,
that when they get home Fran decides she wants to emulate their
lives by having a child:
After we got home from Bud and Ollas that night, and we were
under the covers, Fran said, Honey fill me up with your seed!
When she said that, I heard her all way down to my toes, and I
hollered and let go (354).
But once again, Carver seems to be saying we need to live our
own lives, not that of others, because once Fran and Jack have a
child, their lives go downhill. They become less and less
communicative, more and more set in their ways. Mostly, as
Jack puts it near the storys end, its just the TV.
But the real tour-de-force of Carvers multiple couple stories is
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, a story that
combines elements of some of these others but raises them to a
new intensity. The entire story takes place in the narrators
kitchen where he and his wife are sitting around a table with
another couple drinking gin and talking. As the story begins the
kitchen is flooded with daylight, and the character who utters
much of the storys dialogue, Mel, is holding forth on the subject
of love. Its significant that Mel is a heart surgeon, for we are
about to get a dissection of the ways of the heart in the
contemporary world. In addition, the fact that Mel is a doctor has
the others deferring to him constantly. The story is narrated by
the male half of one of the couples, a man named Nick who tells
us in the very first sentences: My friend Mel McGinnis was

talking. Mel McGinnis is a cardiologist, and sometimes that

gives him the right. This immediately establishes Mels social
status and authority, anticipating his domination of the
conversation. In fact, nearly 80% of the dialogue in the story is
Mels and his views on love virtually roll over those of the
others.
Mel and his second wife Terri are a relatively seasoned couple
(by contemporary standards)they have been married four years
and together for fivewho have been through a good deal
together. Both had tumultuous previous relationships. Mel has a
very hostile relationship with his ex-wife, Marjorie; hes still
paying her alimony and toward the end of the story he says
Shes allergic to bees.If Im not praying shell get married
again, Im praying shell get herself stung to death by a swarm of
fucking bees. Terri, meanwhile, was previously involved with a
batterer named Ed, who shot himself after Terri and Mel moved
in together. Terris insistence that Ed loved herand that he was
willing to die for his love is a sore point between the couple. Mel
insists equally that Eds violence negates the possibility of love.
His background as a seminarian before attending medical school
taught him that spiritual love is the only real love: The kind
of love Im talking about, he says, you dont try to kill
people. Terri, reflecting something of the battered woman
profile, persists in her view that Ed loved her: In his own way
maybe, but he loved me. There was love there Mel. Dont say
there wasnt. This conflict is a 1980s version of the epiphany
that occurs at the end of James Joyces The Dead when Gabriel
Conroy discovers his wife Gretta had a relationship with a man
(appropriately named) Michael Furey who loved her so much he
caught pneumonia while singing her love songs on a cold and
rainy night imploring her not to leave. Though Michael Furey
and Ed on the surface may seem the antithesis of one another,
both are utterly dependent on the woman they love; neither finds
life worth living without her. While this kind of passionate
intensity is an anathema in an age of co-dependency, Joyce and
Carver want us to consider questions about the meaning of love
as it actually occurs in the worldboth the world of early 20th
century Dublin that Joyce wrote about, and the world of late 20th
century Albuquerque, New Mexico, the transient western U.S.
city where Carvers story is set. Carvers story, however, is much
less place specific than Joyces. In an Interview with Gail
Caldwell, Carver says that most of his stories could take place
anywhere: its an emotional landscape Im most interested in.
These four people in What We Talk About When We Talk About
Love could be sitting around a table in Albuquerque, or El Paso
but they could just as easily be in Wichita or Syracuse.
The emotional landscape of What We Talk About involves
recording the state of mind of the two couples as they move
through a mid-afternoon and early evening talking about all
kinds of lovespiritual, carnal, platonic, possessive, brutal,
obsessive, unrequited, and even parental, searching for what
real love is. Mel and Terris tumultuous and volatile love
history of love is explicitly contrasted that of with Nick and
Laura, who are also in a second marriage but have known one
another for just a year and a half and are still in a state of what
some pop psychologists call limmerance, that remarkable time
in the early days of a relationship when lovers have a hard time
keeping their eyes and hands off one another. Mel, who is the
narrator of the story, says I touched the back of Lauras hand.
She gave me a quick smile. I picked up Lauras hand. It was
warm, the nails polished, perfectly manicured. I encircled the
broad wrist with my fingers, and I held her. Yet despite the
physical connection between Nick and Laura, theirs is a
relationship of what we might call lite intimacy. Mels
description of it as virtually perfection itself has a hollow ring to
it: Laura is a legal secretary. Wed met in a professional

capacity. Before we knew it, it was a courtship. Shes thirty-five,

three years younger than I am. In addition to being in love, we
like each other and enjoy one anothers company. Shes easy to
be with. This is the ideal contemporary relationshipbetween a
man and a woman who are friends as well as lovers, and the
operative word here is easy. We all seek easy relationships, but
the real world keeps intruding. And, of course, the trouble with
easy relationships is embodied in the clich, easy come, easy
go.
The transience of contemporary relationships creates a need for
the charactersand by extension for us as readersto redefine
what love is and what it means to love someone. The entire story
revolves around a central passage, delivered as a monologue by
Mel, that connects love with time as has occurred in
contemporary culture. Though the myth of eternal love
persists, the reality of contemporary transitory relationships has
shaken its foundations. I need to quote this central passage in its
entirety because it capsulizes the essence of Carvers narrative.
As Mel drinks more and more, the question implied by the
storys title becomes more and more urgent. Just what do we talk
about when we talk about love between human beings today?
Does the word mean what it has always meant, or is there
something about late 20th century life that has radically altered
its meaning:
What do any of us really know about love? Mel said. It seems
to me were just beginners at love. We say we love each other
and we do, I dont doubt it. I love Terri and Terri loves me, and
you guys love each other too. You know the kind of love Im
talking about now. Physical love, that impulse that drives you to
someone special, as well as love of the other persons being, his
or her essence, as it were. Carnal love and, well, call it
sentimental love, the day to day caring about the other person.
But sometimes I have a hard time accounting for the fact that I
must have loved my first wife too. But I did, I know I did. So I
suppose I am like Terri in that regard. Terri and Ed. He thought
about it and then he went on. There was a time when I thought I
loved my first wife more than life itself. But now I hate her guts.
I do. How do you explain that? What happened to that love?
What happened to it, is what Id like to know. I wish someone
could tell me. Then theres Ed. Okay, so were back to Ed. He
loves Terri so much he tries to kill her and he winds up killing
himself. Mel stopped talking and swallowed from his glass.
You guys have been together eighteen months and you love
each other. It shows all over you. You glow with it. But you both
loved other people before you met each other. Youve both been
married before, just like us. And you probably loved other people
before that too, even. Terri and I have been together five years,
been married for four. And the terrible thing, the terrible thing is,
but the good thing too, the saving grace, you might say, is that if
something happened to one of usexcuse me for saying this
but if something happened to one of us tomorrow, I think the
other one, the other person, would grieve for a while, you know,
but then the surviving party would go out and love again, and
have someone else soon enough. All this, all of this love, were
talking about, it would be just a memory. Am I wrong? Am I way
off base? Because I want you to set me straight if you think Im
wrong. I want to know. I mean, I dont know anything, and Im
the first one to admit it.
Of course, Mel is actually the last one to admit it, and his
confused, drunken monologue has a kind of terrible clarity and
honesty to it. When I read this passage in my class, my Southern
California students, nearly all of them from families that have
experienced divorce, both understand it and are bewildered by it
simultaneously. Which is to say they recognize it as the

contemporary world they live ina world of serial relationships

where one years love is the next years courtroom adversary.
Both Mel and Terri on the one hand, and Nick and Laura on the
otheras well as Mel and Marjorie and Terri and Edare
contrasted with yet another couple referred to in the story, an
elderly couple in their mid-seventies who have been in an auto
accident. Significantly, their camper was slammed by a teenage
drunk driver who was killed in the accident. The old couple
survived, but just barely. Carver intends the couple to represent
our traditional conception of lovelifetime monogamya love
that lasts until death do us part. What troubles Mel about the
love between this old couple is that the husband is upset not so
much because he and his wife are badly injured, but because his
face is bandaged so severely he cannot move his head and look at
his wife. This kind of dependence is much closer to the love of
Ed for Terri or the love of Michael Furey for Gretta than it is to
either the love of Mel for Terri or the love of Nick for Laura.
This kind of love involves dependence, vulnerability and need,
all highly unfashionable qualities in a world of you do your
thing and Ill do mine. Can you imagine? Mel says in an
increasingly booze-influenced diatribe, Im telling you the
mans heart was breaking because he couldnt turn his goddamn
head and see his goddamn wifeI mean it was killing the old
fart because he couldnt look at the fucking woman. In Mels
world, love is disposable, and disposable love is an oxymoron.
Carver underscores our contemporary confusion about love with
two motifs he uses as structural elements in the story: alcohol
and light. Nick associates the two in his first description of the
setting. The four of us were sitting around his [Mels] kitchen
table drinking gin. Sunlight filled the kitchen from the big
window behind the sink. The gin is poured liberally throughout
and four pages into the story, Mel opens a second bottle and
proposes a toast to true love. At this point the couples are in a
kind of enchanted, fairy tale state, at the point in their drinking
when the world seems to be basking in a rose-colored glow.
Again the consumption of gin is related to the light in the room.
The afternoon sun was like a presence in this room, the spacious
light of ease and generosity. We could have been anywhere,
somewhere enchanted. We raised our glasses again and grinned
at each other like children who had agreed on something
forbidden. The emotional landscape here is conspiratorial. The
two couples appear to be moving toward a revelation but the
booze has created an illusory sense of well being.. At this point,
Mel goes into his monologue about love in the contemporary
world and Terris response makes clear the tone of voice in
which it is delivered: Mel, for Gods sakeAre you getting
drunk? Honey? Are you drunk?
Because Carver wrote as a recovering alcoholic, alcohol often
plays an important role in many of his stories. Drinking is often
contrasted with eating. Food is almost always presented as both
nourishing and nurturing. Eating is a communal activity, a small
good thing, as the title of one of his stories has itwhile
alcohol is a kind of empty substitute for it that neither nourishes
nor nurtures but distorts and confuses. As the conversation
continues, Mel makes exactly this contrast. lets drink this
cheapo gin the hell up. Then were going to dinner, right? Terri
and I know a new place. Thats where well go, to this new place
we know about. But were not going until we finish up this cutrate, lousy gin. Even more pointedly, Mel says I like foodIf I
had it to do all over again, Id be a chef, you know? But eating
keeps getting put aside for more drinking. Mel has passed the
state of a euphoric high and is now moving into a somnambulant
stupor: Mel poured himself another drink. He looked at the
label closely as if studying a long row of numbers. Then he
slowly put the bottle down on the table and slowly reached for

the tonic water. Things are indeed moving very slowly at this
point, and after Mel finishes the story about the old couple, Nick
offers a masterful understatement, yet again linking alcohol and
light: Maybe we were a little drunk by then. I know it was hard
keeping things in focus. The light was draining out of the room,
going back through the window where it had come from. Yet
nobody made a move to get up from the table to turn on the
overhead light. The kitchensignificantly a place where food is
preparedgets darker and darker and things move more and
more slowly. Mel especially seems to be moving in slow motion
each of his movements is ponderous and exaggerated. It takes
him a long time merely to cross one leg over the other. The
couples keep talking about food, about going out to eat, but
continue drinking until all the liquor is gone. Mel thinks about
calling his children (a sentimental insertion of parental love in
the midst of all this confusion about love) but finally decides
against it. Maybe I wont call the kids after all. Maybe it isnt
such a hot idea. Maybe well just go eat. How does that sound.?
Nick responds confusedly: Sounds fine to meEat or not eat.
Or keep drinking. I could head right on out into the sunset.
Laura is perplexed by Nicks response, but she underscores the
poverty of the conversation about love when she says I dont
think Ive ever been so hungry in my life. Is there something to
nibble on? This is certainly a figurative as well as literal
statement. All of the characters are hungry for love, but love as
we too often experience it in the contemporary world is a
shallow substitute for the real thing. Being hungry for love is one
thing, but doing something about that hunger is another. Never
one to miss an opportunity for humor in the midst of gravity,
Carver has Terri respond to Lauras request for something to
nibble on with this: Ill put out some cheese and crackers,
Terri said. But Terri just sat there. She did not get up to get
anything.
Serial, transient love is to love as booze is to food. It gives the
characters the illusion of having arrived somewhere, but leaves
them empty and undernourished. And the more we talk about
love, the more it becomes clear that we know virtually nothing
about it. The storys conclusion is a masterful strokea dark,
existential moment when humanity is stripped of its illusions
the gin is finished, and all Nick hears, and consequently we as
readers hear, is the sound of four human hearts beating in the
darkness. Love and all our conceptions of it in this context are
human constructs, what we call today a socially constructed
reality that we employ to give meaning to the biological
actuality of our flesh and blood, of our pulses pounding in the
darkness. I could hear my heart beating. I could hear everyones
heart. I could hear the human noise we sat there making, not one
of us moving, not even when the room went dark. One can
almost hear the anguished cry of Eugene ONeills Jimmy
Tomorrow from The Iceman Cometh hovering behind Carvers
last sentences: What did you do to the booze, Hickey, what did
you do to the booze?

Fred Moramarco is a professor at San Diego State

University.

Looking for Raymond Carver

by A. O. Scott
(fragments)
And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?

I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.
Plenty of writers are admired, celebrated, imitated, and hyped.
Very few writers can, as Raymond Carver does in his poem
Late Fragment, call themselves beloved. In the years since his
death in 1988, at fifty, from lung cancer, Carvers reputation has
blossomed. He has gone from being an influentialand
controversialmember of a briefly fashionable school of
experimental fiction to being an international icon of traditional
American literary values. His geniusbut more his honesty, his
decency, his commitment to the exigencies of craftis praised
by an extraordinarily diverse cross section of his peers.
Richard Ford, whose work, like Carvers, carries the Hemingway
tradition of masculine virtue into the perilous world of discount
stores, suburban sprawl, and no-fault divorce, published a tribute
to his old friend in The New Yorker last year. Jay McInerney, a
student of Carvers at Syracuse in the early 1980s whose cheeky,
cosmopolitan sensibility seems, at first glance, antithetical to
Carvers plain-spoken provinciality, has written memorably, and
movingly, about his teacher. And Carvers stripped-down
vignettes of ordinary life in the United States have been
championed by such heroes of international postmodern superfiction as Salman Rushdie, Amos Oz, and Haruki Murakami,
who is also Carvers principal Japanese translator.
Carvers influence has proven remarkably durable and protean:
the chronicles of family dysfunction, addiction, and recovery that
dominate American writing in the late 1990s may owe as much
to his example as did the flood of laconic, present-tense short
fiction that nearly drowned it in the mid-1980s.
[]
At the beginning of the story Why Dont You Dance? a
nameless man drinks whiskey and stares through his kitchen
window at the contents of his house, arranged in the front yard:
The chiffonier stood a few feet from the foot of the bed.
He had emptied the drawers into cartons that morning,
and the cartons were in the living room. A portable
heater was next to the chiffonier. A rattan chair with a
decorator pillow stood at the foot of the bed. The buffed
aluminum kitchen set took up a part of the driveway. A
yellow muslin cloth, much too large, a gift, covered the
table and hung down over the sides. A potted fern was
on the table, along with a box of silverware and a record
player, also gifts.
In some ways, All of Us resembles this tableauthe interior
furnishings of a life dragged out into the sunlight, where they
seem incongruous and, at the same time, desperately sad. The
pathos of Why Dont You Dance?surely a case of ordinary
objects acquiring power by being rendered in ordinary language
intensifies when we learn, early on in the collected poems, that
the man at the window is Carver himself. Distress Sale begins
with a catalog of household goods:
Early one Sunday morning everything outside
the childs canopy bed and vanity table,
the sofa, end tables and lamps, boxes
of assorted books and records.
These things belong to someone else, a family reduced to selling
off all their possessions. The speaker is a friendIm staying

with them, trying to dry outwhose sympathy is both deepened

and limited by the fact that hes not much better off than they
are: I reach for my wallet and that is how I understand it:/I cant
help anyone.
In fact, as Carver recorded in poems like Bankruptcy and The
Miracle, he and his first wife, Maryann, were twice forced to
declare bankruptcy. And the hardships of Carvers early
adulthoodthe alcoholism, the financial insecurity, the cruelties
and betrayals that finally wrecked his marriageturn up again
and again in his poetry. As Gallagher puts it, Rays appetite for
inventorying domestic havoc is often relentless. Inventory is
perhaps more apt than Gallagher would wish, given the formal
slackness of so many of the poems, but the poems in All of Us
will serve, for serious readers of Carvers fiction, as a useful
storehouse of biographical information, and as irrefutable
cumulative evidence of how closely bound up Carvers stories
are with the events of his life. .
[]
This kind of reticence, the balked, clumsy attempt to express an
experience paralyzed in its enormity and yet at the same time
resolutely ordinary - the destruction of a family - resembles the
way many of the characters in Carvers stories express
themselves. At the end of Why Dont You Dance?, for
example, the point of view shift from the man at the window to a
young woman who had stopped with her boyfriend to check out
the junk on the mans lawn:
Weeeks later, she said: The guy was about middleaged.
[]
She kept talking. She told everyone. There was more to
it, and she was trying to get it talked out. After a time,
she gave up trying.
The girl knows she has witnessed something terrible, but lacks
the resourcesquite literally, the vocabularyto explain to
herself or anyone else what she has seen. She can only say what
happened, and it isnt enoughthere is more to it. But in her
inarticulate state she is not much different from the narrator of
the story, or indeed, as the poems and essays suggest, from
Carver himself. And yet, the girls inability to say more, when
coupled with Carvers refusal to say morethe words husband,
wife, divorce, alcoholism, bankruptcy, and despair occur
nowhere in the storymanages to say it all.

To his admirers, Carvers taciturnity becomes its own kind of

eloquence. But critics, especially those who are bothered by
Carvers disproportionate influence on other writers, have
complained about how much he leaves out. For Sven Birkerts,
writing in 1986, the fiction of Carver and his followers is marked
by a total refusal of any vision of larger social connection. And
it is true that the inhabitants of Carvers world appear to exist not
only in states of isolation and impermanence, but, to borrow a
phrase from George W.S. Trow, in a context of no context,
without geographical, social, or historical coordinates. We
seldom learn the name of the town, or even the state, in which a
given story takes place. The stories tend to be devoid of the
cultural and commercial referencespopular songs, brand
names, moviesthat so many contemporary writers use to fix
their narratives in time and space. And though Carver began
writing in the early 1960s, and came to prominence over the next

two decades, his stories, at first glance, take no notice of the

social and political tumult of the era. We never know who the
president is, or whether men have walked on the moon; the
characters never read newspapers; and nobody expresses any
political interests or opinions. As far as I can tell, Vietnam is
mentioned exactly once: in Vitamins the leering, predatory
behavior of a black man named Nelsonone of the very few
nonwhite characters who appear in Carvers workis ascribed to
the fact that he is a veteran just returned from combat in
Southeast Asia.
[]
Im much more interested in my characters, Carver once told
an interviewer, in the people in my story, than I am in any
potential reader. This is a statement of artistic priorities, to be
sure, but it also amounts to an expression of solidarity. Carvers
characters are a lot like him: they marrytoo young, divorce too
late, and drink too much. Their midlife crises occur in their early
thirties. They are menaced by debt and sporadically employed.
Childhood in Carvers world consists of the uncomprehending,
often brutal imitation of adults; adulthood, which comes
suddenly and irreversibly, is a state of mourning for lost
possibilities punctuated by eruptions of childishness. The desire
for permanence, for stability, for home and family and steady
work, is perpetually at war with the impulse to flee, to strike it
rich, or just to be left alone.
The spareness of Carvers style represents not parsimoniousness,
but tact. It represents, above all, an absolute loyalty to the people
he writes about. Its as if Carver, in deciding to become the kind
of person who has his own library, and who will someday see his
own name under the words edited by, at the same time swore
to remain true not only to the delivery boy he had been, but to
that boys original state of ignorance. In his recent introduction
to The Best American Stories of the Twentieth Century, John
Updike writes, somewhat ruefully, that the fiction of Carver and
fellow minimalists like Barthelme and Ann Beattie involves a
withdrawal of authorial guidance, an existential determination to
let things speak out of their own silence. This is well put, but it
would be more accurate in Carvers case to say that he is
motivated by a moral determination to let persons speak out of
their own deep reticence. The exercise of authorial guidance
would imply, for him, an unprincipled claim to omniscience, an
assertion that he knows more than his characters and is,
therefore, better than they are.
To read Where Im Calling From from beginning to end,
supplemented by some of the stories from earlier collections that
Carver chose not to reprint, is to discover that a great deal of
what is supposed to be missingin particular, the changing
social landscape of the United Stateshas been there all along,
but that it has been witnessed from a perspective almost without
precedent in American literature. Stories like What Do You Do
in San Francisco? and After the Denim record the curious,
suspicious, and disgusted reactions of the small-town working
class to interlopers from the urban, well-to-do counterculture.
Jerry and Molly and Sam, Nobody Said Anything, and
Bicycles, Muscles, Cigarettes, among others, are ultimately
about how the spread of the suburbs transformed family life, and
about the crisis of masculinity that resulted. Carvers work, read
closely and in the aggregate, also carries a lot of news about
feminism, work-ing conditions, and substance abuse in latetwentieth-century provincial America.
To generalize in this way is, of course, to engage in a kind of
analytical discourse Carver resolutely mistrusted. More often

than not, the big talkers in Carvers stories are in possession of a

degree of class privilege. My friend Mel McGinnis was
talking, goes the famous opening of What We Talk About
When We Talk About Love. Mel McGinnis is a cardiologist,
and sometimes that gives him the right. The imperious
homeowner in Put Yourself in My Shoes and the jealous
college teacher in Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? also come
to mind. People who carry on as if they know what theyre
talking about are regarded with suspicion. Carvers greatest
sympathy is reserved for those characters who struggle to use
language to make sense of things, but who founder or fail in the
attempt.
It is striking how many of his stories turn on the inability or
refusal of people to say what happened. Think of the girl at the
end of Why Dont You Dance?, unable to convey the fullness
of what she has seen on the strange mans lawn, or the narrator of
Where is Everyone?, clamming up at his AA meetings. And
there are many more examples. Why, Honey? is a mothers
desperate, almost incoherent, and yet strangely formal effort
(Dear Sir, it begins) to explain to a nameless, prying stranger
how her darling son went wrong. In Distance (also published
as Everything Stuck to Him), a father, asked by his grown
daughter to tell her what it was like when she was a kid,
produces a fairy tale of young parenthood (the main characters in
which are referred to only as the boy and the girl) that leaves
both teller and listener unsettled, unenlightened, and remote from
each other.
And then there is Cathedral, one of Carvers most beloved
stories and the closest thing he produced to an allegory of his
own method. The narrator is visited by a garrulous blind man, an
old friend of his wifes, whose arrival he anticipates with
apprehension. The two men end up smoking marijuana together,
while the television airs a documentary about the cathedrals of
Europe. It starts to bother the narrator that his new acquaintance,
while he knows something about the history of church-building,
has no idea of what cathedrals really are, and he tries to tell him
about them:
Theyre really big, I said. Theyre massive. Theyre
built of stone. Marble, too, sometimes. In those olden
days, when they built cathedrals, men wanted to be
close to God. In those olden days, God was an
important part of everyones life. You could tell this
from their cathedral-building. Im sorry, I said, but it
looks like thats the best I can do for you. Im just no
good at it.
The blind man proposes that they draw a cathedral instead, and
they dothe narrators eyes closed, the blind mans hand
guiding his. The narrator undergoes an epiphany: It was like
nothing else in my life up to now.
The reader is left out: the mens shared experience, visual and
tactile, is beyond the reach of words. But the frustrating
vicariousness of the story is also the source of its power. Art,
according to Carver, is a matter of the blind leading the tonguetied. Carver was an artist of a rare and valuable kind: he told
simple stories, and made it look hard.
New York Review of Books, Aug 12 99

JOHNBARTH
AFewWordsAboutMinimalism*

Lessismore,saidWalterGropius,orAlbertoGiacometti,
or Laszlo MoholyNagy, or Henri GuadierBrzeska, or
ConstantinBrancusi,orLeCorbusierorLudwigMiesvander
Rohe;theremark(firstmadeinfactbyRobertBrowning)has
beenseverallyattributedtoallofthosemoreorlesscelebrated
more or less minimalists. Like the Bauhaus motto, Form
follows function, it is itself a memorable specimen of the
minimalistesthetic,ofwhichacardinalprincipleisthatartistic
effectmaybeenhancedbyaradicaleconomyofartisticmeans,
even where such parsimony compromises other values:
completeness,forexample,orrichnessorprecisionofstatement.
Thepowerofthatestheticprincipleiseasytodemonstrate:
contrast my eminently forgettable formulation of it above
artisticeffectmaybeenhanced,etc.withtheunforgettable
assertionLessismore.Orconsiderthefollowingproposition,
firstwith,andthenwithout,itsparentheticalelements:
Minimalism(ofonesortoranother)istheprinciple(oneof
the principles, anyhow) underlying (what I and many another
interestedobserverconsidertobeperhaps)themostimpressive
phenomenon on the current (North American, especially the
UnitedStates)literaryscene(thegringoequivalenttoelboomin
the Latin American novel): I meanthe new flowering of the
(North) American short story (in particular the kind of terse,
oblique,realisticorhyperrealistic,slightlyplotted,extrospective,
coolsurfaced fictionassociated inthelast5or10years with
such excellent writers as Frederick Barthelme, Ann Beattie,
Raymond Carver, Bobbie Ann Mason, James Robison, Mary
RobisonandTobiasWolff,andbothpraisedanddamnedunder
such labels as KMart realism, hick chic, DietPepsi
minimalism and postVietnam, postliterary, postmodernist
bluecollarneoearlyHemingwayism).
Likeanyclutchofartistscollectivelylabeled,thewritersjust
mentionedareatleastasdifferentfromoneanotherastheyare
similar.Minimalism,moreover,isnottheonlyandmaynotbe
themostimportantattributethattheirfictionmoreorlessshares;
thoselabelsthemselvessuggestsomeotheraspectsandconcerns
of the New American Short Story and its proportionate
counterpart, the threeeighthinch novel. But it is their
minimalismIshallspeakof(briefly)here,anditsantecedence:
theideathat,inartatleast,lessismore.
Itisanidea surelyasold,asenduringlyattractive andas
ubiquitousasitsopposite.InthebeginningwastheWord:only
latercametheBible,nottomentionthethreedeckerVictorian
novel.TheoracleatDelphididnotsay,Exhaustiveanalysisand
comprehensionofonesownpsychemaybeprerequisitetoan
understandingofonesbehaviorandoftheworldatlarge; it
said, Know thyself. Such inherently minimalist genres as
oracles(fromtheDelphicshrineofApollotothemodernfortune
cookie), proverbs, maxims, aphorisms, epigrams, pensees,
mottoes,slogansandquipsarepopularineveryhumancentury
andcultureespeciallyinoralculturesandsubcultures,where
mnemonic staying power has high priority and many
specimens of them are selfreflexive or selfdemonstrative:
minimalism about minimalism. Brevity is the soul of wit.
Silenceisgolden.Vitabrevisest,arslongaSenecawarns
aspiring poets in his third Epistle; Eschew surplusage,
recommendsMarkTwain.
Against the largescale classical prose pleasures of
Herodotus, Thucydides and Petronius, there are the miniature
delights of Aesops fables and Theophrastus Characters.
Against such verse epics as the Iliad, the Odyssey and the
AeneidandthemuchlongerSanskritRamayana,Mahabharata
and Ocean of Story are such venerable supercompressive
poeticformsasthepalindrome(therearelongexamples,butthe
oneswerememberareMadam,ImAdamandSexatnoon

taxes),orthesinglecouplet(amoderninstanceisOgdenNashs
Candyisdandy/Butliquorisquicker),orthefeudalJapanese
haikuanditsWesternechoesintheearly20thcenturyimagists
uptothecontemporaryskinnypoemsof,say,RobertCreeley.
Thereareevensinglewordpoems,orsinglewordsthatoughtto
bepoems;thebestoneIknowofIfoundintheGuinnessBook
ofWorldRecords,listedasthemostsuccinctword:TheTierra
del Fuegian word mamihlapinatapei. In the language of the
LandofFire,mamihlapinatapeiissaidtomean:lookinginto
eachotherseyes,eachhopingthattheotherwillinitiatewhat
bothwanttodobutneitherchoosestocommence.
Thegenreoftheshortstory,asPoedistinguisheditfromthe
traditionaltaleinhis1842reviewofHawthornesfirstcollection
ofstories,isanearlymanifestoofmodernnarrativeminimalism:
Inthewholecompositionthereshouldbenowordwritten,of
whichthetendency...isnottothepreestablisheddesign....
Unduelengthis...tobeavoided.Poescodificationinforms
such later 19thcentury masters of terseness, selectivity and
implicitness(asopposedtoleisurelyonceuponatimelessness,
luxuriantabundance,explicitandextendedanalysis)asGuyde
MaupassantandAntonChekhov.Show,donttell,saidHenry
Jamesineffectandatlengthinhisprefacestothe1908New
Yorkeditionofhisnovels.Anddonttellawordmorethanyou
absolutelyneedto,addedyoungErnest Heningway,whothus
describedhisnewtheoryintheearly1920s:Youcouldomit
anything if you knew that you omitted, and the omitted part
wouldstrenthenthestoryandmakepeoplefeelsomethingmore
thantheyunderstood.
The Bauhaus Functionalists were by then already busy
unornamentingandabstractingmodernarchitecture,paintingand
design; and while functionalism and minimalism are not the
same thing, to say nothing of abstractionism and minimalism
(thereisnothingabstractaboutthoseearlyHemingwaystories),
theyspringfromthesameimpluse:tostripawaythesuperfluous
inordertorevealthenecessary,theessential.Nevermindthat
Voltaire had pointed out, a century and a half before, how
indispensable the superfluous can be (Le superflu, chose si
necessaire);justas,inmodernpainting,theprocessofstripping
away leads from PostImpressionism through Cubism to the
radicalminimalismofKasimirMalevichsWhiteonWhiteof
1918,andAdReinhardtsallbutimagelessblackpaintingsof
the 1950s, so in 20thcentury literature the minimalist
succession leads through Hemingways new theory to the
shorterficcionesofJorgeLuisBorgesandtheevertersertextsof
SamuelBeckett,perhapsculminatinginhisplayBreath(1969):
Thecurtainopensonadimlylitstage,emptybutforscattered
rubbish;thereisheardasinglerecordedhumancry,thenasingle
amplifiedinspirationandexpirationofbreathaccompaniedbya
brightening and redimming of the lights, then again the cry.
Thirtyfivesecondsafteritopened,thecurtaincloses.
Butitclosesonlyontheplay,notonthemoderntraditionof
literary minimalism, which honorably continues in such next
generation writers as, in America, Donald Barthelme (The
fragmentistheonlyformItrust,saysacharacterinhisslender
novelSnowWhite)and,intheliterarygenerationoverlapping
andfollowinghis,theplentiful authorsoftheNew American
ShortStory.
Oldornew,fictioncanbeminimalistinanyorallofseveral
ways. There are minimalisms of unit, form and scale: short
words,shortsentencesandparagraphs,supershortstories,those
threeeighthinchthinnovelsaforementioned,andevenminimal
bibliographies(Borgesfictionaddsuptoafewmodest,though
powerfully influential, shortstory collections). There are
minimalismsofstyle: astrippeddownvocabulary; astripped
downsyntaxthatavoidsperiodicsentences,serialpredications

and complex subordinating constructions; a strippeddown

rhetoric that may eschew figurative language altogether; a
strippeddown,nonemotivetone.Andthereareminimalismsof
material:minimalcharacters,minimalexposition(allthatDavid
Copperfield kind of crap, says J.D. Salingers catcher in the
rye),minimalmisesenscene,minimalaction,minimalplot.
Found together in their purest forms, these several
minimalismsadduptoanartthatinthewordsofitsarch
priest,SamuelBeckett,speakingofthepainterBramVanVelde
expressesthatthereisnothingtoexpress,nothingwithwhich
toexpress,nothingfromwhichtoexpress,nopowertoexpress,
nodesiretoexpresstogetherwiththeobligationtoexpress.
But they are not always found together. There are very short
worksofgreatrhetorical,emotionalandthematicrichness,such
as Borgess essential page, Borges and I; and there are
instancesofwhatmayfairlybecalledlongwindedminimalism,
such as Samuel Becketts starkmonumental trilogy from the
early50s:Molloy,MaloneDiesandTheUnnameable.Parallels
abound in the other arts: the miniature, in painting, is
characteristically brimful (miniaturism is not minimalism);
Joseph Cornells little boxes contain universes. The large
paintingsofMarkRothko,FranzKlineandBarnettNewman,on
theotherhand,areasundetailedastheWashingtonMonument.
The medieval Roman Catholic Church recognized two
oppositeroadstograce:thevianegativaofthemonkscelland
thehermitscave,andtheviaaffirmativaofimmersioninhuman
affairs,ofbeingintheworldwhetherornotoneisofit.Critics
haveaptlyborrowedthosetermstocharacterizethedifference
between Mr. Beckett, for example, and his erstwhile master
James Joyce, himself a maximalist except in hisearly works.
Otherthanbonedeepdisposition,whichisnodoubtthegreat
determinant,whatinclinesawritersometimesalmostacultural
generationofwriterstotheNegationalPath?
For individuals, it may be by their own acknowledgment
largely a matter of past or present personal circumstances.
RaymondCarverwritesofaliteraryapprenticeshipinwhichhis
shortpoemsandstorieswerecarvedinpreciousquarterhours
stolen from a harrowing domestic and economic situation;
thoughhenowhasprofessionaltimeaplenty,thenotionbesets
himthatshouldhepresumetoattemptevenashortnovel,hell
waketofindhimselfbackinthosewretchedcircumstances.An
oppositecasewasBorgess:hisneartotalblindnessinhislater
decadesobligedhimtotheshortformsthathehadelectedfor
other,nonphysicalreasonswhenhewassighted.
...
To account for a trend, literary sociologists and culture
watchers point to more general historical and philosophical
factorsnotexcludingthefactorofpowerfulmodelslikeBorges
andBeckett.Theinfluence ofearly HemingwayonRaymond
Carver,say,isasapparentastheinfluenceofMr.Carverinturn
onahostofotherNewAmericanShortStorywriters,andona
muchmorenumeroushostofapprenticesinAmericancollege
fictionwritingprograms.Butwhythismodel ratherthanthat,
otherthanitsmereandsheerartisticprowess,onwhichafterall
ithasnomonopoly?Doubtlessbecausethisoneisfelt,bythe
writersthusmoreorlessinfluenced,tospeakmorestronglyto
theirconditionandthatoftheirreaders.
Andwhatisthatcondition,inthecaseofthecoolsurface
realistminimaliststorytellersoftheAmerican1970sand80s?
Inmyconversationwiththem,myreadingoftheircriticsboth
positiveandnegativeandmydealingswithrecentandcurrent
apprenticewriters,Ihaveheardcited,amongotherfactors,these
halfdozen,rankedhereinnoparticularorder:
*OurnationalhangoverfromtheVietnamWar,feltbymany
tobeatrauma literallyandfigurativelyunspeakable. I dont

want to talk about it is the characteristic attitude of Nam

veteransinthefictionofAnnBeattie,JayneAnnePhillipsand
Bobbie Ann Mason as it is among many of their reallife
counterparts(andasitwasamongtheirnumberless20thcentury
forerunners, especially after the First World War). Thisis,of
course,oneofthetwoclassicattitudestotrauma,theotherbeing
its opposite, and it can certainly conduce to hedged,
nonintrospective, even minimalist discourse: one remembers
HemingwaysearlystorySoldiersHome.
*Themoreorlesscoincidentenergycrisisof197376,and
the associated reaction against American excess and
wastefulnessingeneral.Thepopularityofthesubcompactcar
parallelsthat(inliterarycircles,atleast)ofthesubcompactnovel
andtheminifictionthoughnot,oneobserves,oftheminiskirt,
whichhadnothingtodowithconservingmaterial.
*Thenationaldeclineinreadingandwritingskills,notonly
amongtheyoung(includingevenyoungapprenticewriters,asa
group),butamongtheirteachers,manyofwhomarethemselves
theproductofaneverlessdemandingeducationalsystemanda
societywhosenarrativedramaticentertainmentandtastescome
farmorefrommoviesandtelevisionthanfromliterature.Thisis
not to disparage the literacy and general education of those
writersmentionedabove,ortosuggestthatthegreatwritersof
thepastwereuniformlyflawlessspellersandgrammarians,of
widepersonalliteraryculture.Somewere,somewerent;some
of todays are, some arent. But at least among those of our
aspiring writers promising enough to be admitted into good
graduatewritingprogramsandsurelytheyarenottheinferior
specimensoftheirbreedthegeneraldeclineinbasiclanguage
skillsoverthelasttwodecadesisinarguableenoughtomakeme
worry in some instances about their teaching undergraduates.
Rarely in their own writing, whatever its considerable other
merits,willonefindasentenceofanysyntacticalcomplexity,
forexample,andinasmuchasalanguagesrepertoireofother
thanbasic syntactical devices permits its users to articulate
otherthanbasic thoughts and feelings, DickandJane prose
tends to be emotionally and intellectually poorer than Henry
James prose. Among the great minimalist writers, this
impoverishment is elected and strategic: simplification in the
interestofstrength,orofsomeothervalue.Amongthelessgreat
itmaybefautedemieux.Amongtodayscommonreadersitis
pandemic.
*Along with this decline, an everdwindling readerly
attention span. The long popular novel still has its devotees,
especially aboard large airplanes and on beaches; but it can
scarcelybedoubtedthatmanyofthehourswebourgeoisnow
spendwithourtelevisionsandvideocassetterecorders,andin
ourcarsandatthemovies,weusedtospendreadingnovelsand
novellas and notsoshort stories, partly because those glitzy
otherdistractionswerentthereandpartlybecauseweweremore
generally conditioned for sustained concentration, in our
pleasuresaswellasinourwork.TheAustriannovelistRobert
Musil was complainingby 1930(in hismaxinovel The Man
WithoutQualities)thatweliveintheageofthemagazine,too
impatient already in the twitchy 20s to read books. Half a
century later, in America at elast, even the largecirculation
magazinemarketforfictionhaddwindledtoahandfulofoutlets;
thereaderswerentthere.ItisatouchingparadoxoftheNew
American Short Story so admirably straightforward and
democraticofaccess,sosteepedinbrandnamesandthepopular
culturethatitperforceappearsmainlyinverysmallcirculation
literaryquarterliesinsteadofthelikesofColliers,Libertyand
TheSaturdayEveningPost.ButTheNewYorkerandEsquire
cantpublisheverybody.

*Together withall theabove, areaction onthese authors

part against theironic,blackhumoristicfabulism and/or the
(sometimes academic) intellectuality and/or the density, here
byzantine,therebaroque,ofsomeoftheirimmediateAmerican
literary antecedents: the likes of Donald Barthelme, Robert
Coover,StanleyElkin,WilliamGaddisandWilliamGass,John
Hawkes,JosephHeller,ThomasPynchon,KurtVonnegut(and,I
shall presume, myself aswell). Thisreaction, where it exists,
would seem to pertain as much to our successors relentless
realismastotheirminimalism:amongthedistinguishedbrothers
Barthelme, Donalds productions are no less lean than
Fredericks or the upandcoming Stevens; but their
characteristicmaterial,angleofattackandresultant flavorare
different indeed.Theformal intricacyofElderBrothersstory
Sentence,forexample(asingleninepagenonsentence),orthe
directthoughsatiricalintellectualityofhisKierkegaardUnfair
toSchlegel, areasforeigntotheKMart Realistsasare the
manicflightsofGravitysRainbow.Soitgoes: Thedialogue
betweenfantastandrealist,fabulatorandquotidianist,likethe
dialogue between maximalist and minimalist, is as old as
storytelling, and by no means always adversary. There are
innumerable combinations, coalitions, linecrossings and
workingsofbothsidesofthestreet.
*The reaction against the all but inescapable hyperbole of
American advertising, both commercial and political, with its
hightechmanipulativenessandglamorouslies,asubiquitousas
andmorepollutedthantheairwebreathe.Howunderstandable
thatsuchanambiance,togetherwithwhateverotheritemsinthis
catalogue, might inspire a fiction dedicated to homely,
understated, programmatically unglamorous, even minimalistic
TellingItLikeItIs.
That has ever been the ground inspiration, moral
philosophicalincharacter,ofminimalismanditskissingcousin
realismintheirmanyavatarsoverthecenturies,inthefinearts
andelsewhere:thefeelingthatthelanguage(orwhatever)has
for whatever reasons become excessive, cluttered, corrupted,
fancy, false. It is the Puritans reaction against baroque
Catholicism;itisThoreausputtingbehindhimeventhemeager
comfortsofthevillageofConcord.
TotheLostGenerationofWorldWarIsurvivors,saysoneof
their famous spokesmen (Frederic Henry in Hemingways A
Farewell to Arms), Abstract words such as glory, honor,
courage,orhallowwereobscene.WassilyKandinskysaidhe
sought not the shell, but the nut. The functionalism of the
Bauhaus was inspired in part by admiration for machine
technology,inpartbyrevulsionagainstthefancyclutterofthe
GildedAge,inlanguageaswellaselsewhere.Thesinkingofthe
elegantTitanichascometosymbolizetheendofthatage,asthe
sightofsomeworkmencrushedbyafallingVictoriancornice
symbolizedforyoungFrankLloydWrightthedeadweightof
functionlessarchitecturaldecoration.Flaubertragedagainstthe
blagueofbourgeoisspeech,bureaucraticspeechinparticular;his
passion for the mot juste involved far more subtraction than
addition.Thebaroqueinspiresitsopposite:aftertheexcessesof
scholasticism comes Descartess radical reductionism let us
doubtanddiscardeverythingnotselfevidentandseewhether
anythingindubitableremainsuponwhichtorebuild.Andamong
the scholastics themselves, three centuries before Descartes,
WilliamofOckhamhonedhiscelebratedrazor:Entianonsunt
multiplicanda(Entitiesarenottobemultiplied).
Inshort,lessismore.
Beyondtheirindividualandhistoricallylocalimpulses,then,
themoreorlessminimalistauthorsoftheNewAmericanShort
Storyarereenactingacyclicalcorrectioninthehistory(andthe
microhistories)ofliteratureandofartingeneral:acycletobe

foundaswell,withlongerrhythms,inthehistoryofphilosophy,
the history of the culture. Renaissances beget Reformations,
whichthenbegetCounterReformations;thesevenfatyearsare
succeededbysevenlean,afterwhichwe,nolessthanthepeople
ofGenesis,maylookforwardtotherecorrection.
Forifthereismuchtoadmireinartisticausterity,itsopposite
isnotwithoutmeritsandjoysaswell.Therearetheminimalist
pleasuresofEmilyDickinsonZeroattheBoneandthe
maximalist ones of Walt Whitman; the lowfat rewards of
SamuelBeckettsTextsforNothingandthehighcaloriedelights
of Gabriel Garcia Marquezs One Hundred Years of Solitude.
There truly are more ways than one to heaven. As between
minimalismanditsopposite,Ipitythereaderorthewriter,or
theagetooaddictedtoeithertosavortheother.
* Copyright c 1986 by The New York Times Company.
Reprintedbypermission.
Weber Studies does not ordinarily publish previously
publishedmaterial.Wehavemadeanexceptioninthecaseof
thisessayfortworeasons.Theessaywasspeciallywrittenfor
andpresentedattheFirstNationalUndergraduateLiterature
ConferenceatWeberStateCollegeonl7Aprill986.Secondly,
the topic presented herein is important enough to warrant
republicationforourreaders.

The New Yorker, December 24, 2007

Letters written by Raymond Carver to Gordon Lish (and one
letter by Lish to Carver) during the years 1969 to 1983, when
Lish was editing Carvers work at Esquire and Alfred A. Knopf.
Serves as an introduction to Carvers story Beginners, also
published in The New Yorker

Letters to an Editor
by Raymond Carver
Following are excerpts from Carvers correspondence with
Lish, from 1969 to 1983.
November 12, 1969
Well, as it happens I do have a few stories on hand, and Im
sending them along within the next day or two. I hope you can
find something you like.
July 15, 1970
Hombre, thanks for the superb assist on the stories. No one
has done that for me since I was 18, I mean it. High time I think,
too. Feel the stories are first class now, but whatever the outcome
there, I appreciate the fine eye you turned on them. Hang tough.
January 19, 1971
I think its a fine story. Took about all yr changes, added a
few things here and there. Hope to get it retyped by this evening
and back off to you. No later than tomorrow, sure. Thanks for
going over it.Listen, something you said a long time ago, the
thing itself is what matters. Is true, in the end. Im not bothered.
Ive always been the slowest kid in class anyway, right down
there. But I keep trying, even at this advanced age. So lean on it,
if you see things. If I dont agree, Ill say something, never fear.
November 11, 1974
Well, listen, cant exactly tell you how pleased and so on
about the prospects of having a collection out under your aegis . .
. along with McGraw-Hill, of course. First reaction was to run
out and buy two bottles of champagne for a champagne
breakfast. . . . But all that is neither here nor there. What Im
concerned about and thrilled about is having out a book of
stories, & from there on I intend, brother, to set the globe afire,
believe me. . . . Ill tell you this, youve not backed a bad horse. .

. . About the editing necessary in some of the stories. Tell me

which ones and Ill go after it, or them. Tell me which ones. Or I
will leave it up to you & you tell me what you think needs done
or doing.
September 27, 1977
The most wonderful thing about this stay in McKinleyville,
though, is that Ive got sober and intend to stay that way. Ive
never done anything in my life Ive felt so good about as getting
and staying sober. What can I say? [Lish had left Esquire.]
Youve made a single-handed impression on American letters
that has helped fix the course of American letters. And, of course,
you know, old bean, just what an influence youve exercised on
my life. Just knowing you were there, at your desk, was an
inspiration for me to write, and you know I mean that. You, my
friend, are my idea of an ideal reader, always have been, always,
that is, forever, will be. So you loomed large on the literary
scene, and that is a fact, as well as a truth, but you loomed large
in my conscious and unconscious life as well.
September 8, 1978
Tess Gallagher, that Irish lass, I like to have fallen in love
with her. She left, went to Tucson on businessshell be
teaching there next year, shes on a Guggy this yearthen
returned and we spent a fine week together, I put her on a plane
to Seattle yesterday, today I get a dozen red roses from her.
February 1, 1979
Im going to Mardi Gras with Tess; and the Fords are coming
down in March for spring break and were going into Mexico by
train for a week. . . . Im happy, and Im sober. Its aces right
now, Gordon. I know better than anyone a fellow is never out of
the woods, but right now its aces, and Im enjoying it.
May 10, 1980
As for lunch, lord, it was the high point of my visit to NYC,
nothing mindless or silly, at least not on your part. I delight in
your company, simple as that. You know, I feel closer to you than
I do to my own brother. Have for a long time, years. We dont
see each other that often, or talk on the phone weekly, etc., but I
know youre there and its important to me. Besides, youre my
herodont you know? Ever since you left PA [Palo Alto] and
went out into the Great World and began sending me messages
back from time to time what it was like out there. Your friendship
and your concern have enriched my life. Theres no question of
your importance to me. Youre my mainstay. Man, I love you. I
dont make that declaration lightly either. . . . For Christs sweet
sake, not to worry about taking a pencil to the stories if you can
make them better; and if anyone can you can. I want them to be
the best possible stories, and I want them to be around for a
while. . . . I never figured I was going to get rich or even earn a
living writing stories and poems. Be enough, you know, to have
Knopf do a book of mine and have you as my editor. So open the
throttle. Ramming speed.
July 8, 1980, 8 A.M.
Dearest Gordon,
Ive got to pull out of this one. Please hear me. Ive been up
all night thinking on this, and nothing but this, so help me. Ive
looked at it from every side, Ive compared both versions of the
edited mssthe first one is better, I truly believe, if some things
are carried over from the second to the firstuntil my eyes are
nearly to fall out of my head. You are a wonder, a genius, and
theres no doubt of that, better than any two of Max Perkins, etc.,
etc. And Im not unmindful of the fact of my immense debt to
you, a debt I can simply never, never repay. This whole new life I
have, so many of the friends I now have, this job up here,
everything, I owe to you for Will You Please. Youve given me
some degree of immortality already. Youve made so many of the
stories in this collection better, far better than they were before.
And maybe if I were alone, by myself, and no one had ever seen
these stories, maybe then, knowing that your versions are better
than some of the ones I had sent, maybe I could get into this and

go with it. But Tess has seen all of these and gone over them
closely. Donald Hall has seen many of the new ones (and
discussed them at length with me and offered his services in
reviewing the collection) and Richard Ford, Toby Wolff,
Geoffrey Wolff, too, some of them. . . . How can I explain to
these fellows when I see them, as I will see them, what happened
to the story in the meantime, after its book publication? Maybe if
the book were not to come out for 18 months or two years, it
would be different. But right now, everything is too new. . . .
Gordon, the changes are brilliant and for the better in most cases
I look at What We Talk About . . . (Beginners) and I see
what it is that youve done, what youve pulled out of it, and Im
awed
and
astonished,
startled
even,
with
your
insights. But its
too close right
now, that story.
Now much of
this has to do
with my sobriety
and with my
new-found (and
fragile, I see)
mental health and
well-being. Ill
tell you the truth,
my very sanity is
on the line here. I
dont want to
sound
melodramatic
here, but Ive
come back from
the grave here to
start
writing
stories
once
more. As I think
you may know,
Id given up
entirely, thrown it in and was looking forward to dying, that
release. But I kept thinking, Ill wait until after the election to kill
myself, or wait until after this or that happened, usually
something down the road a ways, but it was never far from my
mind in those dark days, not all that long ago. Now, Im
incomparably better, I have my health back, money in the bank,
the right woman for this time of my life, a decent job, blah blah.
But I havent written a word since I gave you the collection,
waiting for your reaction, that reaction means so much to me.
Now, Im afraid, mortally afraid, I feel it, that if the book were to
be published as it is in its present edited form, I may never write
another story, thats how closely, God Forbid, some of those
stories are to my sense of regaining my health and mental wellbeing. . . .
Please help me with this, Gordon. I feel as if this is the most
important decision Ive ever been faced with, no shit. I ask for
your understanding. Next to my wife, and now Tess, you have
been and are the most important individual in my life, and thats
the truth. I dont want to lose your love or regard over this, oh
God no. It would be like having a part of myself die, a spiritual
part. Jesus, Im jabbering now. But if this causes you undue
complication and grief and you perhaps understandably become
pissed and discouraged with me, well, Im the poorer for it, and
my life will not be the same again. True. On the other hand, if the
book comes out and I cant feel the kind of pride and pleasure in
it that I want, if I feel Ive somehow too far stepped out of
bounds, crossed that line a little too far, why then I cant feel

good about myself, or maybe even write again; right now I feel
its that serious, and if I cant feel absolutely good about it, I feel
Id be done for. I do. Lord God I just dont know what else to
say. Im awash with confusion and paranoia. Fatigue too, that
too.
Please, Gordon, for Gods sake help me in this and try to
understand. Listen. Ill say it again, if I have any standing or
reputation or credibility in the world, I owe it to you. I owe you
this more-or-less pretty interesting life I have. But if I go ahead
with this as it is, it will not be good for me. The book will not be,
as it should, a cause for joyous celebration, but one of defense
and explanation. . . . I know that the discomfort of this decision
of mine is at its highest now, its rampant, I feel nearly wild with
it. But I know it will cause you grief as well, explanations, more
work, stopping everything in its tracks and coming up with valid
reasons for why. But, eventually, my discomfort and yours, will
go away, therell be a grieving, Im grieving right now, but it will
go away. But if I dont speak now, and speak from the heart, and
halt things now, I foresee a terrible time ahead for me. The
demons I have to deal with every day, or night, nearly, might,
Im afraid, simply rise up and take me over.
Of course I know I shouldnt have signed the contract
without first reading the collection and making my fears, if any,
known to you beforehand, before signing. So what should we do
now, please advise? Can you lay it all on me and get me out of
the contract someway? Can you put the book off until Winter or
Spring of 1982 and let them know I want to have the stories in
the collection published in magazines first (and thats the truth,
several of them are committed to places with publication way off
next year)? Tell them I want the magazine publications first, and
then the book out when Im up for tenure here that spring of
1982? And then decide next year what, for sure, to do? Or else
can or should everything just be stopped now, I send back the
Knopf check, if its on the way, or else you stop it there? And
meanwhile I pay you for the hours, days and nights, Im sure,
youve spent on this. Goddamn it, Im just nearly crazy with this.
Im getting into a state over it. No, I dont think it shd. be put
off. I think it had best be stopped.
I thought the editing, especially in the first version, was
brilliant, as I said. The stories I cant let go of in their entirety are
these. Community Center (If It Please You) and The Bath (A
Small Good Thing) and Id want some more of the old couple,
Anna and Henry Gates, in What We Talk About When We Talk
About Love (Beginners). I would not want Mr. Fixit (Where
Is Everyone) in the book in its present state. The story
Distance should not have its title changed to Everything
Stuck to Him. Nor the little piece Mine to Popular
Mechanics. Dummy should keep its title. A Serious Talk is
fine for Pie. I think Want to See Something is fine, is better
than I Could See the Smallest Things. . . .
Im just much too close to all of this right now. Its even hard
for me to think right now. I think, in all, maybe its just too soon
for me for another collection. I know that next spring is too soon
in any case. Absolutely too soon. I think I had best pull out,
Gordon, before it goes any further. I realize I stand every chance
of losing your love and friendship over this. But I strongly feel I
stand every chance of losing my soul and my mental health over
it, if I dont take that risk. Im still in the process of recovery and
trying to get well from the alcoholism, and I just cant take any
chances, something as momentous and permanent as this, that
would put my head in some jeopardy. Thats it, its in my head.
You have made so many of these stories better, my God, with the
lighter editing and trimming. But those others, those three, I
guess, Im liable to croak if they came out that way. Even though
they may be closer to works of art than the original and people
be reading them 50 years from now, theyre still apt to cause my
demise, Im serious, theyre so intimately hooked up with my

getting well, recovering, gaining back some little self-esteem and

feeling of worth as a writer and a human being.
I know you must feel angry and betrayed and pissed off.
Gods sake, Im sorry. I can pay you for the time youve put in
on this, but I cant begin to help or do anything about the trouble
and grief I may be causing there in the editorial and business
offices that youll have to go through. Forgive me for this,
please. But Im just going to have to wait a while yet for another
book, 18 months, two years, its okay now, as long as Im writing
and have some sense of worth in the process. Your friendship and
your concern and general championing of me have meant, and
mean still, more to me than I can ever say. I could never begin to
repay you, as you must know. I honor and respect you, and I love
you more than my brother. But you will have to get me off the
hook here Gordon, its true. I just cant go another step forward
with this endeavor. So please advise what to do now. . . . As I
say, Im confused, tired, paranoid, and afraid, yes, of the
consequences for me if the collection came out in its present
form. So help me, please, yet again. Dont, please, make this too
hard for me, for Im just likely to start coming unraveled
knowing how Ive displeased and disappointed you. God
almighty, Gordon.
Ray
Please do the necessary things to stop production of the book.
Please try and forgive me, this breach.
July 10, 1980
Please look through the enclosed copy of What We Talk
About, the entire collection. Youll see that nearly all of the
changes I suggest are small enough, but I think theyre
significant and they all can be found in the first edited ms version
you sent me. Its just, not just, but its a question of reinstating
some of the things that were taken out in the second version. But
I feel strongly some of those things taken out should be back in
the finished stories. Gazebo, for instance. In this, too, she was
right. That ending is far superior and gives the story the right,
the just ending, the narrators sense of loss, and a sharp, perfect
ending for the story. Otherwise, the narrator is a lout, a son of a
bitch, and totally insensitive to everything hes been telling us.
Otherwise, why even is he telling the story, I wonder.
July 14, 1980
Im thrilled about the book and its impending publication.
Im stoked about it, and Im already starting to think about the
next one. More than thinking about it, in fact. Fact is, Im giving
some thought to taking the second semester off to do nothing but
write and write through the summer as well. . . . Things are in
full swing, and I am just generally excited, specifically too. I
know you have my best interests at heart, and youll do
everything and more to further those interests. . . . I wont harp
or dog, for I know the book is going to astonish and give
pleasure. So just these last words on the matter: please look at
the suggestions Ive penciled in and entertain those suggestions
seriously, even if finally you decide otherwise; if you think Im
being my own worst enemy, you know, well then, stick to the
final version of the second edited version. But do give those
things a hard third or fourth look. My greatest fear is, or was,
having them too pared, and Im thinking of Community Center
and The Bath both of which lost several pages each in the
second editing. I want that sense of beauty and mystery they
have now, but I dont want to lose track, lose touch with the little
human connections I saw in the first version you sent me. They
seemed somehow to be fuller in the best sense, in that first ed.
version. Maybe I am wrong in this, maybe you are 100% correct,
just please give them another hard look. Thats all. That and what
I said about Where Is Everyone?Mr. Coffee, Mr. Fixit.
August 11, 1982
Now I dont know for sure how were going to work out
some of the disagreements were bound to have over some of
these stories Ive written and am writing this very minute. And

Im going to give you the book [Cathedral] on schedule, in

November. . . . Anyway, youre the best editor there is, and a
writer yourself, you bet, and you have to call them the way you
see them. Fair enough. But I may not be in agreement with you,
and this is whats worrying me right this minute. . . .
Forgive me. But hear me out. Im saying that despite all and
fuck all, Ive been writing short stories ever since I landed out
here in this woodsy cranny. Ive got five new ones, no six,
counting the one I just typed out a second draft of earlier tonight
and hope to finish, at least have some more drafts of, before the
week is out. Ive been writing as if my life depended on it and
like theres no tomorrow. And we both know that first may be
true, and theres always likelihood of the second. (And fuck no, I
cant get off the cigarettes either.) . . . But one thing is certain
the stories in this new collection are going to be fuller than the
ones in the earlier books. And this, for Christs sake, is to the
good. Im not the same writer I used to be. But I know there are
going to be stories in these 14 or 15 I give you that youre going
to draw back from, that arent going to fit anyones notion of
what a Carver short story ought to beyours, mine, the reading
public at large, the critics. But Im not them, Im not us, Im me.
Some of these stories may not fit smoothly or neatly, inevitably,
alongside the rest. But, Gordon, Gods truth, and I may as well
say it out now, I cant undergo the kind of surgical amputation
and transplant that might make them someway fit into the carton
so the lid will close. There may have to be limbs and heads of
hair sticking out. My heart wont take it otherwise. It will simply
burst, and I mean that. Dearest friend of all, brother, you know
what Im saying, and I know you understand. Even if you think
Im dead wrong. . . .
I love your heart, you must know that. But I cant write these
stories and have to feel inhibitedif I feel inhibited Im not
going to write them at alland feel that if you, the reader I want
to please more than any, dont like them, youre going to re-write
them from top to bottom. Why, if I think that the pen will fall
right out of my fingers, and I may not be able to pick it up. . . .
You understand Im not saying, or even remotely thinking,
that these new and year-old stories are beyond criticism, or that
they wont need editing. Not true. Not true in either case. Youre
as close to me, and my work, you couldnt be closer, if you were
my blood brother. Youre the left side of me. Or the right side,
take your pick. But I guess Im trying to say here that were
going to have to work very closely together on this bookthe
most important book of them all for me, at every stage, and be
careful and understanding with each other. Gordon, the last book
passed as if in a dream for me. This one cant go that way, and
we both know it.
October 3, 1982
Listen, Ive finished work on the new Knopf book of stories.
Last week I got them all back from the typist and I spent all day
today reading them through. Its going to be something, that
book. I thought I would try and put them in order, the order Id
like to see them in the book, but just a few minutes ago gave up
on that. Ill leave that up to you. I dont have a title, either. We
talked, a year ago, about calling the book Cathedral. Thats
fine with me and maybe lead off with that story and finish with
Fever, a long story, or A Small Good Thing, another long
story. But I will leave the arrangement of the stories up to you.
You know I want and have to have autonomy on this book and
that the stories have to come out looking very essentially the way
they look right now. Im of course not saying we cant change
words or phrases or a line here and there, and punctuation, sure.
But after youve read the book, Ill come down and well talk
about titles, the ordering, or any suggestions you might have.
October 29, 1982
As I said before, I would be happy with either title,
Cathedral or Where Im Calling From. . . . My biggest
concern, as you know, is that the stories remain intact. Oh,

Christ, sure, you know, if you see some words or sentences that
can be trimmed, thats fine, trim them. You know what Im
saying. Please help me with this book as a good editor, the
best . . . but not as my ghost. I tell you, I may be reading it all
wrongand if I am, I dont care, in a very profound waybut I
think there is a great deal of good will established toward me, or
for me; and this book, the stories, are going to be so different, in
so many regards, from so many of the earlier stories, that the
book is going to be met with a good show of enthusiasm, even
celebration. And, yes, Im eager to have that artist you were
talking about do something for the cover, if she can. Yes, for
sure. I hope that works out. (But that, finally, will be your final
decision; the matter of the text, in this case, has to be mine.)
November 19, 1982
From Lish to Carver
Dear RayHeres Where Im Calling From reworked to
the extent that I think it must beas basic as I can keep it. Im
aware that weve agreed that I will try to keep my editing of the
stories as slight as I deem possible, that you do not want me to
do the extensive work I did on the first two collections. So be it,
Ray. What you see in this sample is that minimum: to do less
than this, would be, in my judgment, to expose you too greatly.
At all events, look: if this is in keeping with your wishes, call
quickly and say soand I will then be guided thereby in my
handling of the rest of the stories. Love, G.
January 21, 1983
From Carver to Lish
Whats the matter, dont you love me anymore? I never hear
from you. Have you forgotten me already? Well, Im going back
to the [Paris Review] interview and take out all the good things I
said about you.

Echoes of Our Own Lives

Interview with Raymond Carver, 2000
David Koehne,
Conducted April 15, 1978.
It is late afternoon, a Saturday and we
are sitting in my apartment drinking
coffee. Outside the living room window
some neighborhood children are arguing. A
station wagon moves slowly down the
street. It could be the opening scene from one of his short stories,
because it is seemingly ordinary. Raymond Carver lights his
cigarette, gestures slightly with the match, leans forward.
You are not your characters, but your characters are you, he
says.
An interesting observation, considering the many roles that
Carver has played in his lifetime. He has been a janitor, a saw
mill hand, a delivery man, a retail clerk, and an editor of a
publishing firm. He taught fiction writing at several universities,
including the Iowa Writers Workshop in 1973-1974.
For the next few months, however, Carver will simply be
living in Iowa City, working on several writing projects before
leaving the Midwest to join the faculty of Goddard College in
Vermont.
This is a new time in my life. My children are both grown,
and I just received a Guggenheim Fellowship. I have large
blocks of time to work with, he says.
Ive been working on a novel. I had already received an
advance from the publisher, but theyve agreed to accept a
collection of short stories this fall, instead.

Carver has previously published two collections of his short

stories: Will you Please Be Quiet, Please?, which was a National
Book Award nominee for 1977, and Furious Seasons, which
contains his Pushcart Prize-winning story, So Much Water So
Close To Home.
Carver thinks of himself primarily as a fiction writer,
although he has published three excellent volumes of poetry and
is assembling a fourth.
A year ago I thought I d never write another poem. I dont
know exactly what it is, but since Ive been in Iowa City Ive
written an entire book. The past few weeks have been very
good.
We talk a while about the division that is sometimes evident
between a writers poetry and her-his prose. I suggest that
Carvers poems often resemble his fiction. He lights another
cigarette.
I believe a plotline is very important. Whether I am writing
a poem or writing prose I am still trying to tell a story. For a long
time I wrote poems because I didnt have the time to write short
stories. The nice thing about a poem is that there is i nstant
gratification. And if something goes wrong, its right there. It
would be a hard thing for me to work for months on a novel and
then have it be bad. It would be a tremendous investment for me,
and I dont have a very long attention span.
If it is fair to say that Carvers poems resemble his short
stories, it is equally true that his short stories have a poetic
intensity. The language is very clear and deceptively simple. The
reader is never certain where the action is going until she-he
arrives.
Raymond Carver has tremendous skill with dialogue, and his
characters remain tangible in the most bizarre situations.
In the story, Whats In Alaska, Mary and Carl spend an
evening with Jack and Helen, trying out the water pipe Jack
received for his birthday. Carver not only simulates the
conversations of four stoned adults with amusing accuracy, he
succeeds in subtly suggesting a series of conflicts that create a
kind of subliminal tension in the reader, a tension that culminates
in the disturbing last line of the story.
Carvers fiction quite often encourages a kind of empathic
response in his readers. This is due to his keen eye for common,
small details, details we imagine unique to our personal histories.
Therefore we sometimes forget we are reading fictions, suspec t
that we are dealing with echoes of our own words, our own lives.
We refill our coffee cups and I ask him about process, the
origins of his stories. He pauses for a moment.
A lot of things come from experience, or sometimes from
something Ive heard, a line somewhere.
I mention that often his titles are taken from lines in his
stories. He leans forward.
You start writing. Sometimes you dont find what you are
trying to say in the story until you turn a line, and then suddenly
you know where the story is going. You just have to discover as
you go. Then when you get that first draft, you go back.
Everything is important in a story, every word, every
punctuation mark. I believe very much in economy in fiction.
Some of my stories, like Neighbors, were three times as long in
their first drafts. I really like the process of rewriting.
Beginnings are very important. A story is either blessed or
cursed with its opening lines. Editors have so many manuscripts
to look through that often all they do is look at the first paragraph
or two, unless its an author they know.
Apparently Carver knows what hes doing, because his
stories have been included in some of the most competitive
collections in the country: Best American Short Stories, and O.
Henry Prize Stories.
The longest pause in our conversation follows my question,
What do you think about writing programs, such as the Iowa

Writers Workshop? I know you were a student here several

years ago.
I think writing programs can be a good thing, a place to
learn craft. Of course, one problem is that a lot of people who are
active in the writing program are never heard from again after
they leave it. They move away from the school and they just stop
writing.
My time at Iowa wasnt very productive. I didnt put much
work up. I was here for two semesters and I left before I could
get my M.F.A.
The important thing is to find someone you can work with.
For me it was John Gardner. He was there at a very important
time in my development.
Carver will read in the English lounge at 8 p.m. today; he will
read, perhaps, the title story from his new collection of short
fiction, Why Dont You Dance? [not published under this title].
I might read another story, also, he says. Put Yourself In
My Shoes. Ill decide on Tuesday.
Carver stands up, looks at me, his cup in his hand. Is there
anymore coffee? he asks.

Rock Springs

Richard Ford

RICHARD FORD (1944-) was born in Jackson, Mississippi, the

only child of a traveling salesman for a starch company, and was
raised in Mississippi and in Arkansas. He went to college at
Michigan State University, where he met Kristina Hensley, to
whom he has been married since 1968. Ford attended law
school briefly before entering the University of California at
Irvine, where he received his M.F.A. in fiction writing in 1970.
His novels are A Piece of My Heart, The Ultimate Good Luck,
The Sportswriter, Wildlife, and, most recently, Women with Men
and Independence Day, the only novel to win both the Pulitzer
Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction. Ford has taught
writing and literature at the University of Michigan at Ann
Arbor, at Princeton University, and at Williams College. He
lives in New Orleans, where Kristina, is the head of the cityplanning commission. He travels frequently and also spends
time on a plantation in the Mississippi Delta and at his cabin in
Chinook, Montana.

Edna and I had started down from Kalispell, heading for TampaSt. Pete where I still had some friends from the old glory days
who wouldn't turn me in to the police. I had managed to scrape
with the law in Kalispell over several bad checkswhich is a
prison crime in Montana. And I knew Edna was already looking
at her cards and thinking about a move, since it wasn't the first
time I'd been in law scrapes in my life. She herself had already
had her own troubles, losing her kids and keeping her exhusband, Danny, from breaking in her house and stealing her
things while she was at work, which was really why I had moved
in in the first place, that and needing to give my litde daughter,
Cheryl, a better shake in things.
I don't know what was between Edna and me, just beached
by the same tides when you got down to it. Though love has
been built on frailer ground than that, as I well know. And when
I came in the house that afternoon, I just asked her if she
wanted to go to Florida with me, leave things where they sat,
and she said, "Why not? My datebook's not that full."
Edna and I had been a pair eight months, more or less man
and wife, some of which time I had been out of work, and some
when Fd worked at the dog track as a lead-out and could help
with the rent and talk sense to Danny when he came around.
Danny was afraid of me because Edna had told him I'd been in
prison in Florida for killing a man, though that wasn't true. I
had once been in jail in Tallahassee for stealing tires and had
gotten into a fight on the county farm where a man had lost his
eye. But I hadn't done the hurting, and Edna just wanted the
story worse than it was so Danny wouldn't act crazy and make
her have to take her kids back, since she had made a good
adjustment to not having them, and I already had Cheryl with
me. I'm not a violent person and would never put a man's eye
out, much less kill someone. My former wife, Helen, would
come all the way from Waikiki Beach to testify to that. We
never had violence, and I believe in crossing the street to stay
out of trouble's way. Though Danny didn't know that.
But we were half down through Wyoming, going toward 180 and feeling good about things, when the oil light flashed on
in die car I'd stolen, a sign I knew to be a bad one.
I'd gotten us a good car, a cranberry Mercedes I'd stolen out
of an ophthalmologist's lot in Whitefish, Montana. I stole it
because I thought it would be comfortable over a long haul,
because I thought it got good mileage, which it didn't, and
because I'd never had a good car in my life, just old Chevy
junkers and used trucks back from when I was a kid swamping
citrus with Cubans.
The car made us all high that day. I ran the windows up and
down, and Edna told us some jokes and made faces. She could
be lively. Her features would light up like a beacon and you
could see her beauty, which wasn't ordinary. It all made me
giddy, and I drove clear down to Bozeman, then straight on
through the park to Jackson Hole. I rented us the bridal suite in
the Quality Court in Jackson and left Cheryl and her little dog,
Duke, sleeping while Edna and I drove to a rib barn and drank
beer and laughed till after midnight. It felt like a whole new
beginning for us, bad memories left behind and a new horizon
to build on. I got so worked up, I had a tattoo done on my arm
that said FAMOUS TIMES, and Edna bought a Bailey hat with an
Indian feather band and a little turquoise-and-silver bracelet for
Cheryl, and we made love on the seat of the car in the Quality
Court parking lot just as the sun was burning up on the Snake
River, and everything seemed tlien like the end of the rainbow.
It was that very enthusiasm, in fact, that made me keep the car

one day longer instead of driving it into the river and stealing
another one, like I should've done and had done before.
Where the car went bad there wasn't a town in sight or even
a house, just some low mountains maybe fifty miles away or
maybe a hundred, a barbed-wire fence in both directions,
hardpan prairie, and some hawks riding the evening air seizing
insects.
I got out to look at the motor, and Edna got out with Cheryl
and the dog to let them have a pee by the car. I checked the
water and checked the oil stick, and both of them said perfect.
"What's that light mean, Earl?" Edna said. She had come and
stood by the car with her hat on. She was just sizing things up
for herself.
"We shouldn't run it," I said. "Something's not right in the
oil."
She looked around at Cheryl and Little Dulce, who were
peeing on the hardtop side-by-side like two little dolls, then out
at the mountains, which were becoming black and lost in the
distance. "What're we doing?" she said. She wasn't worried yet,
but she wanted to know what I was thinking about.
"Let me try it again."
"That's a good idea," she said, and we all got back in the car.
When I turned the motor over, it started right away and the
red light stayed off and there weren't any noises to make you
think something was wrong. I let it idle a minute, then pushed
the accelerator down and watched the red bulb. But there wasn't
any light on, and I started wondering if maybe I hadn't dreamed
I saw it, Or that it had been the sun catching an angle off the
window chrome, or maybe I was scared of something and didn't
know it.
"What's the matter with it, Daddy?" Cheryl said from the
backseat. I looked back at her, and she had on her turquoise
bracelet and Edna's hat set back on the back of her head and
that little black-and-white Heinz dog on her lap. She looked
like a little cowgirl in the movies.
"Nothing, honey, everything's fine now," I said.
"Little Duke tinkled where I tinkled," Cheryl said, and
laughed.
"You're two of a kind," Edna said, not looking back. Edna
was usually good with Cheryl, but I knew she was tired now.
We hadn't had much sleep, and she had a tendency to get
cranky when she didn't sleep. "We oughta ditch this damn car
first chance we get," she said.
"What's the first chance we got?" I asked, because I knew
she'd been at the map, .
"Rock Springs, Wyoming," Edna said with conviction.
"Thirty miles down this road." She pointed out ahead.
I had wanted all along to drive the car into Florida like a big
success story. But I knew Edna was right about it, that we
shouldn't take crazy chances. I had kept thinking of it as my car
and not the ophthalmologist's, and that was how you got caught
in these things,
"Then my belief is we ought to go to Rock Springs and
negotiate ourselves a new car," I said. I wanted to stay upbeat,
like everything was panning out right.
"That's a great idea," Edna said, and she leaned over and
kissed me hard on the mouth.
"That's a great idea," Cheryl said. "Let's pull on out of here
right now."
The sunset that day I remember as being the prettiest I'd ever
seen. Just as it touched the rim of the horizon, it all at once fired
the air into jewels and red sequins the precise likes of which I
had never seen before and haven't seen since. The West has it
all over everywhere for sunsets, even Florida, where it's
supposedly flat but where half the time trees block your view.

"It's cocktail hour," Edna said after we'd driven awhile. "We
ought to have a drink and celebrate something." She felt better
thinking we were going to get rid of the car. It certainly had
dark troubles and was something you'd want to put behind you.
Edna had out a whiskey bottle and some plastic cups and
was measuring levels on the glove-box lid. She liked drinking,
and she liked drinking in the car, which was something you got
used to in Montana, where it wasn't against the law, but where,
strangely enough, a bad check would land you in Deer Lodge
Prison for a year.
"Did I ever tell you I once had a monkey?" Edna said,
setting my drink on the dashboard where I could reach it when I
was ready. Her spirits were already picked up. She was like
that, up one minute and down the next. "I don't think you ever
did tell me that," I said. "Where were you then?" "Missoula,"
she said. She put her bare feet on the dash and rested the cup on
her breasts. "I was waitressing at the AmVets. This was before I
met you. Some guy came in one day with a monkey. A spider
monkey. And I said, just to be joking, Til roll you for that
monkey.' And the guy said, 'Just one roll?' And I said, 'Sure.' He
put the monkey down on the bar, picked up the cup, and rolled
out boxcars. I picked it up and rolled out three fives. And I just
stood there looking at the guy. He was just some guy passing
through, I guess a vet. He got a strange look on his faceI'm
sure not as strange as the one I hadbut he looked kind of sad
and surprised and satisfied all at once. I said, 'We can roll
again.' But he said, 'No, I never roll twice for anything.' And he
sat and drank a beer and talked about one thing and another for
a while, about nuclear war and building a stronghold
somewhere up in the Bitterroot, whatever it was, while I just
watched the monkey, wondering what I was going to do with it
when the guy left. And pretty soon he got up and said, 'Well,
good-bye, Chipper'that was this monkey's name, of course.
And then he left before I could say anything. And the monkey
just sat on the bar all that night. I don't know what made me
think of that, Earl. Just something weird. I'm letting my mind
wander."
"That's perfectly fine," I said. I took a drink of my drink. "I'd
never own a monkey," I said after a minute. "They're too nasty.
I'm sure Cheryl would like a monkey, though, wouldn't you,
honey?" Cheryl was down on the seat playing with Little Duke.
She used to talk about monkeys all the time then. "What'd you
ever do with that monkey?" I said, watching the speedometer.
We were having to go slower now because the red light kept
fluttering on. And all I could do to keep it off was go slower.
We were going maybe thirty-five and it was an hour before
dark, and I was hoping Rock Springs wasn't far away.
"You really want to know?" Edna said. She gave me a quick
glance, then looked back at the empty desert as if she was
brooding over it.
"Sure," I said. I was still upbeat. I figured I could worry
about breaking down and let other people be happy for a
change.
"I kept it a week." And she seemed gloomy all of a sudden,
as if she saw some aspect of the story she had never seen
before. "I took it home and back and forth to the Am Vets on
my shifts. And it didn't cause any trouble. I fixed a chair up for
it to sit on, back of the bar, and people liked it. It made a nice
little clicking noise. We changed its name to Mary because the
bartender figured out it was a girl. Though I was never really
comfortable with it at home. I felt like it watched me too much.
Then one day a guy came in, some guy who'd been in Vietnam,
still wore a fatigue coat. And he said to me, 'Don't you know
that a monkey'U kill you? It's got more strength in its fingers
than you got in your whole body.' He said people had been
killed in Vietnam by monkeys, bunches of them marauding
while you were asleep, killing you and covering you with

leaves. I didn't believe a word of it, except that when I got

home and got undressed I started looking over across the room
at Mary on her chair in the dark watching me. And I got the
creeps. And after a while I got up and went out to the car, got a
length of clothesline wire, and came back in and wired her to
the doorknob through her little silver collar, then went back and
tried to sleep. And I guess I must've slept the sleep of the dead
though I don't remember itbecause when I got up I found
Mary had tipped off her chair-back and hanged herself on the
wire line. I'd made it too short."
Edna seemed badly affected by that story and slid low in die
seat so she couldn't see out over the dash. "Isn't that a shameful
story, Earl, what happened to that poor little monkey?"
"I see a town! I see a town!" Cheryl started yelling from the
backseat, and right up Little Duke started yapping and the
whole car fell into a racket. And sure enough she had seen
something I hadn't, which was Rock Springs, Wyoming, at the
bottom of a long hill, a little glowing jewel in the desert with 180 running on the north side and the black desert spread out
behind.
"That's it, honey," I said. "That's where we're going. You saw
it first." "We're hungry," Cheryl said. "Little Duke wants some
fish, and I want spaghetti." She put her arms around my neck
and hugged me.
"Then you'll just get it," I said. "You can have anything you
want. And so can Edna and so can Little Duke." I looked over
at Edna, smiling, but she was staring at me with eyes that were
fierce with anger. "What's wrong?" I said.
"Don't you care anything about that awful thing that
happened to me?" Her mouth was drawn tight, and her eyes
kept cutting back at Cheryl and Little Duke, as if they had been
tormenting her.
"Of course I do," I said. "I thought that was an awful thing."
I didn't want her to be unhappy. We were almost there, and
pretty soon we could sit down and have a real meal without
thinking somebody might be hurting us.
"You want to know what I did with that monkey?" Edna
said.
"Sure I do," I said.
"I put her in a green garbage bag, put it in the trunk of my
car, drove to the dump, and threw her in the trash." She was
staring at me darkly, as if the story meant something to her that
was real important but that only she could see and that the rest
of the world was a fool for.
"Well, that's horrible," I said. "But I don't see what else you
could do. You didn't mean to kill it. You'd have done it
differently if you had. And then you had to get rid of it, and I
don't know what else you could have done. Throwing it away
might seem unsympathetic to somebody, probably, but not to
me. Sometimes that's all you can do, and you can't worry about
what somebody else thinks." I tried to smile at her, but the red
light was staying on if I pushed the accelerator at all, and I was
trying to gauge if we could coast to Rock Springs before the car
gave out completely. I looked at Edna again. "What else can I
say?" I said.
"Nothing," she said, and stared back at the dark highway. "I
should've known that's what you'd think. You've got a character
that leaves something out, Earl. I've known that a long time."
"And yet here you are," I said. "And you're not doing so bad.
Things could be a lot worse. At least we're all together here."
"Things could always be worse," Edna said. "You could go
to the electric chair tomorrow."
"That's right," I said. "And somewhere somebody probably
will. Only it won't be you."
"I'm hungry," said Cheryl. "When're we gonna eat? Let's
find a motel. I'm tired of this. Little Duke's tired of it too."

Where the car stopped rolling was some distance from the
town, though you could see the clear oudine of the interstate in
the dark with Rock Springs lighting up the sky behind. You
could hear die big tractors hitting, die spacers in the overpass,
revving up for the climb to the mountains.
I shut off the lights.
"What're we going to do now?" Edna said irritably, giving
me a bitter look.
"I'm figuring it," I said. "It won't be hard, whatever it is. You
won't have to do anything."
"I'd hope not," she said and looked the other way.
Across the road and across a dry wash a hundred yards was
what looked like a huge mobile-home town, with a factory or a
refinery of some kind lit up behind it and in full swing. There
were lights on in a lot of the mobile homes, and there were cars
moving along an access road that ended near the freeway
overpass a mile the other way. The lights in the mobile homes
seemed friendly to me, and I knew right then what I should do.
"Get out," I said, opening my door.
"Are we walking?" Edna said.
"We're pushing."
"I'm not pushing." Edna reached up and locked her door.
"All right," I said. "Then you just steer."
"You're pushing us to Rock Springs, are you, Earl? It doesn't
look like it's more than about three miles."
"I'll push," Cheryl said from the back.
"No, hon. Daddy 11 push. You just get out with Little Duke
and move out of the way."
Edna gave me a threatening look, just as if I'd tried to hit her.
But when I got out she slid into my seat and took the wheel,
staring angrily ahead straight into the cottonwood scrub.
"Edna can't drive that car," Cheryl said from out in the dark.
"She'll run it in the ditch."
"Yes, she can, hon. Edna can drive it as good as I can.
Probably better."
"No she can't," Cheryl said. "No she can't either." And I
thought she was about to cry, but she didn't.
I told Edna to keep the ignition on so it wouldn't lock up and
to steer into the cottonwoods with the parking lights on so she
could see. And when I started, she steered it straight off into the
trees, and Lkept pushing until we were twenty yards into the
cover and the tires sank in the soft sand and nothing at all could
be seen from the road.
"Now where are we?" she said, sitting at the wheel. Her
voice was tired and hard, and I knew she could have put a good
meal to use. She had a sweet nature, and I recognized that this
wasn't her fault but mine. Only I wished she could be more
hopeful.
"You stay right here, and I'll go over to that trailer park and
call us a cab;" I said.
"What cab?" Edna said, her mouth wrinkled as if she'd never
heard anything like that in her life.
"There'll be cabs," I said, and tried to smile at her. "There's
cabs everywhere."
"What're you going to tell him when he gets here? Our
stolen car broke down and we need a ride to where we can steal
another one,? That'll bea big hit, Earl."
"I'll talk," I said. "You just listen to the radio for ten minutes
and then walk on out to the shoulder like nothing was
suspicious. And you and Cheryl act nice. She doesn't need to
know about this car."
"Like we're not suspicious enough already, right?" Edna
looked up at me out of the lighted car. "You don't think right,
did you know that, Earl? You think the world's stupid and
you're smart. But that's not how it is. I feel sorry for you. You

might've been something, but things just went crazy

someplace."
I had a thought about poor Danny. He was a vet and crazy as
a shit-house mouse, and I was glad he wasn't in for all this.
"Just get the baby in the car," I said, trying to be patient. "I'm
hungry like you are."
"I'm tired of this," Edna said. "I wish I'd stayed in Montana."
"Then you can go back in the morning," I said. "I'll buy the
ticket and put you on the bus. But not till then."
"Just get on with it, Earl." She slumped down in the seat,
turning off the parking lights with one foot and the radio on
with the other.
The mobile-home community was as big as any I'd ever seen. It
was attached in some way to the plant that was lighted up
behind it, because I could see a car once in a while leave one of
the trailer streets, turn in the direction of the plant, then go
slowly into it. Everything in the plant was white, and you could
see that all the trailers were painted white and looked exactly
alike. A deep hum came out of the plant, and I thought as I got
closer that it wouldn't be a location I'd ever want to work in.
I went right to the first trailer where there was a light, and
knocked on the metal door. Kids' toys were lying in the gravel
around the little wood steps, and I could hear talking on TV that
suddenly went off. I heard a woman's voice talking, and then
the door opened wide.
A large Negro woman with a wide, friendly face stood in the
doorway. She smiled at me and moved forward as if she was
going to come out, but she stopped at the top step. There was a
little Negro boy behind her peeping out from behind her legs,
watching me with his eyes half closed. The trailer had
that feeling that no one else was inside, which was a feeling I
knew something about.
"I'm sorry to intrude," I said. "But I've run up on a little bad
luck tonight. My names Earl Middleton."
The woman looked at me, then out into the night toward the
freeway as if what I had said was something she was going to
be able to see. ""What kind of bad luck?" she said, looking
down at me again.
"My car broke down out on the highway," I said. "I can't fix
it myself, and I wondered if I could use your phone to call for
help."
The woman smiled down at me knowingly. "We can't live
without cars, can we?"
"That's the honest truth," I said.
"They're like our hearts," she said, her face shining in the
little bulb light that burned beside the door. "Where's your car
situated?"
I turned and looked over into the dark, but I couldn't see
anything because of where we'd put it. "It's over there," I said.
"You can't see it in the dark"
"Who all's with you now?" the woman said. "Have you got
your wife with you?"
"She's with my little girl and our dog in the car," I said. "My
daughter's asleep or I would have brought them."
"They shouldn't be left in the dark by themselves," the
woman said and frowned. "There's too much unsavoriness out
there."
"The best I can do is hurry back." I tried to look sincere,
since everything except Cheryl being asleep and Edna being my
wife was the truth. The truth is meant to serve you if you'll let
it, and I wanted it to serve me. "I'll pay for the phone call," I
said. "If you'll bring the phone to the door I'll call from right
here."
The woman looked at me again as if she was searching for a
truth of her own, then back out into the night. She was maybe

in her sixties, but I couldn't say for sure. "You're not going to
rob me, are you, Mr. Middleton?" She smiled like it was a joke
between us.
"Not tonight," I said, and smiled a genuine smile. "I'm not
up to it tonight. Maybe another time."
"Then I guess Terrel and I canlet you use our phone with
Daddy not here, can't we, Terrel? This is my grandson, Terrel
Junior, Mr. Middleton." She put her hand on the boy's head and
looked down at him. "Terrel won't talk. Though if he did he'd
tell you to use our phone. He's a sweet boy." She opened die
screen for me to come in.
The trailer was a big one with a new rug and a new couch
and a living room that expanded to give the space of a real
house. Something good and sweet was cooking in the kitchen,
and the trailer felt like it was somebody's comfortable new
home instead of just temporary. I've lived in trailers, but they
were just snailbacks with one room and no toilet, and they
always felt cramped and unhappythough I've thought maybe
it might've been me that was unhappy in them.
There was a big Sony TV and a lot of kids' toys scattered on
the floor. I recognized a Greyhound bus I'd gotten for Cheryl.
The phone was beside a new leather recliner, and the Negro
woman pointed for me to sit down and call and gave me the
phone book. Terrel began fingering his toy's and the woman sat
on the couch while I called, watching me and smiling.
There were three listings for cab companies, all with one
number different. I called the numbers in order and didn't get an
answer until the last one, which answered with the name of the
second company. I said I was on the highway beyond the
interstate and that my wife and family needed to be taken to
town and I would arrange for a tow later. While I was giving
the location, I looked up the name of a tow service to tell the
driver in case he asked.
When I hung up, the Negro woman was sitting looking at me
with the same look she had been staring with into the dark, a
look that seemed to want truth. She was smiling, though.
Something pleased her and I reminded her of it.
"This is a very nice home," I said, resting in the recliner,
which felt like the driver's seat of the Mercedes, and where I'd
have been happy to stay.
"This isn't our house, Mr. Middleton," the Negro woman
said. "The company owns these. They give them to us for
nothing. We have our own home in Rockford, Illinois."
"That's wonderful," I said.
"It's never wonderful when you have to be away from home,
Mr. Middle-ton, though we're only here three months, and it'll
be easier when Terrel Junior begins his special school. You see,
our son was killed in the war, and his wife ran off without
Terrel Junior. Though you shouldn't worry. He can't understand
us. His little feelings can't be hurt." The woman folded her
hands in her lap and smiled in a satisfied way. She was an
attractive woman, and had on a blue-and-pink floral dress diat
made her seem bigger than she could've been, just the right
woman to sit on the couch she was sitting on. She was good
natures picture, and I was glad she could be, with her little
brain-damaged boy, living in a place where no one in his right
mind would want to live a minute. "Where do you live, Mr.
Middleton?" she said politely, smiling in the same sympathetic
way.
"My family and I are in transit," I said. "I'm an
ophthalmologist, and we're moving back to Florida, where I'm
from. I'm setting up practice in some little town where it's warm
year-round. I haven't decided where."
"Florida's a wonderful place," the woman said. "I think
Terrel would like it there."
Could I ask you something? 1 said.

"You certainly may," tlie woman said. Terrel had begun

pushing his Greyhound across the front of the TV screen,
making a scratch that no one watching the set could miss. "Stop
that, Terrel Junior," the woman said quiedy. But Terrel kept
pushing his bus on the glass, and she smiled at me again as if
we both understood something sad. Except I knew Cheryl
would never damage a television set. She had respect for nice
things, and I was sorry for the lady that Terrel didn't. "What did
you want to ask?" the woman said.
"What goes on in that plant or whatever it is back there
beyond these trailers, where all the lights are on?"
"Gold," the woman said and smiled.
"It's what?" I said.
"Gold," the Negro woman said, smiling as she had for
almost all the time I'd been there. "It's a gold mine."
"They're mining gold back there?" I said, pointing.
"Every night and every day." She smiled in a pleased way.
__
"Does your husband work there?" I said.
"He's the assayer," she said. "He controls the quality. He
works three months a year, and we live the rest of the time at
home in Rockford. We've waited a long time for this. We've
been happy to have our grandson, but I won't say I'll be sorry to
have him go. We're ready to start our lives over." She smiled
broadly at me and then at Terrel, who was giving her a spiteful
look from the floor. "You said you had a daughter," the Negro
woman said. "And what's her name?"
"Irma Cheryl," I said. "She's named for my mother."
"That's nice. And she's healthy, too. I can see it in your face."
She looked at Terrel Junior with pity.
"I guess I'm lucky," I said.
"So far you are. But children bring you grief, the same way
they bring you joy. We were unhappy for a long time before my
husband got his job in the gold mine. Now, when Terrel starts to
school, we'll be kids again." She stood up. "You might miss
your cab, Mr. Middleton," she said, walking toward the door,
though not to be forcing me out. She was too polite. "If we can't
see your car, the cab surely won't be able to."
"That's true." I got up off die recliner, where I'd been so
comfortable. "None of us have eaten yet, and your food makes
me know how hungry we probably all are."
"There are fine restaurants in town, and you'll find them,"
the Negro woman said. "I'm sorry you didn't meet my husband.
He's a wonderful man. He's everything to me."
"Tell him I appreciate the phone," I said. "You saved me."
"You weren't hard to save," the woman said. "Saving people
is what we were all put on earth to do. I just passed you on to
whatever's coming to you."
"Let's hope it's good," I said, stepping back into the dark.
"I'll be hoping, Mr. Middleton. Terrel and I will both be
hoping."
I waved to her as I walked out into the darkness toward the
car where it was hidden in the night.
The cab had already arrived when I got there. I could see its
little red-and-green roof lights all the way across the dry wash,
and it made me worry that Edna was already saying sometxiing
to get us in trouble, something about the car or where we'd come
from, something that would cast suspicion on us. I thought, then,
how I never planned things well enough. There was always a
gap between my plan and what happened, and I only responded
to things as they came along and hoped I wouldn't get in trouble.
I was an offender in the law's eyes. But I always thought
differendy, as if I weren't an offender and had no intention of
being one, which was the truth. But as I read on a napkin once,
between the idea and the act a whole kingdom lies. And I had a

hard time with my acts, which were oftentimes offender's acts,

and my ideas, which were as good as the gold they mined there
where the bright lights were blazing.
"We're waiting for you, Daddy," Cheryl said when I crossed
the road. "The taxicab's already here."
"I see, hon," I said, and gave Cheryl a big hug. The
cabdriver was sitting in the driver's seat having a smoke with
the lights on inside. Edna was leaning against the back of the
cab between the taillights, wearing her Bailey hat. "What'd you
tell him?" I said when I got close.
"Nothing," she said. "What's there to tell?"
"Did he see the car?"
She glanced over in the direction of tlie trees where we had
hid the Mercedes. Nothing was visible in the darkness, though I
could hear Little Duke combing around in the underbrush
tracking something, his little collar tinkling. "Where're we
going?" she said. "I'm so hungry I could pass out."
"Edna's in a terrible mood," Cheryl said. "She already
snapped at me."
"We're tired, honey," I said. "So try to be nicer."
"She's never nice," Cheryl said.
"Run go get Little Duke," I said. "And hurry back."
"I guess my questions come last here, right?" Edna said.
I put my arm around her. "That's not true."
"Did you find somebody over there in the trailers you'd
rather stay with? You were gone long enough."
"That's not a thing to say," I said. "I was just trying to make
things look right, so we don't get put in jail."
"Soyou don't, you mean." Edna laughed a little laugh I didn't
like hearing.
"That's right. So I don't," I said. "I'd be the one in Dutch." I
stared out at the big, lighted assemblage of white buildings and
white lights beyond the trailer community, plumes of white
smoke escaping up into the heardess Wyoming sky, the whole
company of buildings looking like some unbelievable casde,
humming away in a distorted dream. "You know what all those
buildings are there?" I said to Edna, who hadn't moved and who
didn't really seem to care if she ever moved anymore ever.
"No. But I can't say it matters, because it isn't a motel and it
isn't a restaurant."
"It's a gold mine," I said, staring at the gold mine, which, I
knew now, was a greater distance from us than it seemed,
though it seemed huge and near, up against the cold sky. I
thought there should've been a wall around it with guards
instead of just the lights and no fence. It seemed as if anyone
could go in and take what they wanted, just the way I had gone
up to that woman's trailer and used the telephone, though that
obviously wasn't true.
Edna began to laugh then. Not the mean laugh I didn't like,
but a laugh that had something caring behind it, a full laugh that
enjoyed a joke, a laugh she was laughing the first time I laid
eyes on her, in Missoula in the East Gate Bar in 1979, a laugh
we used to laugh together when Cheryl was still with her
mother and I was working steady at the track and not stealing
cars or passing bogus checks to merchants. A better time all
around. And for some reason it made me laugh just hearing her,
and we both stood there behind the cab in the dark, laughing at
the gold mine in the desert, me with my arm around her and
Cheryl out rusding up Little Duke and the cabdriver smoking in
the cab and our stolen Mercedes-Benz, which I'd had such
hopes for in Florida, stuck up to its axle in sand, where I'd
never get to see it again.
"I always wondered what a gold mine would look like when
I saw it," Edna said, still laughing, wiping a tear from her eye.
"Me too," I said. "I was always curious about it."

"We're a couple of fools, aren't we, Earl?" she said, unable to

quit laughing completely. "We're two of a kind."
"It might be a good sign, though," I said.
"How could it be? It's not our gold mine. There aren't any
drive-up windows." She was still laughing.
"We've seen it," I said, pointing. "That's it right there. It may
mean we're getting closer. Some people never see it at all."
"In a pig's eye, Earl," she said. "You and me see it in a pig's
eye."
And she turned and got in the cab to go.
The cabdriver didn't ask anything about our car or where it was,
to mean he'd noticed something queer. All of which made me
feel like we had made a clean break from the car and couldn't be
connected with it until it was too late, if ever. The driver told us
a lot about Rock Springs while he drove, that because of the
gold mine a lot of people had moved there in just six months,
people from all over, including New York, and that most of them
lived out in the trailers. Prostitutes from New York City, who he
called "B-girls," had come into town, he said, on the prosperity
tide, and Cadillacs with New York plates cruised the little streets
every night, full of Negroes with big hats who ran the women.
He told us that everybody who got in his cab now wanted to
know where the women were, and when he got our call he
almost didn't come because some of the trailers were brothels
operated by the mine for engineers and computer people away
from home. He said he got tired of running back and forth out
there just for vile business. He said that 60 Minutes had even
done a program about Rock Springs and that a blow-up had
resulted in Cheyenne, though nothing could be done unless the
boom left town. "It's prosperity's fruit," the driver said. "I'd
rather be poor, which is lucky for me."
He said all the motels were sky-high, but since we were a
family he could show us a nice one that was affordable. But I
told him we wanted a first-rate place where they took animals,
and the money didn't matter because we had had a hard day and
wanted to finish on a high note. I also knew that it was in the
little nowhere places that die police look for you and find you.
People I'd known were always being arrested in cheap hotels
and tourist courts with names you'd never heard of before.
Never in Holiday Inns orTraveLodges.
I asked him to drive us to the middle of town and back out
again so Cheryl could see the train station, and while we were
there I saw a pink Cadillac with New York plates and a TV
aerial being driven slowly by a Negro in a big hat down a
narrow street where there were just bars and a Chinese
restaurant. It was an odd sight, nothing you could ever expect.
"There's your pure criminal element," the cabdriver said and
seemed sad. "I'm sorry for people like you to see a thing like
that. We've got a nice town here, but there're some that want to
ruin it for everybody. There used to be a way to deal with trash
and criminals, but those days are gone forever."
"You said it," Edna said.
"You shouldn't let it get you down," I said to him. "There's
more of you than them. And there always will be. You're die
best advertisement this town has. I know Cheryl will remember
you and not that man, won't you, honey?" But Cheryl was
asleep by then, holding Little Duke in her arms on the taxi seat.
The driver took us to the Ramada Inn on the interstate, not
far from where we'd broken down. I had a small pain of regret
as we drove under the Ramada awning that we hadn't driven up
in a cranberry-colored Mercedes but instead in a beat-up old
Chrysler taxi driven by an old man full of complaints.
Though I knew it was for the best. We were better off without
that car; better, really, in any other car but that one, where the
signs had turned bad.

I registered under another name and paid for the room in

cash so there wouldn't be any questions. On the line where it
said "Representing" I wrote "Ophthalmologist" and put "M.D."
after the name. It had a nice look to it, even though it wasn't my
name.
When we got to the room, which was in the back where I'd
asked for it, I put Cheryl on one of the beds and Little Duke
beside her so they'd sleep. She'd missed dinner, but it only
meant she'd be hungry in the morning, when she could have
anything she wanted. A few missed meals don't make a kid bad.
I'd missed a lot of them myself and haven't turned out
completely bad.
"Let's have some fried chicken," I said to Edna when she
came out of the bathroom. "They have good fried chicken at
Ramadas, and I noticed the buffet was still up. Cheryl can stay
right here, where it's safe, till we're back."
"I guess I'm not hungry anymore," Edna said. She stood at
the window staring out into the dark. I could see out the
window past her some yellowish foggy glow in the sky. For a
moment I thought it was the gold mine out in the distance
lighting the night, though it was only the interstate.
"We could order up," I said. "Whatever you want. There's a
menu on the phone book. You could just have a salad."
"You go ahead," she said. "I've lost my hungry spirit." She
sat on the bed beside Cheryl and Little Duke and looked at
them in a sweet way and put her hand on Cheryl's cheek just as
if she'd had a fever. "Sweet little girl," she said. "Everybody
loves you."
"What do you want to do?" I said. "I'd like to eat. Maybe I'll
order up some chicken."
"Why don't you do that?" she said. "It's your favorite." And
she smiled at me from the bed.
I sat on the other bed and dialed room service. I asked for
chicken, garden salad, potato and a roll, plus a piece of hot
apple pie and iced tea. I realized I hadn't eaten all day. When I
put down the phone I saw that Edna was watching me, not in a
hateful way or a loving way, just in a way that seemed to say
she didn't understand something and was going to ask me about
it.
"When did watching me get so entertaining?" I said and
smiled at her. I was trying to be friendly. I knew how tired she
must be. It was after nine o'clock.
"I was just thinking how much I hated being in a motel
without a car that was mine to drive. Isn't that funny? I started
feeling like that last night when that purple car wasn't mine.
That purple car just gave me the willies, I guess, Earl."
"One of those cars outside is yours," I said. "Just stand right
there and pick it out."
"I know," she said. "But that's different, isn't it?" She
reached and got her blue Bailey hat, put it on her head, and set
it way back like Dale Evans. She looked sweet. "I used to like
to go to motels, you know," she said. "There's something secret
about them and freeI was never paying, of course.-But you
felt safe from everything and free to do what you wanted
because you'd made the decision to be there and paid that price,
and all the rest was tie good part. Fucking and everything, you
know." She smiled at me in a good-natured way.
"Isn't that the way this is?" I was sitting on the bed, watching
her, not
knowing what to expect her to say next.
"I don't guess it is, Earl," she said and stared out the window.
"I'm thirty-two and I'm going to have to give up on motels. I
can't keep that fantasy going anymore."
"Don't you like this place?" I said and looked around at the
room. I appreciated the modern paintings and the lowboy
bureau and the big TV. It seemed like a plenty nice enough
place to me, considering where we'd been.

"No, I don't," Edna said with real conviction. "There's no use

in my getting mad at you about it. It isn't your fault. You do the
best you can for everybody. But every trip teaches you
something. And I've learned I need to give up on motels before
some bad thing happens to me. I'm sorry."
"What does that mean?" I said, because I really didn't know
what she had in mind to do, though I should've guessed.
"I guess I'll take that ticket you mentioned," she said, and
got up and faced the window. "Tomorrow's soon enough. We
haven't got a car to take me anyhow."
"Well, that's a fine thing," I said, sitting on the bed, feeling
like I was in shock. I wanted to say something to her, to argue
with her, but I couldn't think what to say that seemed right. I
didn't want to be mad at her, but it made me mad.
"You've got a right to be mad at me, Earl," she said, "but I
don't think you can really blame me." She turned around and
faced me and sat on the win-dowsill, her hands on her knees.
Someone knocked on die door, and I just yelled for them to set
the tiny down and put it on the bill.
"I guess I do blame you," I said, and I was angry. I thought
about how I couid've disappeared into that trailer community
and hadn't, had come back to keep things going, had tried to
take control of diings for everybody when they looked bad.
"Don't. I wish you wouldn't," Edna said and smiled at me
like she wanted me to hug her. "Anybody ought to have their
choice in things if they can. Don't you believe that, Earl? Here I
am out here in the desert where I don't know anything, in a
stolen car, in a motel room under an assumed name, with no
money of my own, a kid that's not mine, and the law after me.
And I have a choice to get out of all of it by getting on a bus.
What would you do? I know exactly what you'd do."
"You think you do," I said. But I didn't want to get into an
argument about it and tell her all I could've done and didn't do.
Because it wouldn't have done any good. When you get to the
point of arguing, you're past the point of changing anybody's
mind, even though it's supposed to be the other way, and maybe
for some classes of people it is, just never mine.
Edna smiled at me and came across the room and put her
arms around me where I was sitting on the bed. Cheryl rolled
over and looked at us and smiled, then closed her eyes, and the
room was quiet. I was beginning to think of Rock Springs in a
way I knew I would always think of it, a lowdown city full of
crimes and whores and disappointments, a place where a
woman left me, instead of a place where I got things on the
straight track once and for all, a place I saw a gold mine.
"Eat your chicken, Earl," Edna said. "Then we can go to bed.
I'm tired, but I'd like to make love to you anyway. None of this
is a matterof not loving you, you know that."
Sometime late in the night, after Edna was asleep, I got up
and walked outside into the parking lot. It could've been
anytime because there was still the light from the interstate
frosting the low sky and the big red Ramada sign humming
motionlessly in the night and no light at all in the east to
indicate it might be morning. The lot was full of cars all nosed
in, a couple of them with suitcases strapped to their roofs and
their trunks weighed down with belongings the people were
taking someplace, to a new home or a vacation resort in the
mountains. I had laid in bed a long time after Edna was asleep,
watching the Adanta Braves on television, trying to get my
mind off how I'd feel when I saw that bus pull away the next
day, and how I'd feel when I turned around and there stood
Cheryl and Little Duke and no one to see about them but me
alone, and that the first thing I had to do was get hold of some
automobile and get the plates switched, then get them some
breakfast and get us all on the road to Florida, all in the space
of probably two hours, since that Mercedes would certainly
look less hid in the daytime tiian the night, and word travels

fast. I've always taken care of Cheryl myself as long as I've had
her with me. None of the women ever did. Most of them didn't
even seem to like her, though they took care of me in a way so
that I could take care of her. And I knew that once Edna left, all
that was going to get harder. Though what I wanted most to do
was not think about it just for a little while, try to let my mind
go limp so it could be strong for the rest of what there was. I
thought that the difference between a successful life and an
unsuccessful one, between me at that moment and all the
people who owned the cars that were nosed into their proper
places in the lot, maybe between me and that woman out in the
trailers by the gold mine, was how well you were able to put
things like this out of your mind and not be bothered by them,
and maybe, too, by how many troubles like this one you had to
face in a lifetime. Through luck or design they had all faced
fewer troubles, and by their own characters, they forgot them
faster. And that's what I wanted for me. Fewer troubles, fewer
memories of trouble.
I walked over to a car, a Pontiac with Ohio tags, one of the
ones with bundles and suitcases strapped to the top and a lot
more in the trunk, by the way it was riding. I looked inside the
driver's window. There were maps and paperback books and
sunglasses and the little plastic holders for cans that hang on the
window wells. And in the back there were kids' toys and some
pillows and a cat box with a cat sitting in it staring up at me like
I was the face of the moon. It all looked familiar to me, the very
same things I would have in my car if I had a car. Nothing
seemed surprising, nothing different. Though I had a funny
sensation at that moment and turned and looked up at the
windows along the back of the motel. All were dark except two.
Mine and another one. And I wondered, because it seemed
funny, what would you think a man was doing if you saw him
in the middle of the night looking in the windows of cars in the
parking lot of the Ramada Inn? Would you think he was trying
to get his head cleared? Would you think he was trying to get
ready for a day when trouble would come down on him? Would
you think his girlfriend was leaving him? Would you think he
had a daughter? Would you think he was anybody like you?

heart of the 2000 election, then that set of events can be viewed
as a direct cause of the unthinkable circumstances in Iraq today,
the cause of so much loss of innocent life, and the cause of
Americas near-obliterated role as a potential force for good in
world affairs. Is all this Americas final fate? I surely hope not.
Its the fix were in today. And I hope we have a better, more
wholesome fate than this. But theres no doubt about what was
the initial event in the chain of events that landed us in this mess.

Why do you think so many American novelistssome

surprising ones, John Updike, some less so, Don
DeLillohave felt bound to confront 9/11 so directly
in fiction?
They were moved by those events. Its not very complicated. In
the case of DeLillo and Updike, theyre both supremely
accomplished writers whore unusually confident of their
abilities to make a subject their own. The fact that I wouldnt do
it, didnt do it, probably just means Im not their equal on either
front. Otherwise Id have surely done it. Right?

Much of Frank Bascombes dislocation and hurt

comes from the death of his son. All of your writing
seems to have some of this atmosphere of loss. Where
do you sense the source of that in your own life?

An Interview with Richard Ford

Richard Ford in conversation with one of Americas
foremost writers, Tim Adams.

When The Lay of the Land was completed you suggested

you would never write another long novel. Are you
still feeling that way?
I still feel that way, possibly even more that way. The Lay of
the Land was, for me, a big effort and, as efforts go, entirely
singular. And it requires a commensurate (if not exactly equal)
devotion from its readership. More than I cant imagine myself
writing such a long novel again (and I cant), I neither can
imagine wanting to write anything that would work on a reader
with anything like the same intense forcelength, complexity,
general largeness. Id like to write another novel, yes. Id like to
write plenty of things. But I cant imagine another such
undertaking as The Lay of the Land. Some things just dont
need to be done twiceespecially since I feel like I did it right
the first time.

You set that book at the time of the disputed first Bush
presidential election. Do you feel that election set
Americas fate?
It did set Americas fate. No question. Insofar as the election was
stolen by the Republicans, and insofar as the American electorate
was sufficiently uninspired as to permit such a close race, and
insofar as the two-party system (particularly the feckless
Democrats) allowed a man of George Bushs astonishing
incompetence and dishonesty to become the leader of our
countryinsofar as all these things are true and occurred at the

First of all, I dont think that a writer who writes about loss (if I
do) needs to have suffered loss himself. We can imagine loss.
Thats the writers job. We empathize, we project, we make
much of what might be small experience. Hemingway (as usual,
full of wind) said only write about what you know. But that
cant mean you should only write about what you yourself have
done or experienced. A rule like that pointlessly straps the
imagination, confines ones curiosity, ones capacity to
empathize. After all, a novel (if it chooses) can cause a reader to
experience sensation, emotion, to recognize behaviour that
reader may never have seen before. The writerll have to be able
to do that, too. Some subjects just cause what Katherine Anne
Porter called a commotion in the mind. That commotion may
or may not be a response to what we actually did on earth.
That said, I probably experienced loss no more fully than most
people. I was the child of older parents who I always was
fearfully expecting to die on me. And the old Arkansas aunties
and great uncles did start departing life when I was just a small
child. One of my first vivid memories is of my Aunt Lizzies
funeralin Arkansasand of her lying in her casket. Vivid, yes;
but also rather normal in life. Then my father died when I was
sixteendied in my arms, at home. That could certainly be seen
as imprinting. We were a three-person family, very close and
loving. So I experienced loss when he died; and probably, as
significantly, I experienced the loss my mother sufferedof her
one great love in life. How we experience what we experience is
a complex business.

Did you, or do you, look back on the years before

your father died, when there were the three of you, as
a golden time?
No, not a golden time. Im suspicious of golden times. I think
that right now this minute had better be the golden time, because
its what youve got. I had a happy childhood because my
parents loved me and took good care of me. But my father had a
very serious heart attack when I was eight and he was fortyeight. And that coloured a lot of life, because it scared him silly
and he never felt entirely well after thatprobably wasnt well.
And he was gone a lot. His job as a salesman caused him to
travel by car five days a week, and my mother and I were left at
home together. And we were both of us pretty volatile
personalities. And I never did particularly well in school; was, as
time went by, a kid who tended to get into troublestealing,
getting into fights. I was dyslexic and never read very well. So,
no. Golden it wasnt. But it was good.

to look after me the way she had up to thenbecause she had to

go out and get a joband that Id better not turn up in jail or
juvenile court again because she wouldnt get me out. That made
a big impression of me. I guess thats consequence of a kind. But
I wasnt a very committed felon. More of a little dickhead.

Do you think the dyslexia has shaped how you have

read?
Absolutely. I read slowly, and as a consequence have definitely
not read as many books as I shouldvein order to be
considered properly educated. But what Ive readbecause Ive
read slowly and attentivelyI seem to have taken in pretty well.
And, importantly, when you read slowly you also become
available to those qualities of language thatre other than the
cognitive qualities. One becomes sensitive to what you might
call the poetic qualitiesrhythms, repetitions, sonorities,
syncopations, the aptness of particular word choicesthose
qualities. Theyre importantat least they are to me. Thats had
a consequence not only upon my reading but also upon my aims
as a writer of sentences.

Do you always know what a Richard Ford sentence

sounds like?

Richard Ford and his hunting dogs.

Did the stealing have consequencesdid you get
caught?
Were not talking about holding up Brinks trucks, here, or
Manson Family capers; just, oh, stealing the odd car, some
random breaking and enterings, and many lesser offences. And I
did get caught, got hauled in front of the juvenile judge, put on
probationwhich was sort of awful but also sort of a badge of
honour. It all scared my mother, though, made her miserable, in
fact. And as far as consequence was concerned, I suppose I saw
what consequence my behaviour had on herwhich was bad. I
was on probation at the time my father suddenly died; and my
mother sat me down and told me that she wasnt going to be able

I dont think theres any signature to my sentences. Ive heard

some people say there is, but thats just a gesture meant to flatter
me. Because Im sure theres not. A sentences style or manner,
or a book full of sentences with styles or manners, is a response
to a variety of forces operating on a writer: the writers sensuous,
instinctual relation to the material itself; the accumulated amount
of material that precedes the writing; the writers history with
other books that may or may not have entertained some of the
same subject matter, or books that the writer simply admires; the
daily tidal changes in any persons mood and energies. And
much more. All these things affect how sentences get written
how many words they hold, how syntactically complex they are,
their diction and all word-choosings, what they undertake to
elucidate. And in the course of any one book these stylistic
characteristics can and often do change or modulate. Its
certainly the case that over the course of any writers life his or
her grasp on sentences will also changeeither from book to
book, subject to subject, or just as one gets older. I think that
The Lay of the Land has longer, complexer sentences
because my mind (my older mans mind) was just fuller of things
that interested me, and I didnt want to lose a lot of them. So, I
devised sentences to keep all that stuff and put them in play. You
can say that was ambition, or you could say it was poor judgment
and an inability to discriminate. Id say it was ambition, because
I like the book a lotlike its thoroughness.
People can get preoccupied by such stylistic matters as voice:
having a consistent voice, a true voice, a voice of ones own.
This conception of voice can have something to do with a
writers purported signature. But to me this isnt very important.
To me voice is probably just the music of the storys
intelligence, how it sounds when its being smart, or when its
working on the reader. And that music, like a storys style, can
change, and does change. So, a Richard Ford sentence will
usually be differently made from one piece of writing to the next.
Which is fine with me.

How aware were you of Eudora Welty in Jackson

while you were growing up?

Well, I knew her name. One did, in Jackson. I went to school

with her niece, Elizabeth. But, Eudorad grown up directly across
the street from me on Congress Street, and I didnt even know
that until I was far along into adulthood. I also didnt read
anything of hers (or anything much at all) until I was in college
and had it presented to me on a syllabus. Eudora livedon
Pinehurst Streetnot so far away from us when I was growing
up. Walking distance. But it was in another, somewhat better old
Jackson neighbourhood than ours. My mother once pointed
Eudora out to me at the grocery storeI mightve been eight.
She said Richard, thats Eudora Welty, over there. Shes a
writer. I could tell from the tone of my mothers voice that she
thought being a writer was good.

Did she write anything herself, your mother I mean?

Interestingto me, anyway. When I was going through my
mothers belongings after shed died, in 1971, I found a
notebook that had only one line written in it, on its first page, and
in my mothers quite elegant hand. It said Les, A life. Now my
grandmother, her mother, was called Lessome version of her
real name, which was Essie. My mother took care of my
grandmother through the last years of my grandmothers life.
And it was not an easy passage. My grandmother was capable of
great, aggressive nastiness. And I know my mother got in the
way of it a lot. We all did at one time or other. But it may have
seemed to my mother that some act of writingfictive or
otherwisewas the best way to record or imagine her own
experience. Id guess, too, it was partly because she had a son
who was a novelist that this began to seem possible to her. But.
She never did itwhich is all right. She didnt want to enough.

Do you think stories are created or discovered?

Thats easy. Stories are created. It isnt as if theyre out there
waiting in some Platonic hyper-space like unread emails. They
arent. Writers make stories up. It might be that when stories turn
out to be good they then achieve a quality of inevitability, of
there seeming to have been a previously existing and important
space that they perfectly fill. But that isnt whats true. Im sure
of it. A story makes its own space and then fills it. Writers dont
find storiesalthough some writers might say so. This to me
just means they have a vocabulary thats inadequate at depicting
what they actually do. Theyre like Hemingwayalways fleeing
complexity as if it were a barn fire.

You have written movingly of New Orleans, in

memory of your feelings for that city, where you and
Kristina have lived and worked; has that disaster
altered your perception of loss?
I dont know that I ever had a previous perception of loss. But
the disaster in New Orleans surely didnt sponsor a new one. My
sense of permanence has always included the likely demolition
of all vestiges of permanencehouses, street corners, trees
whereon we carved our names in hearts, persons. It can all go,
and will. In America we white people sentimentalize permanence
or at least we once could. But Native Americans certainly
dont. Blacks probably dont either. Europeans of a certain age
dont. I dont.

Has faith or church-going ever had any appeal to

you?

Not church-going. But faith, well Theres the famous line in

Hebrews 11: Faith is the evidence of things unseen. Ive always
been attracted to that line. But for specifically ir-religious
reasons. I deem that line to be a line about the imagination. I
could almost say that, the imagination is the evidence of things
unseen. But again specifically Id say that my faith lies in the
imagination and in the imaginations power to bring into
existence essential experience that heretofore wasnt known to
exist.

That reminds me of Frank Bascombes line: The

unseen exists and has properties. Do you have an
ongoing sense of that unseen, or only at certain
charged moments?
I dont much think about the unseen. For lack of great erudition,
or a great education, I suppose Ive stored a fair amount of trust
in my instinct. But as soon as I see that written down I start to
think that instinct may just be another word for luck and for
trusting to luckwhich Ive done. A favourite line I repair to is
by the philosopher Daniel Dennett, who said: We have a builtin, very potent, hairtriggered tendency to find agency in things
that are not agents. Im not sure if Dennett approves of that
tendency or not. But certainly thats one of the things literature
doesit ascribes agency where before no agency was noticed: it
says this causes that, this is a consequence of that, etc. It may be
that writing fiction, imagining agencies, is my most trusted way
into the unseen.

There is a kind of unflinching morality in many of

your stories. Im thinking particularly of the tales of
adultery in A Multitude of Sins. Trangression has
consequences, even if only in pointing up the
emptiness of lives. Does this moral sense grow out of
characters, or does the moral engine come first?
I dont know a specific answer to that. In most of those stories I
didnt start with a character. I usually dont. I usually start either
with a situation (a man meets his ex-lovers husband in Grand
Central Station; a married couple are on their way to a party,
when the young wife informs her young husband that shes had
an affair with the host of the party theyre attendingthose are
examples). Or else I just go looking for bits and pieces that I
want a story to contain, and organize the story out of those bits. I
suppose when I put it that way, and in terms of your question, the
moral engine may seem to come first, be an unspoken force in
the choosings. But Im entirely unaware of its being so. I hold
with the notion that Martin Amis quoted Northrop Frye to say:
that literature is a disinterested use of language; a writer must
have nothing riding on the outcome. I set up situations and then
see what I can have happen as a consequence, using language.
And, at least in theory, the consequence could pretty much be
anything.

Does that principle of disinterest apply equally in

your novels, is it tough not to be rooting for Frank,
say?
Im always rooting for Frank to do something, or have something
to say thats not expected, but interesting, given the conventional
sort of man the reader may be imagining him to bea real estate
agent, etc. So, the rule of disinterest still applies. It should also
be said, of course, that Im not bound strictly by that rule. If by
following it I write something that I dont like, or have Frank or

any character say or do something that seems dumb or somehow

wrong, I can just scratch it out and often do. I never saw Frank as
a human being (although Id like the reader to think he was
pretty close to being a human being). Rather I saw him as an
agency made of language. So, I wouldnt be rooting for him the
way youd root for the kid with Hodgkins Disease to see one
last game at Yankee Stadium. Its different. I may be more
rooting for myself to come up with something good.

Do you find your empathy with the weaknesses of

your characters has deepened as you have grown
older?
My empathy with every kind of weakness has deepened. Is it a
matter of age? Maybe. More probably its just a matter of
experience. Graham Greene wroteand Ive always hated the
ideathat morality comes with old age, with ones curiosity
growing weak. Thats a sourpusss notion of morality. As
something thats moribund. And I dont buy it. Maybe thats
because my curiosity still seems strong.

In your introduction to The New Granta Book of the

American Short Story you quote Walter Benjamin
suggesting We no longer work at things that cant be
abbreviated, perhaps a factor of waning curiosity.
What is your feeling for Americas attention span?
That was Benjamin expressing his displeasure with modern
times. Probably an observer could make, or couldve made, the
same claim about the contemporary attention span at any given
time in history. But as for me, and as for now, I see lots of people
on airplanes reading really long books; I see the young of my
country, as well as their beaverish parents, spending long, long,
long periods of time in front of computer screens; I see athletes
training and training until they drop. So, I conclude from this
admittedly unscientific survey, that plenty of Americans have
plenty of attention availablefor something. It may not be for
literary fiction. But then its my job as a purveyor of literary
fiction to tap into that otherwise wasted attention span. But its
there.

You have rarely written of childhood, in the way that,

for instance, Tobias Wolff has; has that territory never
tempted you?
Well, Id say I have written about childhood. Several of the
stories in Rock Springs are narrated by teenagers, as is all of
Wildlife. And in the New Jersey books there are Franks kids all
around especially in Independence Day. Maybe in your
terms a teenager isnt a child; and maybe thats true. But I always
think Ive written about childrenbecause I always brag that its
a lot easier to write about children than to have them. And I dont
have any.

To what extent do you think your life was shaped by

being an only child among big Southern families?
Thats one of those questions that asks me to imagine another life
from my own. I suppose I coulda life with brothers and sisters
but its a bit like asking whether things have been different, do
you suppose, if youd been a girl. Probably would. Being an only
child, however, shaped a great, great deal in my life. A
psychologist could probably give a better answer than I could,

and probably a truer answer, too. But Ill just propose one thing:
that I was almost always around adults when I was quite young.
Adult life was the important life, the aspired-to life, and I could
eavesdrop on it all the time, hear what adults thought was
important, observe discrepancies in their behaviours and their
pronouncements. It probably also intensified the faith that I had
in parentchild relationships, inasmuch as my parents seemed to
have wanted me, loved me, wanted good for me. It mightve also
caused me to fear loss more than wouldve been the case had
there been others around. And I think that in myself (and perhaps
evident in what I write) fear of loss and the corresponding
instinct to protect myself against loss are potent forces.

Do you think that instinct to protect yourself against

loss is one of the reasons you chose not to have
children?
Doctor Freud might say so. But I just say that it was because
Kristina and I didnt especially like children, didnt want to be
saddled with the responsibility of them. We had our ideas about
the future, and there was never room for children in those ideas.
It was really the first important thing we ever agreed on when we
were in our teens together, in Michigan. I remember the exact
moment we first talked about it. It was great.

There are, youve said, two fixed points in your life: I

always write and I am always married to the same
girl. In what ways does one depend on the other?
Ive answered that question enough for one lifetime.

All right; youve also said that you consciously want

your writing to be affirmative of the possibility of
love, closeness in a life, what makes you hold to that?
Not to keep on quoting famous men, but somewhere in Wallace
Stevens theres a little fragment that says, we gulp down evil,
choke at good. Thats always meant to me that its more
appetizing to decry, and less appetizing, maybe less simple, to
find a vocabulary for affirmation. And also closeness in a life
and (if you will) love seem immensely sustaining to me, and
worthy of efforts at articulation. That said, Ive written mostly
stories that would have to be called cautionary tales, and that a
lot of readers would not think of as conventionally affirming.
However, I hold with John Gardner [the novelist and early
supporter of Raymond Carver] who said that moral literature (by
which I understand him to have meant good literature, valuable
literature) tests values and arouses trustworthy feelings about
the better and worse in human actions. To me, indeed, great
literature is always affirming, even if its grimif only because
its a gesture by someone for the use of another in a future thats
hoped to come. Sartre said even the grimmest literature is
optimistic since it proves those things can be thought about.

So literature makes us want to be better men (and

women)?
I dont know about that. I just know it gives a reader the chance
to see life affirmed through literatures great concern with life.
And it gives the reader a chancein the sheltered environment
of a bookto see the important consequences of events. Making
one want to be better, well thats a private matter. I have some
evidence that that may not be accuratealthough wanting to be
better and being better are obviously different things.

What did you make of being described as a Dirty

Realist by Granta?
I thoughtwe probably all thoughtthat Dirty Realism was a
wonderful marketing ploy. I dont think Carver or Toby Wolff or
Jayne Anne Phillips or any of us ever thought it really described
anything especially true or thematically consistent in our stories.
Bill Buford just dreamed it up to sell magazines in Britain. And it
worked very, very well. Were still talking about it, arent we? At
the timethe middle EightiesI had no books in print, and no
readership. This wasnt true for the other writers in the Dirty
Realism issue. But it was true for me. And Bills scheme helped
me find a readership for my stories. I cant thank him enough.

Did you ever think of giving up at that time?

I certainly did. I thought that Id had my shot at being a novelist
and it hadnt worked out well enough. I went over to Sports
Illustrated and asked for a job. But the guy who was running it
told me no. He said I was a novelist (cruel irony), and that I
couldnt be a sportswriter. So I went home and wrote The
Sportswriter. But if hed given me a job Id almost assuredly
have taken it and been very, very happy. Id be retired now and
have a big pension. It wouldve been a great life.

It seemed to me natural to group you with Carver and

Tobias Wolff as writers to the extent that you had
some kind of shared interest in a sort of lonely or
alienated masculinity. Where do you think that came
from?
I never think about that. At our best (if I have a bestand
certainly they do), our stories werent that much alike. And
frankly I cant think about my own characters in those rather
cosseted, conventional termsalienated, lonely, even masculine.
Im not interested in masculinity. Id be surprised if Ray or
Toby wouldve said much different. But. I do know that I
inherited much of my sense of what a story could be and be
about from my readingfrom Frank OConnor, from Sherwood
Anderson, from Faulkner, from Isaac Babel, from Flannery
OConnoralas, from Hemingway, who seems influential in
only the most superficial ways. So, thats where my first ideas
came from.

Youve lived longer than your father, do you catch

yourself making his gestures, or have a keener
impression of his life now you have reached and
passed his age?
I look like my father. I sometimes feel my facial features
arranging themselves into visages that I know are like his. The
long Irish upper lip lapsing over the poor lower one in a state of
puzzlement; my tendency to sigh at moments of frustration; the
fierce swarm into anger; the tendency to strike out at something
(or someone) that threatens me. I saw all this in him when he was
in my life. And I accept them in myselfwhich isnt to say I
glory in them. That said, I have a paler and paler recollection of
him as times gone on. And I feel the poorer for that. I liked him
very much.

Do you think men are born with more ways to fail

than women?

I dont know what that means. But, no. Women and men seem a
lot more alike than theyre given credit for. A lot of interests, of
course, are deeply and perniciously invested in keeping them
apart and distinct.

You have written about your love of hunting. Does it

inform your writing?
Its certainly informed some storiesthe ones thatre expressly
about hunting: Communist, Great Falls, Calling. But in
general I think its just been a thing I like to do that hasnt much
informed my writing. I dont like to read hunting stories.
Communist I wrote back in 1984, only because Tom McGuane
and I were out hunting partridge in Montana, and he told me he
knew a guy who was preparing an anthology of hunting stories
and if I ever wrote a hunting story I should send it to this guy. I
never had before. But I did. And Communist was it. I probably
never wrote a better story than that. Go figure.

Tell me about your relationship with your HarleyDavidson; it feels like an escape clause?
When I got back to owning motorcycles, in the mid-Eighties, I
used to say (in my boyish way) that a fellow needed to have
something around that could kill him. And at heart, once we get
past the snapshot visions of oneself astride the rakish machine,
and the appeal of the sound of the thing, and the wind-in-yourhair imagery, and the hoped-for effect on womenonce thats all
gone by, I guess I still feel the way I did in the mid-Eighties.

You dont strike me as someone with a self-destructive

urge thoughnot at all?
I dont think I have a self-destructive urge. But the prospect of
ones eventual end is pretty firmly fixed in my brain. And Id
certainly like to think I held my fate in my own hands should I
be struck by some withering disease. I remember when my
mother diedof breast cancerand Kristina and I were sitting
on her bed, getting dressed for her funeral, the phone rang. And it
was one of my mothers old Arkie cousins, from up in the sticks.
This woman was just calling up to express her condolences, I
guess. I had no idea who she was, just a scratchy voice on the
phone, there in Little Rock. She said a few consoling things. And
then she saidand this woman didnt know me; she said, Now,
Rich-ard. Your mamma died of cancer. So, hon, youre gonna get
it, too. Dont forget that. Okay, I wont, I said. Thanks. Just a
kind sober thought toward the future to penetrate ones grief.

What did you learn in writing and in life from

Raymond Carver?
I did learn some things from Ray. Sometimes people ask me if he
was my teacher; but he wasnt. He and I were close friends, and
were colleagues. But he wasnt that much older than meseven
years. We were pretty much contemporaries. Though it seems
strange that hes been gone now for nearly twenty years. But.
One thing that may seem insignificant, but wasnt, was that his
parents and my parents came from pretty much the same place
west Arkansas. His parents had gone out west, and mine had
gone down southfor work. And from that coincidence, and
from admiring Rays early stories very much, and admiring his
own instincts for writing them, I think I drew some corroborative
strength that my own inherited storage of what was interesting
and what a story could be was, in fact, valuable and credible.

Ray and I enjoyed a kind of unspoken confidence that we came

from the same stockpossibly rough stock.
Beyond that, his early stories and our friendshipwhich began
as he was writing his second bookdefinitely encouraged me to
try writing stories again myself. Id quit writing stories in the
Seventies because I just couldnt do it very well. But Rays
stories seemed so natural, almost easy (many people have
thought that to their ruin), that I thought Id try my hand at it
again. And I did. At least a couple of the stories in Rock Springs
bear signs of his stylistic influence. He always encouraged me to
write stories, although Im sure he felt confident he would
always be better at it than Id be.

He mustve learned things from you as well, though?

I dont know what he couldve learned from me. There mightve
been something. We were friends, we talked about work a lot.
We had that confidence that came from our family background.
And Im sure I reenforced his confidence about his work. I also
had opinions about some of the stories in his book What We
Talk About When We Talk About Loveall of which he
showed me in early drafts. But most of what I didnt like he
rejected and later chided me for. Although there was that story, I
think its A Small Good Thing, that I and others (the poet
Donald Hall and Geoffrey Wolff, probably Toby, too)
complained to him about. Hed shown that story to us in an early,
much more fully developed form. And then he published it in a
rather harshly curtailed form. And we all told Ray he should
restore it to its fuller self when he collected it in a subsequent
volume. And he did. His work was growing, his sentences
getting longer, more complex, his sympathies and intellectual
reach expanding. Tess [Gallagher, Carvers second wife] had a
big influence on himprobably the biggest influence. I think
that Iand again I was just one of a few people he trustedI
just told him work was wonderful, and that was probably the
most of it.

You shared an absolute commitment to the business of

writing stories: have you always had that work ethic?
No. I havent. I always wished I had itfrom an early age. But I
didnt for a long time. Itthe work ethicjust arrived during
the summer of 1963, when I was nineteen. Im not sure where it
came from. I was working on the Missouri Pacific Railroad as a
switchman, and making lots of money and having a pretty happy
life. I was supposed to go to college in the autumn, and was
giving thought to just staying working on the railroad. But I
ended up going to school, instead.
Maybe seeing those working guys I spent my days with made an
impression on me; or maybe it was that I wanted to impress
Kristina. I dont really know. But when I got to school, in
Michigan, I was just a changed boy. Whatever thresholds Id not
ventured to crosswith regard to my studies, for instanceI
just barged across. And its been that way ever since. But I
should sayabout myself and about a work ethicits pretty
boring. Thats why we associate the ethic with Protestants,
whore also pretty boring. It may lead one on to good, but it
doesnt feel like much of a virtue, frankly.
A work ethic story, though. When I was in college I lived with a
guy named Tom Candee, whos now a veterinarian not far from
where I livedown in Massachusetts. And every term our
grades came out, and Candee used to laugh at merail at me,

really. He used to say, Look at Ford, he got all As, but had to
worked like a pig to get it. Whereas me, I got all As and never
turned a hand. Im smart. Hes not. We eventually came to pretty
serious blows, Candee and me, because that used to get under my
skin real bad. But the truth was he was right. I did work like a
pig. He barely lifted a hand. So, to me, a work ethic has always
been a kind of blue-collar trait, something I have to embrace to
do anything thats worthwhilebut spectacularly inferior to
being able to waltz through life. I am, however, glad not to be a
veterinarian.

I remember talking to Kazuo Ishiguro and he said he

imagined the rest of his life in terms of how many
novels he would be lucky enough to complete, if he
spent, as was his habit, five or six years on each. Do
you have a powerful sense of finite time?
Well, the return on Ishs investment is quite wonderful, isnt it?
So his attitude puts a much better burnish on those working
virtues than I can hope to put. I suppose I do share a sense of
finite time, all right. But I dont measure it in terms of how many
novels Ill write, or might write. I agree that to get to write a
novel at all is very, very luckyto get to do ones best, to get to
do what Dostoevsky and Faulkner did, to try to contribute good
to the life of people you dont know. All thats a great privilege.
But every time I finish a novel, or a book (and Ive only finished
nine), I ask myself if this isnt enough now. Ive given this last
effortwhatever it wasmy very best. Ive held back nothing.
Have I not perhaps gone along this course as far as I can go? Are
my returns not likely to begin to diminish? Could I really have
anything as important as this to write again? Someday, I assume,
my answer will be, Yes, this is enough. I dont see writing as a
profession, something Im married to forever. I have to reinvent
it every time. And I also see that theres more to life than writing.
I see that portrayed in other peoples lives all the time. Im as
curious about that as I ever was.

The greatest short story writers it seems to me are

those with the clearest sense of an ending. Do you
always know when you are done?
Yes, I always know when a storys finished. And I hope that
makes me one of the greatest short story writersif thats what it
takes.

Theres a line you once used: Your life is the

blueprint you make after the building is built. How
do you think your own blueprint will look when the
time comes?

LEE SMITH

Intensive Care
LEE SMITH (1944) grew up an only child in Grundy,
Virginia (population 2,000), an isolated mountain community
in the western part of the state. She attended Hollins College
in Roanoke, Virginia, where she graduated with a bachelor's
degree. She has been the recipient of many awards and
honors, including the Robert Penn Warren Prize for Fiction
(1991), the Sir Walter Raleigh Award (1989), rhe John Dos
Passos Award for Literature (1987), and the North Carolina
Award for Fiction (1984). She also won the 1994 Lila
Wallace-Reader's Digest Writers' Award and rhe fifth annual
John William Corringxon Award for Literary Excellence.
Smith is the author of eight novels, The Last Day the
Dogbitshes Bloomed, Something in the Wind, Fancy Strut,
Black Mountain Breakdown, Oral History, Family Linen, Fair
and Tender Ladies, and The Devil's Dream; and three story
collections, Me and My Baby Vieiu the Eclipse, Cakewalk, and
News of the Spirit. Lee Smith lives in North Carolina.

Cherry Oxendine is dying now, and everybody knows it.

Everybody in town except maybe her new husband, Harold
Stikes, although Lord knows he ought to, it's as plain as the nose
on your face. And it's not like he hasn't been told either, by both
Dr. Thacker and Dr. Pinckney and also that hotshot young Jew
doctor from Memphis, Dr. Shapiro, who comes over here once a
week. "Harold just can't take it in," is what the head nurse in
Intensive Care, Lois Hickey, said in the Beauty Nook last week.
Lois ought to know. She's been right there during the past six
weeks while Cherry Oxendine has been in Intensive Care,
writing down Cherry's blood pressure every hour on the hour,
changing bags on the IV, checking the stomach tube, moving the
bed up and down to prevent bedsores, monitoring the respirator
and calling in Rodney Broadbent, the respiratory therapist,

more and more frequently. "Her blood gases is not but twentyeight," Lois said in the Beauty Nook. "If" we was to unhook that
respirator, she'd die in a day."
"I would go on and do it then, it I was Harold." said Mrs.
Hooker, the Presbyterian minister's wife, who was getting a
permanent. "It is the Christian thing."
"You wouldn't either." Lois said, "because she still knows him.
That's the awful part. She still knows him. In tact she peps right
up ever time he comes in, like they are going on a date or
something. It's the saddest thing. And ever time we open the
doors, here comes Harold, regular as clockwork. Eight o'clock,
one o'clock, six o'clock, eight o'clock, why shoot, he'd stay in
there all day and all night if we'd let him. Well, she opens her
mouth and says Hi honey, you can tell what she's saying even if
she can't make a sound. And her eyes get real bright and her face
looks pretty good too, that's because of the Lasix, only Harold
don't know .that. He just can't take it all in," Lois said.
"Oh, I feel so sorry for him," said Mrs. Hooker. Her tace is as
round and flat as a dime.
"Well, I don't." Dot Mains, owner of the Beauty Nook, started
cutting Lois Hickey's hair. Lois wears it too short, in Dot's
opinion. "I certainly don't feel sorry for Harold Stikes, after what
he did." Dot snipped decisively at Lois Hickey's frosted hair.
Mrs. Hooker made a sad little sound, half sigh, half words, as
Janice stuck her under the dryer, while Miss Berry, the old-maid
home demonstration agent waiting for her appointment, snapped
the pages of Cosmopolitan magazine one by one, blindly, filled
with somewhat gratuitous rage against the behavior of Harold
Stikes. Miss Berry is Harold Stikes's ex-wife's cousin. So she
does not pity him, not one bit. He got what's coming to him,
that's all, in Miss Berry's opinion. Most people don't. It's a
pleasure to see it, but Miss Berry would never say this out loud
since Cherry Oxendine is of course dying. Cherry Oxendine!
Like it was yesterday, Miss Berry remembers how Cherry
Oxendine acted in high school, wearing her skirts too tight,
popping her gum.
"The doctors can't do a thing," said Lois Hickey.
Silence settled like fog then on the Beauty Nook, on Miss
Berry and her magazine, on Dot Mains cutting Lois Hickey's
hair, on little Janice thinking about her boyfriend Bruce, and on
Mrs. Hooker crying gently under the dryer. Suddenly, Dot
remembered something her old granny used to say about such
momenrs of sudden absolute quiet: "An angel is passing over."
After a while, Mrs. Hooker said, "It's all in the hands ot God,
then." She spread out her fingers one by one on the tray, for
Janice to give her a manicure.
And as for Harold Stikes, he's not even considering God. Oh, he
doesn't interfere when Mr. Hooker comes by the hospital once a
day to check on him
Harold was a Presbyterian in his former liteor even when
the Baptist preacher from Cherry's mama's church shows up
and insists that everybody in the whole waiting room join hands
and bow heads in prayer while he raises his big red face and
curly gray head straight up to heaven and prays in a loud voice
that God will heal these loved ones who walk through the Valley
of Death, and comfort these others who watch, through their hour
ot need. This includes Mrs. Eunice Sprayberry, whose mother
has had a stroke, John and Paula Ripman, whose infant son is
dying of encephalitis, and different others who drift in and out of
Intensive Care following surgery or wrecks. Harold is losing
track. He closes his eyes and bows his head, figuring it can't
hurt, like taking out insurance. But deep down inside, he knows
that it God is worth His salt, He is not impressed by the prayer of
Harold Stikes, who knowingly gave up all hope of peace on earth
and heaven hereafter for the love ot Cherry Oxendine.
Not to mention his family.
He gave them up too.

But this morning when he leaves the hospital alter his eighto'clock visit to Cherry, Harold finds himself turning left out of
the lot instead of right toward Food Lion, his store. Harold finds
himself taking 15-501 just south of town and then driving
through those ornate marble gates that mark the entrance to
Camelot Hills, his old neighborhood. Some lucky instinct makes
him pull into the little park and stop there, beside the pond. Here
comes his ex-wife, Joan, driving the Honda Accord he paid for
last year. Joan looks straight ahead. She's still wearing her shiny
blond hair in the pageboy she's worn ever since Harold met her
at Mercer College so many years ago. Harold is sure she's
wearing low heels and a shirtwaist dress. He knows her briefcase
is in the backseat, containing lesson plans for today, yogurt, and
a banana. Potassium is important. Harold has heard this a million
times. Behind her, the beds are all made, the breakfast dishes
stacked in the sink. As a home ec teacher, Joan believes that
breakfast is the most important meal of the day. The two
younger children, Brenda and Harold Jr., are alreadv on the bus
to the Academy. James rides to the high school with his mother,
hair wet, tace blank, staring straight ahead. They don't see
Harold. Joan brakes at the stop sign before entering 15-501. She
always comes to a complere stop, even if nothing's coming.
Always. She looks both ways. Then she's gone.
Harold drives past well-kepr lawn after well-kept lawn and
lovely house after lovely house, many of them houses where
Harold has attended Cub Scout meetings, eaten barbecue,
watched bowl games. Now these houses have a blank, closed
look to them, like mean faces. Harold turns left on Oxford, then
right on Shrewsbury. He comes to a stop beside the curb at 1105
Cambridge and just sits rhere with the motor running, looking ar
the house. His house. The Queen Anne house he and Joan
planned so carefully, down to the last detail, the fish-scale
siding. The house he is still paying for and will be until his dying
day, if Joan has her way about it.
Which she will, of course. Everybody is on her side:
desertion. Harold Stikes deserted his lovely wife and three
children for a redheaded waitress. For a fallen woman with a
checkered past. Harold can hear her now. "I fail to see why I and
the children should lower our standards of living, Harold, and go
to the dogs just because you have chosen to become insane in
mid-life." Joan's voice is slow and amiable. It has a down-toearth quality which used to appeal to Harold but now drives him
wild. Harold sits at the curb with the motor running and looks at
his house good. It looks fine. It looks just like it did when they
picked it out of the pages of Southern Living and wrote off for
the plans. The only difference is, that house was in Stone
Mountain, Georgia, and this house is in Greenwood, Mississippi.
Big deal.
Joan's response to Harold's desertion has been a surprise to
him. He expected tears, recriminations, fireworks. He did not
expect her calm, reasonable manner, treating Harold the way she
treats the Mormon missionaries who come to the door in their
black suits, for instance, that very calm sweet careful voice. Joan
acts like Harold's desertion is nothing much. And nothing much
appears to have changed for her except the loss of Harold's actual
presence, and this cannot be a very big deal since everything else
has remained exactly the same.
What the hell. After a while Harold turns off the motor and
walks up the flagstone walk to the front door. His key still fits.
All the furniture is arranged exactly the way it was arranged four
years ago. The only thing that ever changes here is the display of
magazines on the glass coffee table before the fireplace, Joan
keeps them up to date. Newsweek, National Geographic, Good
Housekeeping, Gourmet. It's a mostly educational grouping,
unlike what Cherrv readsParade, Coronet, National Enquirer.
Now these magazines litter the floor at the side of the bed like
little souvenirs of Cherry. Harold can't stand to pick them up.

He sits down heavily on the white sofa and stares at the coffee
table. He remembers the quiz and the day he found it, four years
ago now although it feels like only yesterday, funny thing though
that he can't remember which magazine it was in. Maybe
Reader's Digest. The quiz was titled "How Good Is Your
Marriage?" and Harold noticed that Joan had filled it in carefully.
This did not surprise him. Joan was so law-abiding, such a
goodgirl, that she always filled in such quizzes when she came
across them, as if she had to, before she could go ahead and
finish the magazine. Usually Harold didn't pay much attention.
This time, he picked the magazine up and started reading. One
of the questions said: "What is your idea of the perfect vacation?
(a) a romantic getaway for you and your spouse alone; (b) a
family trip to the beach; (c) a business convention; (d) an
organized tour of a foreign land." Joan had wavered on this one.
She had marked and then erased "an organized tour of a foreign
land." Finally she had settled on "a family trip to the beach."
Harold skimmed along. The final question was: "When you think
of the love between yourself and your spouse, do you think of (a)
a great passion; (b) a warm, meaningful companionship; (c) an
average love; (d) an unsatisfying habit." Joan had marked "(c) an
average love." Harold stared at these words, knowing they were
true. An average love, norhing great, an average marriage
between an average man and woman. Suddenly, strangely,
Harold was filled with rage.
"It is not enough!" He thought he actually said these words
our loud. Perhaps he did say them out loud, into the clean hushed
air-conditioned air of his average home. Harold's rage was
followed by a brief period, maybe five minutes, of unbearable
longing, after which he simply closed rhe magazine and put it
back on the table and got up and poured himself a stiff shot of
bourbon. He stood for a while before the picture window in the
living room, looking out at his even green grass, his clipped
hedge, and the impatiens blooming in its bed, the clematis
climbing the mailbox. The colors of the world fairly leaped at
himthe sky so blue, the grass so green. A passing jogger's
shorts glowed unbearably red. He felt that he had never seen any
of these things before. Yet in another way it all seemed so
familiar as to be an actual part of his bodyhis throat, his heart,
his breath. Harold rook another drink. Then he went out and
played nine holes of golf at the country club with Bubba Fields,
something he did every Wednesday afternoon. He shot 82.
By the time he came home for dinner he was okay again. He
was very tired and a little lightheaded, all his muscles tingling.
His face was hot. Yet Harold felt vaguely pleased with himself,
as if he had been through something and come out the other side
of it, as if he had done a creditable job on a difficult assignment.
But right then, during dinner, Harold could not have told you
exactly what had happened to him that da}', or why he felt this
way. Because the mind will forget what it can't stand to
remember, and anyway the Stikeses had beef Stroganoff that
night, a new recipe that Joan was testing for the Junior League
cookbook, and Harold Jr. had written them a funny letter from
camp, and for once Brenda did not whine.. James, who was
twelve that year, actually condescended to talk to his father, with
some degree of interest, about baseball, and after supper was
over he and Harold went out and pitched to each other until it
grew dark and lightning bugs emerged. This is how it's supposed
to be, Harold rhought, father and son playing carch in the
twilight.
Then he went upstairs and joined Joan in bed to watch TV,
after which they turned out the light and made love. But Joan had
greased herself all over with Oil of Olay, earlier, and right in the
middle of doing it, Harold got a crazy terrified feeling that he
was losing her, that Joan was slipping, slipping away.
But time passed, as it does, and Harold forgot that whole
weird day, forgot it until right now, in fact, as he sits on the white
sofa in his old house again and stares at the magazines on the

coffee table, those magazines so familiar except for the date,

which is four years later. Now Harold wonders: If he hadn't
picked up that quiz and read it, would he have even noticed when
Cherry Oxendine spooned out that potato salad for him six
months later, in his own Food Lion deli? "Would the sight of
redheaded Cherry Oxendine, the Food Lion smock mostly
obscuring her dynamite figure, have hit him like a bolt out of the
blue the way it did?
Cherry herself does not believe there is any such thing as
coincidence. Cherry thinks there is a master plan for the
universe, and what is meant to happen will. She thinks it's all set
in the stars. For the first time, Harold thinks maybe she's right.
He sees part of a pattern in the works, but dimly, as if he is
looking at a constellation hidden by clouds. Mainly, he sees her
face.
Harold gets up from rhe sofa and goes into the kitchen,
suddenly aware that he isn't supposed to be here. He could be
arrested, probably! He looks back at the living room but there's
not a trace of him left, not even an imprint on the soft white
cushions of the sofa. Absentmindedly, Harold opens and shuts
the refrigerator door. There's no beer, he notices. He can't have a
Coke. On the kitchen calendar, he reads:
Harold Jr to dentist,
3:30 p.m. Tues
Change furnace filter
2/18/88 (James)
So James is changing the furnace filters now, James is the man of
the house. Why not? It's good for him. He's been given too much,
kids these days grow up so fast, no responsibilities, they get on
drugs, you read about it all the time. But deep down inside,
Harold knows that James is not on drugs and he feels something
awful, feels the way he felt growing up, that sick little flutter in
his stomach that took years to go away.
Harold's dad died of walking pneumonia when he was only
three, so his mother raised him alone. She called him her "little
man." This made Harold feel proud but also wild, like a boy
growing up in a cage. Does James feel this way now? Harold
suddenly decides to get James a car for his birthday, and take
him hunting.
Hunting is something Harold never did as a boy, but it means
a lot to him now. In fact Harold never owned a gun until he was
thirty-one, when he bought a shotgun in order to accept the
invitation of his regional manager, "Litde Jimmy" Fletcher, to go
quail hunting in Georgia. He had a great time. Now he's invited
back every year, and Little Jimmy is in charge of the cornpany's
whole eastern division. Harold has a great future with Food Lion
too. He owns three stores, one in downtown Greenwood, one out
at the mall, and one over in Indianola. He owned two of them
when his mother died, and he's pleased to think that she died
proudprotid of the good little boy he'd always been, and the
good man he'd become.
Of course she'd wanted him to make a preacher, but Harold
never got the call, and she gave that up finally when he was
twenty. Harold was not going to pretend to get the call if he
never got it, and he held strong to this principle. He wanted to
see a burning bush, but if this was not vouchsafed to him, he
wasn't going to lie about it. He would just major in math instead,
which he was good at anyway. Majoring in math at Mercer
College, the small Baptist school his mother had chosen for him,
Harold came upon Joan Berry, a home ec major from his own
hometown who set out single-mindedlv to marry him, which
wasn't hard. After graduation, Harold got a job as management
trainee in the Food Lion store where he had started as a bagboy
at fourteen. Joan produced their three children, spaced three
years apart, and got her tubes tied. Harold got one promotion,
then another. Joan and Harold prospered. They built rhis house.

Harold looks around and now this house, his house, strikes
him as creepy, a wax museum. He lets himself out the back door
and walks quickly, almost runs, to his car. It's real cold out, a
gray day in February, but Harold's sweating. He starts his car and
roars off roward the hospital, drivingas Cherry would say
like a bat out of hell.
They're letting Harold sray with her longer now. He knows it,
they know it, but nobody says a word. Lois Hickey jusr looks the
other way when the announcement "Visiting hours are over"
crackles across the PA. Is this a good sign or a bad sign? Harold
can't tell. He feels slow and confused, like a man underwater. "I
think she looks better, don't you?" he said last night to Cherry's
son Stan, the TV weatherman, who had driven down from
Memphis for the day. Eyes slick and bright with tears, Stan went
over to Harold and hugged him tight. This scared Harold to
death, he has practically never touched his own sons, and he
doesn't even know Stan, who's been grown and gone for years.
Harold is not used to hugging anybody, especially men. Harold
breathed in Stan's strong go-get-'em cologne, he buried his face
in Stan's long curly hair. He thinks it is possible that Stan has a
permanent. They'll do anything up in Memphis. Then Stan
stepped back and put one hand on each of Harold's shoulders,
holding him out at arm's length. Stan has his mother's wide,
mobile mouth. The bright white light of Intensive Care glinted
off the gold chain and the crystal that he wore around his neck.
"I'm afraid we're going to lose her, Pop," he said.
But Harold doesn't think so. Today he thinks Cherry looks the
best she's looked in weeks, with a bright spot of color in each
cheek to match her flaming hair. She's moving around a lot too,
she keeps kicking the sheet off.
"She's getting back some of that old energy now," he tells
Cherry's daughter, Tammy Lynn Palladino, when she comes by
after school. Tammy Lynn and Harold's son James are both
members of the senior class, but they aren't friends. Tammy Lynn
says James is a "stuck-up jock," a "preppie," and a "countryclubber." Harold can't say a word to defend his own son against
these charges, he doesn't even know James anymore. It might be
true, anyway. Tammy Lynn is real smart, a teenage egghead.
She's got a full scholarship to Millsaps College for next year. She
applied for it all by herself. As Cherry used to say, Tammy Lynn
came into this world with a full deck of cards and an ace or two
up her sleeve. Also she looks out for Number One.
In this regard Tammy Lynn is as different from her mama as
night from day, because Cherry would give you the shirt off her
back and frequently has. That's gotten her into lots of trouble.
With Ed Palladino, for instance, her second husband and Tammy
Lynn's dad. Just about everybody in this town got took by Ed
Palladino, who came in here wearing a seersucker suit and
talking big about putting in an outlet mall across the river. A lot
of people got burned on that outlet mall deal. But Ed Palladino
had a way about him that made you want to cast your lot with
his, it is true. You wanted to give Ed Palladino your savings,
your time-sharing condo, your cousin, your ticket to the Super
Bowl. Cherry gave it all.
She married him and turned over what little inheritance she
had from her daddy's deathand that's the only time in her life
she ever had any money, mind youand then she just shrugged
and smiled her big crooked smile when he left town under cover
of night. "C'est la vie," Cherry said. She donated the rest of his
clorhes to the Salvation Army. "Que sera, serd," Cherry said,
quoting a song that was popular when she was in junior high.
Tammy Lynn sits by her mama's bed and holds Cherry's thin
dry hand. "I brought you a Chick-Fil-A," she says to Harold. "It's
over there in that bag." She points to the shelf by the door.
Harold nods. Tammy Lynn works at Chick-Fil-A. Cherry's eyes
are wide and blue and full of meaning as she stares at her
daughter. Her mouth moves, both Harold and Tammy Lynn lean

forward, but then her mouth falls slack and her eyelids flutter
shut. Tammy sits back.
"I think she looks some better today, don't you?" Harold asks.
"No," Tammy Lynn says. She has a flat little redneck voice.
She sounds just the way she did last summer when she told
Cherry that what she saw in the field was a cotton picker
working at night, and not a UFO after all. "I wish I did but I
don't, Harold. I'm going to go on home now and heat up some
Beanee Weenee for Mamaw. You come on as soon as you can."
"Well," Harold says. He feels like things have gotten all
turned around here some way, he feels like he's the kid and
Tammy Lynn has turned into a freaky little grown-up. He says,
"I'll be along directly."
But they both know he won't leave until Lois Hickey throws
him out. And speaking of Lois, as soon as Tammy Lynn takes
off, here she comes again, checking something on the respirator,
making a little clucking sound with her mouth, then whirling to
leave. When Lois walks, her panty girdle goes swish, swish,
sivish at the top of her legs. She comes right back with the young
black man named Rodney Broadbent, Respiratory Therapist. It
says so on his badge. Rodney wheels a complicated-looking cart
ahead of himself. He's all built up, like a weightlifter.
"How you doing tonight, Mr. Stipe?" Rodney says.
"I think she's some better," Harold says.
Lois Hickey and Rodney look at him.
"Well, lessee here," Rodney says. He unhooks the respirator
tube at Cherry's throat, sticks the tube from his own machine
down the opening, and switches on the machine.
It makes a whirring sound. It looks like an electric ice cream
mixer. Rodney Broadbent looks at Lois Hickey in a significant
way as she turns to leave the room.
They don't have to tell him, Harold knows. Cherry is worse,
not better. Harold gets the Chick-Fil-A, unwraps it, eats it, and
then goes over to stand by the window. It's already getting dark.
The big mercury arc light glows in the hospital parking lot. A
little wind blows some trash around on the concrete. He has had
Cherry for three years, that's all. One trip to Disney World, two
vacations at Gulf Shores, Alabama, hundreds of nights in the old
metal bed out at the farm with Cherry sleeping naked beside him,
her arm thrown over his stomach. They had a million laughs.
"Alrightee," Rodney Broadbent nearly sings, unhooking his
machine. Harold rurns to look at him. Rodney Broadbent
certainly looks more like a middle linebacker than a respiratory
therapist. But Harold likes him.
"Well, Rodney?" Harold says.
Rodney Starrs shadow-boxing in the middle of the room.
"Tough times," he says finally. "These is tough times, Mr. Stipe."
Harold stares at him. Rodney is light on his feet as can be.
Harold sits down in the chair by the respirator. "What do you
mean?" he asks.
"I mean she is drowning, Mr. Stipe," Rodney says. He throws
a punch which lands real close to Harold's left ear. "What I'm
doing here, see, is suctioning. I'm pulling all the fluid up our of
her lungs. But now looka here, Mr. Stipe, they is just too damn
much of it. See this little doohickey here I'm measuring it with?
This here is the danger zone, man. Now Mrs. Stipe, she has been
in the clanger zone for some time. They is just too much damn
fluid in there. What she got, anyway? Cancer and pneumonia
both, am I right? What can I tell you, man? She is drowning."
Rodney gives Harold a short affectionate punch in the ribs, men
wheels his cart away. From the door, apparently struck by some
misgivings, he says, "Well, man, if it was me, I'd want to know
what the story is, you follow me, man? If it was me, what I'm
saying. Harold can't see Rodney anymore, only hear his voice
from the open door.
"Thank you, Rodney," Harold says. He sits in the chair. In a
way he has known this already, for quite some time. In a way,
Rodney's news is no news, to Harold. He just hopes he will be

man enough to bear it, to do what will have to be done. Harold

has always been scared that he is not man enough for Cherry
Oxendine, anyway. This is his worst secret fear. He looks around
the little Intensive Care room, searching for a sign, some sign,
anything, that he will be man enough. Nothing happens. Cherry
lies strapped to the bed, flanked by so many machines that it
looks like she's in the cockpit of a jet. Her eyes are closed,
eyelids fluttering, red spots on her freckled cheeks. Her chest
rises and falls as the respirator pushes air in and out through the
tube in her neck. He doesn't see how she can sleep in the bright
white light of Intensive Care, where it is always noon. And does
she dream? Cherry used to tell him her dreams, which were wild,
long Technicolor dreams, like movies. Cherry played different
parts in them. If you dream in color, it means you're intelligent,
Cherry said. She used to tease him all the time. She thought
Harold's own dreams were a stitch, dreams more boring than his
life, dreams in which he'd drive to Jackson, say, or be washing
his car.
"Harold?" It's Ray Muncey, manager of the Food Lion at the
mall.
"Why, what are you doing over here, Ray?" Harold asks, and
then in a flash he knows, Lois Hickey must have called him, to
make Harold go on home.
"I was just driving by and I thought, Hey, maybe Harold and
me might run by the Holiday Inn, get a bite to eat." Ray shifts
from foot to foot in the doorway. He doesn't come inside, he's not
supposed to, nobody but immediate family is allowed in
Intensive Care, and Harold's gladCherry would just die if
people she barely knows, like Ray Muncey, got to see her
looking so bad.
"No, Ray, you go on and eat," Harold says. "I already ate. I'm
leaving right now, anyway."
"Well, how's the missus doing?" Ray is a big man, afflicted
with big, heavy manners.
"She's drowning," Harold says abruptly. Suddenly he
remembers Cherry in a water ballet at the town pool, it must
have been the summer of junior year, Fourth of July, Cherry and
the other girls floating in a circle on their backs to form a giant
flowerlegs high, toes pointed. Harold doesn'r know it when
Ray Muncey leaves. Out the window, the parking lot light glows
like a big full moon. Lois Hickey comes in. "You've got to go
home now, Harold," she says. "I'll call if there's any change." He
remembers Cherry at Glass Lake, on the senior class picnic.
Cherry's getting real agitated now, she tosses her head back and
forth, moves her arms. She'd pull out the tubes if she could. She
kicks off the sheet. Her legs are still good, great legs in fact, the
legs of a beautiful young woman.
Harold at seventeen was tall and skinny, brown hair in a soft flat
crew cut, glasses with heavy black frames. His jeans were too
short. He carried a pen-and-pencil set in a clear plastic case in
his breast pocket. Harold and his best friend, Ben Hill, looked so
much alike that people had trouble telling them apart. The}' did
everyrhing together. They built model rockets, they read ever}'
science fiction book they could get their hands on, they collected
Lionel train parts and Marvel comics. They loved superheroes
with special powers, enormous beings who leaped across rivers
and oceans. Harold's friendship with Ben Hill kept the awful
loneliness of the only child at bay, and it also kept him from
having to talk to girls. You couldn't talk to those two, not
seriously. They were giggling and bumping into each other all
the time. They were immature.
So it was in Ben's company that Harold experienced the most
private, the most personal memory he has of Cherry Oxendine in
high school. Oh, he also has those other memories you'd expect,
the big public memories of Cherry being crowned Miss
Greenwood High (for her talent; she surprised everybody by
reciting "Abou Ben Adhem" in such a stirring way that there

wasn't a dry eye in the whole auditorium when she got through),
or running out onto the field ahead of the team with the other
cheerleaders, red curls flying, green and white skirt whirling out
around her hips like a beach umbrella when she turned a
cartwheel. Harold noticed her then, of course. He noticed her
when she moved through the crowded halls of the high school
with her walk rhat was almost a prance, she put a little something
extra into it, all righr. Flarold noticed Cherry Oxendine then in
the way that he noticed Sandra Dee on the cover of a magazine,
or Annette Funicello on American Bandstand.
But such girls were not for the likes of Harold, and Harold
knew it. Girls like Cherry always had boyfriends like Lamar
Peebles, who was hersa doctor's son with a baby-blue
convertible and plenty of money. They used to drive around town
in his car, smoking cigarettes. Harold saw them, as he carried out
grocery bags. He did not envy Lamar Peebles, or wish he had a
girl like Cherry Oxendine. Only something about them made him
stand where he was in rhe Food Lion lot, watching, until they
had passed from sight.
So Harold's close-up encounter with Cherry was unexpected.
It took place at the senior class picnic, where Harold and Ben
had been drinking beer all afternoon. No alcohol was allowed at
the senior class picnic, but some of the more enterprising boys
had brought out kegs the night before and hidden them in the
woods. Anybody could go back there and pay some money and
get some beer. The chaperones didn't know, or appeared not to
know. In any case, the chaperones all left at six o'clock, when the
picnic was officially over. Some of the class members left then
too. Then some of them came back with more beer, more
blankets. It was a free lake. Nobody could make you go home.
Normally, Harold and Ben would have been among the first to
leave, but because they had had four beers apiece, and because
this was the first time they had ever had any beer ever, at all,
they were still down by the water, skipping rocks and waiting to
sober up so that they would not wreck Harold's mother's green
Gremlin on the way home. All the cool kids were on the other
side of the lake, listening to transisror radios. The sun went
down. Bullfrogs started up. A mist came out all around the sides
of the lake. It was a cloudy, humid day anyway, not a great day
for a picnic.
"If God is really God, how come He let Himself get crucified,
is what I want to know," Ben said. Ben's daddy was a Holiness
preacher, out in the county.
But Harold heard something. "Hush, Ben," he said.
"If I was God I would go around and really kick some ass,"
Ben said.
Harold heard it again. It was almost too dark to see.
"Damn." It was a girl's voice, followed by a splash.
All of a sudden, Harold felt sober. "Who's there?" he asked.
He stepped forward, right up to the water's edge. Somebody was
in the water. Harold was wearing his swim trunks under his
jeans, but he had not gone in the water himself. He couldn't stand
to show himself in front of people. He thought he was too skinny.
"Well, do something." It was the voice of Cherry Oxendine,
almost wailing. She stumbled up the bank. Harold reached out
and grabbed her arm. Close up, she was a mess, wet and muddy,
with her hair all over her head. But the thing that got Harold, of
course, was that she didn't have any top on. She didn't even try to
cover them up either, just stomped her little foot on the bank and
said, "I am going to kill Lamar Peebles when I get ahold of him."
Harold had never even imagined so much skin.
"What's going on?" asked Ben, from up the bank.
Harold took off his own shirt as fast as he could and handed it
over to Cherry Oxendine. "Cover yourself," he said.
"Why, thank you." Cherry didn't bat an eye. She took his shirt
and put it on, tying it stylishly at the waist. Harold couldn't
believe it. Close up, Cherry was a lot smaller than she looked on

the stage or the football field. She looked up at Harold through

her dripping hair and gave him her crooked grin.
"Thanks, hey?" she said.
And then she was gone, vanished into the mist and trees
before Harold could say another word. He opened his mouth and
closed it. Mist obscured his view. From the other side of the lake
he could hear "Ramblin Rose" playing on somebody's radio. He
heard a girl's high-pirched giggle, a boy's whooping laugh.
"What's going on?" asked Ben.
"Nothing," Harold said. It was the first time he had ever lied
to Ben. Harold never told anybody what had happened that night,
not ever. He felt that it was up to him to protect Cherry
Oxendine's honor. Later, much later, when he and Cherry were
lovers, he was astonished to learn that she couldn't remember any
of this, not who she was with or what had happened or what she
was doing in the lake like that with her top off, or Harold giving
her his shirt. "I think that was sweet, though," Cherry told him.
When Harold and Ben finally got home that night at nine or
ten o'clock, Harold's mother was frantic. "You've been drinking,"
she shrilled at him under the hanging porch light. "And where's
your shirt?" It was a new madras shirt which Harold had gotten
for graduation. Now Harold's mother is out at the Hillandale Rest
Home. Ben died in Vietnam, and Cherry is drowning. This time,
and Harold knows it now, he can't help her.
Oh, Cherry! Would she have been so wild if she hadn't been so
cute? And what if her parents had been younger when she was
bornnormal-age parentscouldn't they have controlled her
better? As it was, the Oxendines were sober, solid people living
in a farmhouse out near the county line, and Cherry lit up their
lives like a rocket. Her dad, Martin "Buddy" Oxendine, went to
sleep in his chair every night right after supper, woke back up for
the eleven-o'clock news, and then went to bed for good. Buddy
was an elder in the Baptist church. Cherry's mom, Gladys
Oxendine, made drapes for people. She assumed she would
never have children at all because of her spastic colitis. Gladys
and Buddy had started raising cockapoos when they gave up on
children. Imagine Gladys's surprise, then, to find herself pregnant
at thirty-eight, when she was already old! They say she didn't
even know it when she went to the doctor. She thought she had a
tumor.
But then she got so excited, that old farm woman, when Dr.
Grimwood told her what was what, and she wouldn't even
consider an abortion when he mentioned the chances of a
mongoloid. People didn't use to have babies so old then as they
do now, so Gladys Oxendine's pregnancy was the talk of the
county. Neighbors crocheted little jackets and made receiving
blankets. Buddy built a baby room onto the house and made a
cradle by hand. During the last two months of the pregnancy,
when Gladvs had to stay in bed because of toxemia, people
brought over casseroles and boiled cusrard, everything good.
Gladys's pregnancy was the only time in her whole life that she
was ever pretty, and she loved it, and she loved the attention,
neighbors in and our of the house. When the baby was finally
born on November 1, 1944, no parents were ever more ready
than Gladys and Buddy Oxendine. And the baby was everything
they hoped for too, which is not usually the casethe prettiest
baby in the world, a baby like a little flower.
They named her Doris Christine which is who she was until
eighth grade, when she made junior varsity cheerleader and
announced that she was changing her name to Cherry. Cherry!
Even her parents had to admit it suited her better than Doris
Christine. As a little girl, Doris Christine was redheaded, bouncy,
and busyshe was always into something, usually something
you'd never thought to tell her not to do. She started talking early
and never shut up. Her old dad, old Buddy Oxendine, was so
crazy about Doris Christine diat he took her everywhere with
him in his red pickup truck. You got used to seeing the two of

them, Buddy and his curly-headed little daughter, riding the

country roads together, going to the seed-and-feed together,
sharing a shake at the Dairy Queen. Gladys made all of Doris
Christine's clothes, the most beautiful little dresses in the world,
with hand-smocking and French seams. They gave Doris
Christine everything they could think ofwhat she asked for,
what she didn't. "That child is going to get spoiled," people
started to say. And of course she did get spoiled, she couldn't
have helped that, but she was never spoiled rotten as so many
are. She stayed sweet in spite of it all.
Then along about ninth grade, soon after she changed her
name to Cherry and got interested in boys, things changed
between Cherry and the old Oxendines. Stuff happened. Instead
of being the light of their lives, Cherry became the bane of their
existence, the curse of their old age. She wanted to wear makeup,
she wanted to have car dates. You can't blame hershe was old
enough, sixteen. Everybody else did it. But you can't blame
Gladys and Buddy eitherthey were old people by then, all
worn out. They were not up to such a daughter. Cherry sneaked
out. She wrecked a car. She ran away to Pensacola with a soldier.
Finally, Gladys and Buddy just gave up. When Cherry eloped
with the disc jockey, Don Westall, right after graduation, they
threw up their hands. They did not do a thing about it. They had
done the best they could, and everybody knew it. They went
back to raising cockapoos.
Cherry, living up in Nashville, Tennessee, had a baby, Stan,
the one that's in his twenties now. Cherry sent baby pictures back
to Gladys and Buddy, and wrote that she was going to be a
singer. Six years later, she came home. She said nothing against
Don Westall, who was still a disc jockey on WKLX, Nashville.
You could hear him on the radio every night after ten P.M.
Cherry said the breakup was all her fault. She said she had made
some mistakes, but she didn't say what they were. She was thin
and noble. Her kid was cute. She did not go back out to the farm
then. She rented an apartment over the hardware store, down by
the river, and got a job downtown working in Ginger's Boutique.
After a year or so, she started acting more like herself again,
although not quite like herself, she had grown up somehow in
Nashville, and quit being spoiled. She put Stan, her kid, first.
And if she did run around a little bit, or if she was the life of the
party sometimes out at the country club, so what? Stan didn't
want for a thing. By then the Oxendines were failing and she had
to take care of them too, she had to drive her daddy up to
Grenada for dialysis twice a week. It was not an easy life for
Cherry, but if it ever got her down, you couldn't tell it. She was
still cute. When her daddy finally died and left her a little money,
everybody was real glad. Oh now, they said, Cherry Oxendine
can quit working so hard and put her mama in a home or
something and have a decent life. She can go on a cruise. But
then along came Ed Palladino, and the rest is history.
Cherry Oxendine was left with no husband, no money, a little
girl, and a mean old mama to take care of. At least by this time
Stan was in the Navy-Cherry never complained, though. She
moved back out to the farm. When Ginger retired from business
and closed her boutique, Cherry got another job, as a receptionist
at Wallace, Wallace and Peebles. This was her undoing. Because
Lamar Peebles had just moved back to town with his family, to
join his father's firm. Lamar had two little girls. He had been
married to a tobacco heiress since college. All this time he had
run around on her. He was not on the up-and-up. And when he
encountered redheaded Cherry Oxendine again after the passage
of so many years, all those old fireworks went off again. They
got to be a scandal, then a disgrace. Lamar said he was going to
marry her, and Cherry believed him. After six months of it, Mrs.
Lamar Peebles checked herself into a mental hospital in Silver
Hill, Connecticut. First, she called her lawyers.
And then it was all over, not even a year after it began. Mr.
and Mrs. Lamar Peebles were reconciled and moved to Winston-

Salem, North Carolina, her hometown. Cherry Oxendine lost her

job at Wallace, Wallace and Peebles, and was reduced to working
in the deli at Food Lion. Why did she do it? Why did she lose all
the goodwill she'd built up in this community over so many
years? It is because she doesn't know how to look out for
Number One. Her own daughter, Tammy Lynn Palladino, is
aware of this.
"You have got a fatal flaw, Mama," Tammy said after learning
about fatal flaws in English class. "You believe everything
everybody tells you."
Still, Tammy loves her mother. Sometimes she writes her
mother's whole name, Cherry Oxendine Westall Palladino Stikes,
over and over in her Blue Horse notebook. Tammy Lynn will
never be half the woman her mother is, and she's so smart she
knows it. She gets a kick out of her morher's wild ideas.
"When you gee too old to be cute, honey, you get to be
eccentric," Cherry told Tammy one time. It's the truest thing she
ever said.
It seems to Tammy that the main thing about her mother is,
Cherry always has to have something going on. If it isn't a man
it's something else, such as having her palm read by thar woman
over in French Camp, or astrology, or the grapefruit diet. Cherry
believes in the Bermuda Triangle, Bigfoot, Atlantis, and ghosts.
It kills her that she's not psychic. The UFO Club was just the
latest in a long string of interests although it has lasted the
longest, starting back before Cherry's marriage to Harold Sdkes.
And then Cherry got cancer, and she kind of forgot about it. But
Tammy still remembers the night her mama first got so turned on
to UFOs.
Rhonda Ramey, Cherry's best friend, joined the UFO Club first.
Rhonda and Cherry are a lot alike, although it's hard to see this at
first. While Cherry is short and peppy, Rhonda is tall, thin, and
listless. She looks like Cher. Rhonda doesn't have any children.
She's crazy about her husband, Bill, but he's a workaholic who
runs a string of video rental stores all over northern Mississippi,
so he's gone a lot, and Rhonda gets bored. She works out at the
spa, but it isn't enough. Maybe this is why she got so interested
when the UFO landed at a farm outside her mother's hometown
of Como. It was first spotted by sixteen-year-old Donnie Johnson
just at sunset, as he was finishing his chores on his parents' farm.
He heard a loud rumbling sound "in the direction of the hog
house," it said in the paper. Looking up, he suddenly saw a
"brilliantly lit mushroom-shaped object" hovering about two feet
above the ground, with a shaft of white light below and glowing
all over with an intensely bright multicolored light, "like the light
of a welder's arc."
Donnie said it sounded like a jet. He was temporarily blinded
and paralyzed. He fell down on the ground. When he came back
to his senses again, it was gone. Donnie staggered into the
kitchen where his parents, Durel, fifty-four, and Erma, fortynine, were eating supper, and told them what had happened.
They all ran back outside to the field, where they found four
large imprints and four small imprinrs in the muddy ground, and
a nearby clump of sage grass on fire. The hogs were acting
funny, bunching up, looking dazed. Immediately, Durel jumped
in his truck and went to get the sheriff, who came right back with
two deputies. All in all, six people viewed the site while the bush
continued to burn, and who knows how many peoplehalf of
Comosaw the imprints the next day. Rhonda saw them too.
She drove out to the Johnson farm with her mother, as soon as
she heard about it.
It was a close encounter of the second kind, according to Civil
Air Patrol head Glenn Raines, who appeared on TV to discuss it,
because the UFO "interacted with its surroundings in a
significant way." A close encounter of the first kind is simplv a
close-range sighting, while a close encounter of the third kind is
something like the most famous example, of Betty and Barney

Hill of Exeter, New Hampshire, who were actually kidnapped by

a UFO while they were driving along on a trip. Betty and Barney
Hill were taken aboard the alien ship and given physical exams
by intelligent humanoid beings. Two hours and thirty-five
minutes were missing from their trip, and afterward, Betty had to
be treated for acute anxiety. Glenn Raines, wearing his brown
Civil Air Patrol uniform, said all this on TV.
His appearance, plus what had happened at the Johnson farm,
sparked a rash of sightings all across Mississippi, Louisiana, and
Texas for the next two years. Metal disk-like objects were seen,
and luminous objects appearing as lights at night. In Levelland,
Texas, fifteen people called the police to report an egg-shaped
UFO appearing over State Road 1173. Overall, the UFOs seemed
to show a preference for soybean fields and teenage girl viewers.
But a pretty good photograph of a UFO flying over the Gulf was
taken by a retired man from Pascagoula, so you can't generalize.
Clubs sprang up all over the place. The one that Rhonda and
Cherry went to had seventeen members and met once a month at
the junior high school.
Tammy recalls exactly how her mama and Rhonda acted the
night they came home from Cherry's first meeting. Cherry's eyes
sparkled in her face like Brenda Starr's eyes in the comics. She
started right in telling Tammy all about it, beginning with the
Johnsons from Como and Betty and Barney Hill.
Tammy was not impressed. "I don't believe it," she said. She
was president of the Science Club at the junior high school.
"You are the most irritating child!" Cherry said. " What don't
you believe?"
"Well, any of it," Tammy said then. "All of it," and this has
remained her attitude ever since.
"Listen, honey, jimmy Carter saw one," Cherry said
triumphantly. "In nineteen seventy-one, at the Executive
Mansion in Georgia. He turned in an official report on it."
"How come nobody knows about it, then?" Tammy asked. She
was a tough customer.
"Because the government covered it up!" said Rhonda, just
dying to tell this part. "People see UFOs all the time, it's
common knowledge, they are trying to make contact with us
right now, honey, but the government doesn't want the average
citizen to know about it. There's a big cover-up going on."
"It's just like Watergate." Cherry opened a beer and handed it
over to Rhonda.
"That's right," Rhonda said, "and every time there's a major
incident, you know what happens? These men from the
government show up at your front door dressed all in black.
After they get through with you, you'll wish you never heard the
word 'saucer.' You turn pale and get real sick. You can't get
anything to stay on your stomach."
Tammy cracked up. Bur Rhonda and Cherry went on and on.
They had official-looking gray notebooks to log their sightings
in. At their meetings, they reported these sightings to each other,
and studied up on the subject in general. Somebody in the club
was responsible for the educational part of each meeting, and
somebody else broughr the refreshments.
Tammy Lynn learned to keep her mouth shut. It was less
embarrassing than belly dancing; she had a friend whose mother
took belly dancing at the YMCA. Tammy did not tell her mama
about all the rational explanations for UFOs that she found in the
school library. They included: (1) hoaxes; (2) natural
phenomena, such as fungus causing the so-called fairy rings
sometimes found after a landing; (3) real airplanes flying off
course; and Tammv's favorite, (4) the Fata Morgana, described as
a "rare and beautiful type of mirage, constantly changing, the
result of unstable layers of warm and cold air. The Fata Morgana
takes its name from fairy lore and is said to evoke in the viewer a
profound sense of longing," the book went on to say. Tammy's
biology teacher, Mr. Owens, said he thought that the weather
patterns in Mississippi might be especially conducive to this

phenomenon. But Tammy kept her mouth shut. And after a

while, when nobody in the UFO Club saw anything, its
membership declined sharply. Then her mama met Harold Stikes,
then Harold Stikes left his wife and children and moved out to
the farm with them, and sometimes Cherry forgot to attend the
meetings, she was so happy with Harold Stikes.
Tammy couldn't see tuhy, initially. In her opinion, Harold
Stikes was about as interesting as a telephone pole. "But he's so
nice!" Cherry tried to explain it to Tammy Lynn. Finally Tammy
decided that there is nothing in the world that makes somebody
as attractive as if they really love you. And Harold Stikes really
did love her mama, there was no question. That old manwhat a
crazy old Romeo! Why, he proposed to Cherry when she was
still in the hospital after she had her breast removed (this was
back when they thought that was it, that the doctors had gotten it
all).
"Listen, Cherry," he said solemnly, gripping a dozen red roses.
"I want you to marry me."
"What?" Cherry said. She was still groggy.
"I want you to marry me," Harold said. He knelt down heavily
beside her bed.
"Harold! Get up from there!" Cherry said. "Somebody will see
you."
"Say yes," said Harold.
"I just had my breast removed."
"Say yes," he said again.
" Yes, yes, yes!" Cherry said.
And as soon as she got out of the hospital, they were married
out in the orchard, on a beautiful April day, by Lew Uggams, a
JP from out of town. They couldn't find a local preacher to do it.
The sky was bright blue, not a cloud in sight. Nobody was
invited except Stan, Tammy, Rhonda and Bill, and Cherry's
mother, who wore her dress inside out. Cherry wore a new pink
lace dress, the color of cherry blossoms. Tough little Tammy
cried and cried. It's the most beautiful wedding she's ever seen,
and now she's completely devoted to Harold Stikes.
So Tammy leaves the lights on for Harold when she finally goes
to bed that night. She tried to wait up for him, but she has to go
to school in the morning, she's got a chemistry test. Her mamaw
is sound asleep in the little added-on baby room that Buddy
Oxendine built for Cherry. Gladys acts like a baby now, a spoiled
baby at that. The only thing she'll drink is Sprite out of a can. She
talks mean. She doesn't like anything in the world except George
and Tammy, the two remaining cockapoos.
They bark up a storm when Harold finally gets back out to the
farm, at one-thirty. The cockapoos are barking, Cherry's mom is
snoring like a chain saw. Harold doesn't see how Tammy Lynn
can sleep through all of this, but she always does. Teenagers can
sleep through anything. Harold himself has started waking up
several times a night, his heart pounding. He wonders if he's
going to have a heart attack. He almost mentioned his symptoms
to Lois Hickey last week, in fact, but then thought, What the hell.
His heart is broken. Of course it's going to act up some. And
everything, not only his heart, is out of whack. Sometimes he'll
break into a sweat for no reason. Often he forgets really crucial
things, such as filing his estimated income tax on January 15.
Harold is not the kind to forget something this important. He has
strange aches that float from joint to joint. He has headaches.
He's lost twelve pounds. Sometimes he has no appetite at all.
Other times, like right now, he's just starving.
Harold goes in the kitchen and finds a flat rectangular
casserole, carefully wrapped in tinfoil, on the counter, along with
aTupperware cake carrier. He lifts off the top of the cake carrier
and finds a pina colada cake, his favorite. Then he pulls back the
tinfoil on the casserole. Lasagna! Plenty is left over. Harold
sticks it in the microwave. He knows that the cake and the
lasagna were left here by his ex-wife. Ever since Cherry has been

in Intensive Care, Joan has been bringing food out to the farm.
She comes when Harold's at work or at the hospital, and leaves it
with Gladys or Tammy. She probably figures that Harold would
refuse it, if she caught him at home, which he would. She's a
grear cook, though. Harold takes the lasagna out of the
microwave, opens a beer, and sits down at the kitchen table. He
loves Joan's lasagna.
Cherry's idea of a terrific meal is one she doesn't have to cook.
Harold remembers eating in bed with Cherry, tacos from Taco
Bell, sour-cream-and-onion chips, beer. He gets some more
lasagna and a big wedge of pina colada cake.
Now it's two-thirty, but for some reason Harold is not a bit
sleepy. His mind whirls with thoughts of Cherry. He snaps off all
the lights and stands in the darkened house. His heart is racing.
Moonlight comes in the windows, it falls on the old patterned
rug. Outside, it's as bright as day. He puts his coat on and goes
out, with the cockapoos scampering along beside him. They are
not even surprised. They think it's a fine time for a walk. Harold
goes past the mailbox, down the dirt road between the fields. Out
here in the country, the sky is both bigger and closer than it is in
town. Harold feels like he's in a huge bowl turned upside down,
with tiny little pinpoints of light shining through. And everything
is silvered by the moonlightthe old fenceposts, the corn
stubble in the flat long fields, a distant barn, the highway at the
end of the dirt road, his own strange hand when he holds it out to
look at it.
He remembers when she waited on him in the Food Lion deli,
three years ago. He had asked for a roast beef sandwich, which
come prepackaged. Cherry put it on his plate. Then she paused,
and cocked her hip, and looked at him. "Can I give you some
potato salad to go with that?" she asked. "Some slaw?"
Harold looked at her. Some red curls had escaped the required
net. "Nothing else," he said.
But Cherry spooned a generous helping of potato salad onto his
plate. "Thank you so much," he said. They looked at each other.
"I know I know you," Cherry said.
It came to him then. "Cherry Oxendine," said Harold. "I
remember you from high school."
"Lord, you've got a great memory, then!" Cherry had an easy
laugh. "That was a hundred years ago."
"Doesn't seem like it." Harold knew he was holding up the
line.
"Depends on who you're talking to," Cherry said.
Later that day, Harold found an excuse to go back over to the
deli for coffee and apple pie, then he found an excuse to look
through the personnel files. He started eating lunch at the deli
every day, without making any conscious decision to do so. In
the afternoons, when he went back for coffee, Cherry would take
her break and sit at a table with him.
Harold and Cherry talked and talked. They talked about their
families, their kids, high school. Cherry told him everything that
had happended to her. She was tough and funny, not bitter or
self-pitying. They talked and talked. In his whole life, Harold
had never had so much to say. During this period, which lasted
for several weeks, his whole life took on a heightened aspect.
Everything that happened to him seemed significant, a little
incident to tell Cherry about. Every song he liked on the radio he
remembered, so he could ask Cherry if she liked it too. Then
there came the day when they were having coffee and she
mentioned she'd left her car at Al's Garage that morning to get a
new clutch.
"I'll give you a ride over there to pick it up," said Harold
instantly. In his mind he immediately canceled the sales meeting
he had scheduled for four o'clock.
"Oh, that's too much trouble," Cherry said.
"But I insist." In his conversations with Cherry, Harold had
developed a brand-new gallant manner he had never had before.

"Well, if you're sure it's not any trouble ..." Cherry grinned at
him like she knew he really wanted to do it, and that afternoon
when he grabbed her hand suddenly before letting her out at Al's
Garage, she did not pull it away.
The next weekend Harold took her up to Memphis and they
stayed at the Peabody Hotel, where Cherry got the biggest kick
out of the ducks in the lobby, and ordering from room service.
"You're a fool," Harold's friends told him later, when the shit
hit the fan.
But Harold didn't think so. He doesn't think so now, walking
the old dirt road on the Oxendine farm in the moonlight. He
loves his wife. He feels that he has been ennobled and enlarged,
by knowing Cherry Oxendine. He feels like he has been specially
selected among men, to receive a precious gift. He stepped out of
his average life for her, he gave up being a good man, but the
rewards have been extraordinary. He's glad he did it. He'd do it
all over again.
Still walking, Harold suddenly knows that something is going
to happen. But he doesn't stop walking. Only, the whole world
around him seems to waver a bit, and intensify. The moonlight
shines whiter than ever. A little wind whips up out of nowhere.
The stars are twinkling so brightly that theyr seem to dance,
actually dance, in the sky. And then, while Harold watches, one
of them detaches itself from the rest of the skv and grows larger,
moves closer, until it's clear that it is actually moving across the
sky, at an angle to the earth. A falling star, perhaps? A comet?
Harold stops walking. The star moves faster and taster, with
an erratic pattern. It's getting real close now. It's no star. Harold
hears a high whining noise, like a blender. The cockapoos huddle
against his ankles. They don't bark. Now he can see the blinking
red lights on the top of it, and the beam of white light shooting
out the bottom. His coat is blown straight out behind him by the
wind. He feels like he's going blind. He shields his eyes. At first
it's as big as a barn, then a tobacco warehouse. It covers the field.
Although Harold can't say exactly how it communicates to him
or even if it does, suddenly his soul is filled to bursting. The
ineffable occurs. And then, more quickly than it came, it's gone,
off toward Carrollton, rising inro the night, leaving the field, the
farm, the road. Harold turns back.
It will take Cherry Oxendine two more weeks to die. She's
tough. And even when there's nothing left of her bur heart, she
will fight all the way. She will go out turious, squeezing Harold's
hand at the very moment of death, clinging last to every minute
of this bright, hard life. And although at first he won't want to,
Harold will go on living. He will buy another store. Gladys will
die. Tammy Lynn will make Phi Beta Kappa. Harold will start
attending the Presbyterian church again. Eventually Harold may
even go back to his family, but he will love Cherry Oxendine
until the day he dies, and he will never, ever, tell anybody what
he saw.

Lee Smith at Home in Appalachia

by Jeanne McDonald
As they say in the South, Lee Smith has never met a stranger.
Five minutes after you meet her, you are exchanging intimate
secrets and discussing weighty things-metaphysical issues,
humanity, the really important stuff. Smith demonstrates an
empathy and involvement with the concerns of others that are so
sincere, you realize immediately that she herself has been on the
same emotional plateau at one time or another. Her lively blue
eyes are as friendly and approachable as a cool lake you can
wade into, and her smile and expressions seem completely
implicated with everything you are telling her. No wonder her

characters are so real, her subjects so genuine. Lee Smith

understands. She listens. And after her discovery of James Still,
Smith began listening even more intently to the stories told in
Grundy, taping them and writing them down. She coaxed her
mother to retell tales from the past that she might have forgotten,
talked to her father about ghost stories and legends of the region,
and prompted her Aunt Kate to tell her version of the truth.
Writing comes out of a life lived, James Still said once in an
interview (Knoxville News-Sentinel, May 16, 1993). For me,
ideas are hanging from limbs like pears, from fences like gourds.
They rise up like birds from cover. So it was for Lee Smith, who
began to incorporate all those true tales and anecdotes from
Grundy into her novels. Last year, at the beginning of her ninth
novel, Saving Grace (Putnam, 1996), she quoted these lines from
T. S. Eliots Little Giddings:
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we

started
And know the place for the first time.
During the writing of her fourth novel, Oral History (Putnam,
1983), another revelation occurred. Smith discovered that the
device of using first-person narrative gave her characters dignity
and removed stiffness from the dialogue. Now she had place,
story, and voice, the voice that had been in her head, in her ears,
on the tip of her tongue, for years. The rhythms of the native
dialect came naturally to her.
Even in the novels she had read as a child, Smith had fallen
in love with the Southern literary voice. Of course, she says, it
was impossible not to be influenced by Faulkner, and it was
from novels like The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying that
she got the idea of multiple narrators, even though Faulkners
Deep South settings, with their Spanish moss, ruined columns,
and crumbling old mansions, were a world apart from Grundys
dark hills and poverty-ridden hollows. There were no black
people in Grundy, either. For Smith, Faulkners world was so
alien, it might as well have been a foreign country. The voices of
Grundy that already existed in her head were reinforced by the
characters in Eudora Weltys Shower of Gold and Flannery
OConnors Everything That Rises Must Converge. Although
Smith is often compared to both these Southern writers, her own
reading taste is broad and eclectic. She lists Virginia Woolfs To
the Lighthouse as the perfect novel, is an avid reader of poetry,
and, with tongue in cheek, calls Shakespeare real good. Smith
could never be labeled as a grit-lit writer who reduces poor
white Southerners to generic caricatures. She brings to her
characters a decency and dignity that makes them as credible as
any memorable character in English literature. Some people,
however, equate Southern dialects with ignorance-in both
characters and authors. Smith recounts an episode that occurred
early in her career, when she gave a reading at Columbia
University. As soon as she began to speak, several people got up
and walked out of the auditorium, put off, she assumed, by her
thick Southern accent. Others call her accent lilting,
charming, and Newsweek summed up the impact of her work
in a review of her fifth novel, Fair and Tender Ladies (Putnam,
1988): Her work is about the moment when, as you look at or
listen to a work of nave art, it stops being a curiosity and starts
to speak to you in a human voice.
Lee Smith made a giant leap into the mainstream when Oral
History was published. With that novel, she became the titular
queen of the new Southern regional movement, which Peter
Guralnick, writing in the Los Angeles Times Magazine (May 21,
1995), defined as a simultaneous embrace of past and present,
this insistent chronicling of the small, heroic battles of the human

spirit, a recognition of the dignity and absurdity of the

commonplace. Guralnick includes among the movements
members Larry Brown, Kaye Gibbons, Cormac McCarthy, Jill
McCorkle, Jayne Anne Phillips, Anne Tyler, and James Wilcox.
Though they may have varied literary styles, all these authors,
like Smith, write stories with an exceptionally strong sense of
place.
In the South, Smith says, sense of place implies who you
are and what your family did. Its not just literally the physical
surroundings, what stuff looks like. Its a whole sense of the past.
Even if I write a short story, I have to make diagrams of what the
characters house looks like and where the house is in relation to
the town. In fact, Putnam recently returned to her a map she
drew when she wrote Oral History, depicting not only the
physical setting for the novel, but also the geographical
relationship of all the characters.
Oral History is the virtual prototype of the modern
Appalachian novel, but it is also the book that broke Lee Smith
out of the regional mold. Lee Smith, says Guralnick, is the
latest in a long line of Southerners who transform the regions
voices and visions into quintessentially American novels. Other
novels by Smith that celebrate the small, heroic battles of the
human spirit followed soon after: Family Linen (Putnam, 1985),
Fair and Tender Ladies, The Devils Dream (Putnam, 1992), and,
in 1996, Saving Grace.
Smiths first novel came out of her senior thesis at Hollins
College under the tutelage of Louis Rubin, who later founded
Algonquin Press. The Last Day the Dogbushes Bloomed,
published by Harper and Row in 1968, was an impressive
beginning for such a young writer, but there was a period early in
her career when the initial momentum broke down. Harper and
Row had published my second and third novels [Something in
the Wind, 1971, and Fancy Strut, 1973], when my wonderful
editor, Cass Canfield, retired. I was young, living in Alabama,
and my books had lost money for the publishers. I had been
published in Best Writing From American Colleges, had won a
Book-of-the-Month Club Writing Fellowship, and I had a good
agent, Perry Knowlton. But nobody would take my new novel,
Black Mountain Breakdown. Not even my agent believed in it.
To further complicate matters, Smith realized that her
marriage to her first husband, poet James Seay, was
disintegrating, and she had two young sons to care for. From
1973 to 1981 she taught high school English and a variety of
other courses and had actually enrolled in graduate school for
training as a special education teacher when her friend Roy
Blount, Jr., helped her find the New York agent who still
represents her work-Liz Darhanshoff-and her literary career took
off again. Faith Sale at Putnam became my editor and remains
my editor after all these years, says Smith, and that ended the
nonpublishing streak. She handled the temporary defeat as
cheerfully as she handles all obstacles: I have never had writers
block, she says wryly, but I have definitely had publishers
block.
Meanwhile, back in Grundy, nobody had ever doubted that
Lee Smith would grow up to be a famous storyteller, especially
not Smith herself, who says she had been romantically
dedicated to the grand idea of being a writer ever since she
could remember. Like Karen, the teen-aged narrator in her story
Tongues of Fire in the short story collection Me and My Baby
View the Eclipse, Putnam, 1990) who Smith says is closest to her
autobiographical double, she often pictured herself poised at the
foggy edge of a cliff someplace in the south of France, wearing a
cape, drawing furiously on a long cigarette, hollow-cheeked and
haunted.
As soon as she was able to spell, Smith started writing
stories. I loved it, she said, because everything happened just
the way I wanted it to. Writing stories gave me a special power.
Her first novel, written on her mothers stationery when Smith

was eight years old, had as its main characters her two favorite
people at the time-Adlai Stevenson and Jane Russell. The plot
involved their falling in love, heading west in a covered wagon,
and converting to Mormonism.
At the age of 11, Smith and her best friend, Martha Sue
Owens, published a neighborhood newspaper, The Small Review,
which they laboriously hand-copied for 12 neighbors. Articles
from the newspaper show evidence of Smiths budding talent for
detailed observation as well as her curiosity about peoples
idiosyncrasies. Her controversial editorial, George McGuire Is
Too Grumpy, exacted an apology to the neighbor across the
street, but it was indicative of Smiths dedication to truth in
writing. For example, in the short story Fancy Strut in the
collection Me and My Baby View the Eclipse, she writes, Bob
and Frances Pitt stayed in a bridal suite in the Ocean-Aire Autel
at Fort Walton Beach, Florida, on their honeymoon, and had a
perfectly all right time; but do you know what Johnny B. and
Sandy DuBois did? They went to the Southern 500 at Darlington,
South Carolina, and sat out in the weather on those old hard
benches for three entire days, watching the cars go around and
around. In another story, Life on the Moon (in Me and My
Baby View the Eclipse), she writes: Lonnie took the rug and the
E-Z Boy and his clothes and six pieces of Tupperware, thats all,
and moved in with a nurse from the hospital, Sharon Ledbetter,
into her one-bedroom apartment at Colony Courts.
It is these particulars of life that are splendidly observed,
said reviewer Caroline Thompson, writing in the Los Angeles
Times at the publication of Black Mountain Breakdown (Putnam,
1981): They would make a Carson McCullers of a Flannery
OConnor proud. Smith already knows her characters intimately
before she sits down to write the first word of a story. In order to
keep her work spontaneous, she rarely revises, which is lucky,
because she still writes first drafts in longhand. But she knows
exactly what her characters are going to do because, she says,
they tell her. In fact, she describes herself as the medium through
which those characters speak. For her, voices are easy to do.
Theres always a human voice thats telling me the story. It is
easy for us as readers to accept her declaration that she is merely
the vehicle for her characters stories when we see how
accurately she gives voice to those poverty-stricken daughters,
wives, and mothers who live in the mountain hollers she knew
when she was growing up in Grundy. Her empathy and her
innate ability to recreate the events of their lives and the cadence
of their voices are factors that help the reader understand-even
love-those women who marry young, are weighed down by
poverty and children while they are mere children themselves,
and who usually die never having seen the world beyond the
shadowy mountains where the sun rarely shows itself before
noon. Most of Smiths novels deal with women whom
Publishers Weekly (May 1995) called spirited women of humble
background who are destined to endure difficult and often tragic
times. She draws her women so thoroughly-Crystal Spangler in
Black Mountain Breakdown, Florida Grace Shepherd in Saving
Grace, Ivy Rowe in Fair and Tender Ladies-that by the time you
have finished her novels, you feel as if you have made two new
friends-the character and Lee Smith herself.
Until Smith began to write novels, most southern heroines,
like Scarlett OHara, were from privileged families. Poor white
women remained in the background, unexamined and unworthy
of star billing. But Smith changed all that by exploring their
hearts and minds and resurrecting the dignity of Appalachian
women. Saving Grace is the perfect example of a story and voice
that Smith says possessed her, much as Ivy Rowes had in Fair
and Tender Ladies. In fact, she was so involved with Ivy, a
character she says helped her deal with the death of her own
mother, that she was reluctant to give up the manuscript when
her editor declared the book finished. Grace had already been
speaking to Smith for a while when she went to the annual

Flannery OConnor Festival in Milledgeville, Georgia. She

returned home to Chapel Hill, reread all the OConnor works she
could find, submerged herself in a torrent of writing, and
delivered the manuscript to Putnam two years early. I got taken
over by Grace, she says. It was the most compelling narrative
that had ever come my way. But even when it was finished and I
went to the post office to mail the manuscript to the publisher, I
still hadnt thought of a name for the book. While I was waiting
in line, the wife of the local pediatrician came in. Whats the
book about? she asked me. And whats the characters name?
Grace, I told her, recounts Smith.
Well, theres your title, Lee, she said. Call it Saving
Grace. And I did.
One reason so many Southern fans identify with Lee Smith is
that she tells a story in the same convoluted way that they
themselves do, using intimate asides, gossipy digressions, and
personal references, just as any friend would tell a story in
ordinary conversation. The way Southerners tell a story is really
specific to the South, Smith says. Its a whole narrative strategy,
its an approach. Every kind of information is imparted in the
form of a story. Ask for directions in the South? She laughs. Its
not just turn left. Its I remember the time my cousin went up
there and got bit by a mad dog. Its a whole different approach to
interactions between people and to transmitting information.
There is a fine line between the exaggerations and
embellishments with which Southerners give details and what
they define as a story. My father was fond of saying that I would
climb a tree to tell a lie rather than stand on the ground to tell the
truth, says Smith. In fact, in the mountains where I come from,
a lie was often called a story, and well do I remember being
shaken until my teeth rattled and [given] the stern admonition:
Dont you tell me no story, now. But Smith was a precocious
and imaginative child, and her dramatic views were reinforced
by books that gave her an insight to the outside world that few
others in Grundy were privy to.
Though none of her large extended family ever read novels,
Smith discovered literature early. Not for entertainment or
information, she says, but to feel all wild and trembly inside.
Her favorites were anything at all about horses and saints.
Nobody ever told me something was too old for me because they
didnt know, see? They hadnt read them. I read stuff that would
have made my mother die-Mandingo, Frank Yerby, Butterfield 8,
lots of John OHara. And Raintree County put me to bed for two
days. I had to lie down.
Smith gave these same books to Florida Grace Shepherd to
read in Saving Grace, and that is how Grace, like Smith, learned
that there was much more to explore in the world. Still, it is the
people Smith grew up with who provided most of the material
and background for her characters: the minister and his wife, her
grandmother, her friends who lived in the hollers, or the women
who worked in her fathers dime store and talked about babies
being born with veils across their faces. Although her
characters may be eccentric or bizarre, they are always
believable, and their dimension emanates from Smiths ability to
slip into other peoples hearts and minds. Even when he
characters are flawed-shallow or evil or crafty-she gives the
reader something to love in each one. Their weaknesses and
vulnerability make them seem real, and every single one of her
characters is the kind of person you can still meet in southern
Appalachia today. You can still find the Randy Newhouse of
Saving Grace at any roadside tavern in the South; you can still
hear Travis Word preaching at any Southern fundamentalist
country church; and you can see Virgil Shepherd on religious TV
on any day of the week. In order to make these characters
realizable, Smith gives them dignity. Smith has great empathy
for the poor, said Publishers Weekly in a 1996 review of Saving
Grace, uneducated country people who yearn for a transcendent
message to infuse their lives with spiritual meaning.

A review of Saving Grace in The New York Times Book

Review complained that Smith had made her characters
dangerously close to clich, but anybody who has grown up in
the South recognizes in Smiths stories his cousin, or an eccentric
neighbor, or the man who runs the grocery store down at the
crossroads. And Lee Smith knows human nature. When she
wants more information for a story, she dives in headfirst. For
background on Family Linen she took a job as a shampoo girl at
a local beauty shop to learn firsthand how her characters lives
would play out.
Nothing is too demanding or exhausting for Smith. She is a
woman who loves her work. In conjunction with her latest
award-a Lila Wallace-Readers Digest grant, which gives her a
generous financial stipend and a three-year sabbatical-she chose
to affiliate with the Hindman Settlement School in Kentucky,
where, ironically, James Still was librarian in 1932. Besides the
connection wit Still, Smith is attracted to the area because it
reminds her of Grundy, and she feels an affinity to the people
there. She has been working with writing students at Hindmans
Adult Learning Center and at other eastern Kentucky schools.
Smith has also been the recipient of the Robert Penn Warren
Prize for Fiction (1991), the Sir Walter Raleigh Award (1989),
the John Dos Passos Award for Literature (1987), the North
Carolina Award for Fiction (1984), and a Lyndhurst Prize. She
left Hollins College in 1967 with a bachelors degree in English
and $3,000 from her first major award, the Book-of-the-Month
College English Writing Contest Prize, and embarked on a career
that has spanned 30 years.
The affiliation in Kentucky has excited and energized Smith.
Watching people express themselves in language, she muses, is
like watching them fall in love. She is particularly excited and
inspired by the older participants in her workshops, especially
the ones who have only recently learned to read and write. For
the first time, she says, they are able to express on paper the
scores of stories that have been stored in their heads for years.
And-lucky for them-they have Lee Smith to help.
I love to work with older writers, says Smith. At North
Carolina State University I have lots of older graduate students,
but its good to get out of the academic community where people
are always deconstructing texts and talking about symbolism.
This experience in Kentucky puts the emphasis on
communication and how thrilling it is to read and write.
For both Smith and the adults enrolled in the literacy
program, the ultimate fulfillment is seeing their words in print
for the first time. The publishers are Lila Wallace, Kinkos, and
me, says Smith wit a laugh. Weve already printed two
autobiographies in batches of 1,000 and were selling out. Some
of the manuscripts are being used by other writing workshops as
models of how writing can be taught in the community.
Next year Smith will return to teaching at North Carolina
State University in Raleigh. She and her second husband, Hal
Crowther, a syndicated journalist and columnist for Oxford
American magazine, have recently bought an old house in
Hillsborough, North Carolina, eight miles from their former
Chapel Hill home. Theyve also purchased a cabin in Jefferson,
North Carolina, where Smith grows dahlias and roses and
nourishes 20 apple trees. The cabin and the surrounding
woods remind her of Grundy and her roots and the people
who have been her greatest source of inspiration.
But while shes living other areas of her life, plots are
still buzzing around in her head, and she rarely takes a
vacation from her stories. Louis Rubin, Smiths former
writing teacher, has said of her: Lees a real writer. She
writes all the time. She writes when shes down. She
writes when shes up-thats just her way of dealing with
the world.
I write fiction the way other people write in their
journals, Smith says. It helps me keep track of time so I

can see what Im up to. Often writing helps her work through
real-life trauma. Its her personal brand of therapy, the way she
deals with whatever emotional ups and downs she inherited from
her beloved manic-depressive parents. She never discussed their
illness while they were alive, but its something she is dealing
with openly and honestly now. Sometimes when I look back at
something Ive written, I remember what was going on in my life
at that time, and I see how I worked it out through the writing.
The deaths of both her parents in recent years and their constant
history of depression have bee overwhelming, but writing, she
says, has actually helped her to work through and come to terms
with such obstacles. Now, life generally seems balmy. I want
more time with Hal, more years, Smith says adoringly of her
husband. (The two met at Duke Universitys Evening College,
where both were teaching writing courses.)
Smith never loses her enthusiasm for teaching classes and
workshops. Although she firmly believes that such programs
have given rise to a proliferation of good writers, The terrible
paradox, she says, is that even though there are more good
writers now than ever before, publishers are publishing less
literary fiction. In fact, almost nobody who is a good literary
writer ever makes it any more. Among those who have made it,
a few of her current favorites are Richard Bausch, Larry Brown,
James Lee Burke, Clyde Edgerton, Ellen Gilchrist, Toni
Morrison, Lewis Nordan, and Anne Tyler.
Smiths project that she calls a stocking stuffer was
published by Algonquin in the fall of 1996. Although most of her
books have been published by Putnam, she has always wanted to
do a project with Algonquin editor Shannon Ravenel, her old
friend from Hollins. Like Fair and Tender Ladies, which is an
epistolary novel based on actual letters Smith found at a garage
sale, The Christmas Letters is a novella composed of actual
Christmas letters from three generations of women in the same
family. But the resemblance stops there. The new book also
involves recipes, she says. I guess I could tell my entire life
story through food. You know how we went through that phase
using Cool Whip and cream of mushroom soup? And then we
went on to fondue, then quiche? Now its salsa. Recently she has
also been busy promoting her newest book, News of the Spirit, a
collection of short stories and novellas released in September by
Putnam, and is working on new stories.
Smith has come full circle, from discovering James Stills
novel and becoming a friend of the author himself at the
Hindman Center in Kentucky, to seeing her first novel, The Last
Day the Dogbushes Bloomed, recently reprinted in paperback by
Louisiana State University Press as part of a series of Southern
reissues. Now she is working on the songs and stories of Florida
Slone, a ballad singer famous around Knott County, and
participating in a workshop for public school teachers in
Kentucky. Meanwhile, she has donated her fathers former dime
store in Grundy to the town for the use as a teen center. And with
all this boundless energy and enthusiasm for life, Smith
continues to write incessantly and to support the work of others.
She is fascinated by the writing of Lou Crabtree, a woman in her
80s in Abingdon, Virginia, who, like everyone else who meets
her, has become Lee Smiths friend. Until LSU recently
published
her

collection, Stories from Sweet Holler, Lou had been writing her
whole life without any thought of publication, says Smith, with
her usual exuberance. Once I said to her, Lou, what would you
do if somebody told you that you werent allowed to write
anymore? Well, Lou replied, I reckon Id just have to sneak
off and do it.
So would Lee Smith: shed just sneak off and do it.

In Her Own Words

Although I dont usually write autobiographical fiction, my
main character in one of the short stories from News and the
Spirit sounds suspiciously like the girl I used to be: More than
anything else in the world, I wanted to be a writer. I didnt want
to learn to write, of course. I just wanted to be a writer, and I
often pictured myself poised at the foggy edge of a cliff
somewhere in the south of France, wearing a cape, drawing
furiously on a long cigarette, hollow-cheeked and haunted. I had
been romantically dedicated to the grand idea of being a writer
ever since I can remember.
I started telling stories as soon as I could talk true stories,
and made-up stories, too. It has always been hard for me to tell
the difference between them.
My father was fond of saying that I would climb a tree to tell
a lie rather than stand on the ground to tell the truth. In fact, in
the mountains of southwestern Virginia where I grew up, a lie
was often called a story, and well do I remember being shaken
until my teeth rattled with the stern admonition, Dont you tell
me no story, now!
But he was hardly one to talk. Both my mama and my father
were natural storytellers themselves. My mama a home ec.
teacher from the Eastern shore of Virginia was one of those
Southern women who can and did make a story out of thin
air, out of anything a trip to the drugstore, something
somebody said to her in the church. My father liked to drink a
little and recite Kipling out loud. He came from right there, from
a big mountain family of storytelling Democrats who would sit
on the porch and place 25 dollar bets on which bird would fly
first off a telephone wire. They were all big talkers.
I got hooked on stories early, and as soon as I could write, I
started writing them down. I wrote my first novel on my
mothers stationery when I was eight. It featured as main
characters my two favorite people at that time: Adlai Stevenson
and Jane Russell. In my novel, they fell in love and then went
west together in a covered wagon.
Once there, they became inexplicably Mormons! Even at
that age, I was fixed upon glamour and flight, two themes I
returned to again and again as I wrote my way throughout high
school, then college.
Decades later, Im still at it. Narrative is as necessary to me
as breathing, as air. I write for the reason Ive always done so:
simply to survive. To make sense of my life. I never know what I
think until I read what Ive written. And I refuse to lead an
unexamined life. No matter how painful it is, I intend to know
whats going on. The writing itself is a source of strength for me,
a way to make it through the night.
The story has always served this function, I believe, from the
beginning of time. In the telling of it, we discover who we are,
why we exist, what we should do. It brings order and delight. Its
form is inherently pleasing, and deeply satisfying to us. Because
it has a beginning, a middle, and an end, it gives a recognizable
shape to the muddle and chaos of our lives.

Goodbye to the Sunset Man

Lee Smith bids farewell to her son, Josh

BY LE E SM ITH
Once again my husband and I line up for sunset cruise tickets
on the tall vintage schooner Western Union, which sways in its
dock here at the end of William Street, here at the end of
America.
How many? The handsome blonde in the ticket booth looks
like she used to be a man.
Three, I say.
Two, Hal says, turning around to look at me.
So how many is it? She drums her long nails on the wooden
counter.
Two, Hal says. He gives her his credit card.
She slides over two tickets for the sunset cruise and two
coupons for free drinks, which we order on the roof of the
Schooner Wharf Bar where we wait until time to board. This
year we are here without my son, Josh, who died in his sleep this
past Oct. 26. The cause of his death was an acute
myocardiopathy, the collapse of an enlarged heart brought
about, in part, I believe, by all the weight he had gained while
taking an antipsychotic drug. He was 33; he had been sick for
half his life, doing daily heroic battle with the brain disorder that
first struck while he was in a program for gifted teen musicians
at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, the summer between
his junior and senior years in high school.
Back in Chapel Hill, wed started getting wilder and wilder
phone calls from him about birds flying too close to the sun,
reports of all-night practice sessions on the piano, strange
encounters in the park, and no sleep no sleep, ever. He flew
home in a straight jacket.
Then the hospitalizations began first a lengthy stay at Holly
Hill in Raleigh followed by a short, heart-breaking try at
returning home to normalcy and Chapel Hill High; then longterm
care at Highland Hospital in Asheville, where he lived for the
next four years, sometimes in the hospital itself, sometimes in
their group home, sometimes in an apartment with participation
in their day program. For a while he was better, then not. All
kinds of fantasies and scenarios rolled through his head. He
moved, talked and dressed bizarrely; he couldnt remember
anything; he couldnt even read. We brought him back to UNC
Neurosciences Hospital. They referred him to Dorothea Dixs
test program for the new wonder drug clozapine, just legalized
in this country (1992).
Up on that beautiful, windy hill looking out over the city of
Raleigh, Josh started getting truly better for the first time. He
could participate in a real conversation; he could make a joke. It
was literally a miracle.
He was able to leave the hospital and enter Caramore
Community in Chapel Hill, which offered vocational
rehabilitation, a group home and then a supervised apartment
as well as a lot of camaraderie. He came in with some great
stories as he worked with the Caramore lawn and housecleaning
business ... my favorite being the time the housecleaning crew
dared one of the gang to jump into the baptismal pool at a local
church they were cleaning and then they all baptized him on
the spot. Before long he graduated into a real job at Carolina
Cleaners. Against all odds, Josh had become a working man, as
he always referred to himself; his pride in this was enormous.
Though other hospitalizations (tune-ups, he called them)
would be required from time to time, Josh was on his way. He
lived in his own apartment, drove a car, managed his weekly
doctor visits, blood tests, pharmacy trips and medication. But as
the most important part of his own treatment team, he
steadfastly refused his doctors eventual urging to switch to one
of the newer drugs, such as olanzapine, risperidol or geodon, in
hopes of jump-starting his metabolism. Clozapine had given him
back his life, and he didnt want to give it up. And in spite of his

weight and smoking, he seemed healthy enough; physical

examinations didnt ring any warning bells.
Josh became a familiar figure in Chapel Hill and Carrboro,
with friends and acquaintances all over town especially his
regular haunts such as Weaver Street and Caffe Driade, where he
went every day. Josh worked at Akai Hana Japanese Restaurant
in Carrboro for the last seven years of his life, doing everything
from washing dishes to prep work to lunchtime sushi chef. He
was the first one there every morning he opened up and started
preparing the rice. It was his favorite time of the day, as he often
said. He played piano at Akai Hana every Saturday night: a mix
of jazz, blues and his own compositions.
The live music produced by the Wharf Bars Jimmy Buffet
wannabe band is way too loud, and our drinks, when they come,
are a startling shade of red, with umbrellas in them. Hal raises his
plastic glass high. Heres to the big guy, he says. We drain
them.
Josh considered the schooner trip a requisite for his annual
Key West experience. He loved the ritual of it all, beginning
when the crew invited the evenings passengers to participate in
raising the mainsail. He always went over to line up and pull,
passing the halyard hand over hand to the next guy. He loved to
stand at the rail as we passed the town dock and Mallory Square,
where all the weird pageantry of the sunset was already in full
swing: the tourists, the guy with the trained housecats, the flame
swallower, the escape artist tied up in chains, the oddly terrifying
cookie lady. The aging hippie musician on board invariably
cranked up Sloop John Bee as we headed out to sea while the
sun sank lower on the starboard side. The sun was so bright that I
couldnt even face it without sunglasses, but Josh never wore
them. He just sat there perfectly still, staring straight into the sun,
a little smile playing around his lips.
What thoughts went through his head on that last voyage?
Perhaps more to the point, what thoughts did not go through
his head, in this later stage of schizophrenia characterized by
blank mind and lack of affect? Gone the voices, gone the
visions, gone the colored lights, to be replaced by ... what?
Maybe nothing, like the bodhisattva, a person who has achieved
the final apotheosis, beyond desire and self. Here he sat, an
immense man in a black T-shirt and blue jeans, silent, calm,
apparently at peace. He no longer seemed to know what he had
lost. Some call this a blessing, and some days I am among
them; but most days I am not, remembering instead that wild boy
of 17 who wanted the world all the music; all the friends, BMX
bikes and skateboards; all the poetry; all the girls all the life
there ever was.
Now the captain is blowing the conch shell from the deck of
the Western Union. We stand. The sun slants into our eyes. A
breeze is coming up. I pull on my windbreaker, fingering the
little bronze vial of ashes in my pocket.
Its time.
Last January (2003) Josh and I flew into Key West together,
arriving late on a cool and blustery Tuesday night around 9 p.m.
Wind rattled the palm fronds as we walked out onto the brightly
lit but somehow lonely looking Duval Street. Only a few people
scurried past, their shoulders hunched against the wind. We
passed the funky Chicken Store, a safe house for the muchmaligned chickens that have overrun Key West. We passed the
Scrub Club, an adult bathhouse that usually featured its scantily
clad ladies blowing bubbles over the balcony rail, calling out, Hi
there! Feeling dirty? Need a bath? to the amused passersby. But
it was too cool for bubbles that night, and the girls were all inside
behind their red door. The wind whipped paper trash along the
street.
We crossed Duval and went into the friendly looking Coffee
and Tea House, where big trees overhung an old bungalow with a
porch and yard filled with comfortable, mismatched furniture.
Josh was very tired. He had that out-of-it, blank look he

sometimes gets, almost vegetative, like a big sweet potato. We

walked up the concrete steps and into the bar with its comforting,
helpful smell of coffee brewing. People clustered at little tables,
on sofas, in armchairs in adjacent rooms, talking and reading the
newspapers strewn everyplace.
The bartenders long, gray hair was pulled back into a
ponytail. He came over to Josh and said, What can I get for you,
sir?
Well, Ill tell you, Josh said in a surprisingly loud voice
(maybe it even surprised him), shaking his head like a dog
coming up from under the water. Ill tell you, buddy, I dont
know what the hell it is I want, and I dont know where the hell it
is I am, and I dont know what the hell it is Im doing!
Heads along the bar swiveled, and the bartender burst out
laughing. In that case, sir, youve come to the right island! he
announced, as everybody applauded.
Josh had found his Key West home for the next week. At bars
or beaches, he talked to everybody; you never knew what he was
going to say next.
He told a great version of the Christmas story, too, conflating
the Bible with O. Henry: Once upon a time there was a young
girl who was very sick, and somehow she got the idea that she
would die when all the leaves fell off the tree that grew just
outside her bedroom window. One by one they dropped. She got
sicker and sicker. Finally there was only one red leaf left on the
tree; she was just about to die. That night while she was asleep,
Jesus flew up to her window. Jesus was a French artist. He wore
a red beret. So he brought his box of oil paints with him and
painted red leaves all over the window, finishing just as the sun
came up and the last red leaf fluttered down to the ground. Then
he flew away. Then she woke up, and she was well, and it was
Christmas.
Answering the question of whether or not he believed in
Jesus, he said, Well, I dont know. Every time Im in the
hospital, there are at least three people in there who think theyre
Jesus. So sometimes I think, well, maybe Jesus wasnt Jesus at
all maybe he was just the first schizophrenic.
Joshs eventual diagnosis was schizo-affective, meaning
partly schizophrenic (his mind did not work logically, his senses
were often unreliable, his grip on reality sometimes tenuous) and
partly bipolar actually a blessing, since the characteristic ups
and downs allowed him more expression and empathy. But
diagnosis is tricky at best. The sudden onset of these major brain
disorders usually occurs in the late teens or early twenties, and
its usually severe. But all psychosis looks alike at first. Theres
no way to distinguish between the highs of bipolar illness, for
instance, and the florid stage of schizophrenia or even a garden
variety LSD psychosis. Reality had fled in every case. The best
doctors make no claims; Wait and see, they say.
As far as prognosis goes, medical folklore holds to a rule of
three: About a third of all people with major psychotic episodes
will actually get well, such as Kurt Vonneguts son, Mark, now a
physician who wrote the memoir Eden Express. The next, larger
group will be in and out of hospitals and programs for the rest of
their lives, with wildly varying degrees of success in work and
life situations; the final group will have recalcitrant, persistent
illnesses which may require lifelong care or hospitalization
though now, I suspect, the new drugs and community care
models have shrunk this group considerably.
But heres the bottom line: All mental illnesses are treatable.
Often, brain chemistry has to be adjusted with medication. If
symptoms occur, go to the doctor. Dont downplay it, dont hide
it seek treatment immediately. Mental illness is no more
embarrassing than diabetes. And the earlier we get treatment, the
more effective it will be. I myself could never have made it
through this past year of grief and depression without both
counseling and medication. We are also lucky to have
organizations and support groups in this area to help us and our

families cope. As Josh proved, very real, valid and full lives can
be lived within these illnesses.
Now my husband and I sit discreetly at the very back of the
Western Union, right behind the captain at the wheel. He has
given the order; the crew has cried fire in the hole and shot off
the cannon. We have covered our ears. We have gotten our
complimentary wine, our conch chowder. We have listened to
our shipmates talk about how much snow they left behind in
Cleveland, how many grandchildren they have, and how one guy
played hockey for Hopkins on that great team in 1965. Then we
duck as, with a great whoosh of the jib, we come about. We sit
quietly, holding hands, hard. Now theres a lot of wind. All
around us, people are putting on their jackets.
Independent of any of this, the sky puts on its big show,
gearing up for sunset. The sun speeds up as it sinks lower and
lower. The water turns into a sheet of silver, like a mirror.
Like Hal, Josh was a major sunset man, always looking for
that legendary green flash right after the sunset, which nobody I
know has ever actually seen, though everybody claims to have
known somebody who has seen it. Here where sunset is a
religion, we never miss the moment. In Key West the sun grows
huge and spreads out when it touches the water, so that its no
longer round at all but a glowing red beehive shape that plunges
down abruptly to the thunderous applause of the revelers back at
Mallory Square.
Get ready, Hal says in my ear. But look, theres a cloud
bank, its not going to go all the way.
I twist the top of the vial in my windbreaker pocket.
The sun glows neon red, cut off at the bottom by clouds.
A hush falls over the whole crowd on board the Western
Union. Everybody faces west. Cameras are raised. It is
happening.
Bon voyage, Hal says. Suddenly, the sun is gone. The crowd
cheers. I throw the ashes out on the water behind us; like a puff
of smoke, they disappear immediately into the wake. I say,
Goodbye, baby. Nobody notices. The water turns into mother of
pearl, shining pink all the way from our schooner to the horizon.
The scalloped edge of the puffy clouds goes from pink to gold.
The crowd goes aah. Goodbye baby. But no green flash. The
crowd stretches, they move, they mill around on deck. The light
fades and stars come out.
I dont agree with the theory that mental illness conveys
certain gifts. Even if this sometimes seems to be the case, as in
bipolar disorders frequent association with creativity, those gifts
are not worth the pain and devastating losses the illness also
brings with it. Yet sometimes there are moments....
I am remembering one starry summer night back in North
Carolina, the kind of breathtakingly beautiful summer night of all
our dreams, when Josh and I took a long walk around our village.
Hed been staying with us for several days because he was too
sick to stay in his own apartment. Hed been deteriorating for
months, and his doctor had arranged his admission to UNCs
Neurosciences Hospital for the next morning. Josh didnt know
this yet. But he was always compliant, as they call it. We were
very lucky in this. My friends son wouldnt take his medicine
and chose to live on the street; she never knew where he was.
Schizophrenia is like an umbrella diagnosis covering a whole
crowd of very different illnesses; but very few people with brain
disorders actually become violent, despite the stereotype.
Josh liked the hospital. It was safe, and the world hed been
in that week in North Carolina was not safe, not at all, a world
where strangers were talking about him and people he used to
know inhabited other peoples bodies and tables turned into
spiders and all the familiar landmarks disappeared so that he
couldnt find his way anywhere. He couldnt sleep, he couldnt
drive, he couldnt think.
Yet on that summer night in Hillsborough, a wonderful thing
happened. We were walking through the alley between the old

Confederate cemetery and our back yard when we ran into our
neighbor Allan.
Hi there, Josh, Allan said.
Instead of replying, Josh sang out a single note of music.
A flat, he said. It hung in the hot honeysuckle air.
Nice, Allan said, passing on.
The alley ended at Tryon Street, where we stepped onto the
sidewalk. A young girl hurried past.
C sharp, Josh said, then sang it out.
The girl looked at him before she disappeared into the
Presbyterian Church.
We crossed the street and walked past the young policemen
getting out of his car in front of the police station.
Middle C, Josh said, humming.
Since it was one of Hillsboroughs Last Friday street fairs,
we ran into more and more people as we headed toward the
center of town. For each one, Josh had a musical note or a
chord, for a pair or a group.
Whats up? I finally asked.
Well, you know I have perfect pitch, he said I nodded,
though he did not and everybody we see has a special musical
note, and I can hear every one. He broke off to sing a high chord
for a couple of young teen girls, then dropped into a lower
register for a retired couple eating ice cream cones.
Hello, another neighbor said, smiling when Josh hummed
back at him.
So it went all over town. Even some of the buildings had
notes, apparently: the old Masonic Hall, the courthouse, the
corner bar. Josh was singing his heart out. And almost almost
it was a song, the symphony of Hillsborough. We were both
exhilarated. We walked and walked. By the time we got back
home, he was exhausted. Finally he slept. The next day, he went
into the hospital.
Josh loved James Taylor, especially his song Fire and Rain.
But we were too conservative, or chickenshit, or something, to
put it on his tombstone, the same way we were not cool
enough, as Josh put it, to walk down the aisle to Purple Rain
(his idea) while he played the piano on the day we got married in
1985.
But now I say the words to Hal as the light fades slowly on
the water behind us.
Ive seen fire and Ive seen rain
Ive seen sunny days that I thought would never end
Ive seen lonely times when I could not find a friend
But I always thought that Id see you again.
Well, I wont. I know this. But what a privilege it was to live
on this earth with him, what a privilege it was to be his mother.
There will be a lessening of pain, there will be consolations, I
can tell. But as C.S. Lewis wrote in On Grief: Reality never
repeats... . That is what we should all like, the happy past
restored... as it can never be, and maybe never was. Whos got
perfect pitch, anyway?
Yet to have children or simply to experience great love for
any person at all is to throw yourself wide open to the
possibility of pain at any moment. But I would not choose
otherwise. Not now, not ever. Like every parent with a disabled
child, my greatest fear used to be that I would die first. I cant
die, I always said whenever any risky undertaking was
proposed. So now I can die. But I dont want to. Instead, I want
to live as hard as I can, burning up the days in honor of his
sweet, hard life.
Night falls on the schooner ride back to Key West. I clutch
the bronze vial that held some of Joshs ashes, tracing its
engraved design with my finger. The wind blows my hair. The
young couple in front of us are making out.
Lets get some oysters at Alonzos, Hal says, and suddenly I
realize that Im starving.
Look, the captain says, pointing up. Venus.

Sure enough. Then we see the Big Dipper, Orion, Mars.

Wheres that French artist with the red beret? No sign of him,
and no green flash, either but stars. A whole sky full of them by
the time we slide into the dock at the end of William Street.
Lee Smith lives in Hillsborough with her husband, Hal Crowther.
Her latest novel is The Last Girls.

Angel Levine
Bernard Malamud
To
the

Joshua Field Seay

12/23/69-10/26/03
CHAPEL HILL Joshua Field Seay, 32, died in his sleep
early Sunday, Oct. 26, 2003. Josh was born on Dec. 23, 1969, in
Tuscaloosa, Ala. He moved with his family to Nashville, Tenn.,
in 1971 and lived there until 1974, when his family came to
Chapel Hill.
He is survived by his father, James Seay; his mother, Lee
Smith; James wife, Caroline Seay, and Lees husband, Harold
Crowther. Also surviving are his stepsister, Amity Crowther of
Chapel Hill; his brother, Page Seay, who resides in Nashville,
Tenn., with his wife, Erin, and Joshs beloved niece, Lucy.
Josh attended Chapel Hill public schools and UNC-Asheville.
For the past seven years he was employed at Akai Hana Japanese
Restaurant in Carrboro. Among his duties there were his lively
and popular Saturday evening piano sets, a unique mix of blues
and jazz covers along with his own compositions. He recently
assembled a tape of his compositions which, with signature
humor, he entitled Five Not So Easy Pieces. Josh was beset by
mental illness in his teen years, but he came to regard the
amelioration of that illness as part of his daily work. He was
never embittered by what life dealt him. In the words of a friend,
He bore it with quiet bravery and distinction, at a cost few of the
rest of us can begin to calculate. Josh never wavered in his
determination to keep that illness from defeating him. His
absence will leave an immense void in the lives of his family and
friends.
James Seay

memory of
Robert Warshow
Manischewitz, a tailor, in his fifty-first year suffered many
reverses and indignities. Previously a man of comfortable means,
he overnight lost all he had when his establishment caught fire,
and, because a meal container of cleaning fluid exploded, burned
to the ground. Although Manischewitz was insured, damage suits
against him by two customers who had been seriously hurt in the
flames deprived him of every penny he had collected. At almost
the same time, his son, of much promise, was killed in the war,
and his daughter, without a word of warning, married a worthless
lout and disappeared with him, as if off the face of the earth.
Thereafter Manischewitz became the victim of incessant
excruciating backaches that knifed him over in pain, and he
found himself unable to work even as a presser the only job
available to him for more than an hour or two daily, because
after that the pain from standing became maddening. His Leah, a
good wife and mother, who had taken in washing began before
his eyes to waste away. Suffering marked shortness of breath, she
at last became seriously ill and took to her bed. The doctor a
former customer of Manischewitz, who out of pity treated them,
at first had difficulty diagnosing her ailment but later put it down
as hardening of the arteries, at an advanced stage. He took
Manischewitz aside, prescribed complete rest for her, and in
whispers gave him to know there was little hope.
Throughout his trials Manischewitz had remained somewhat
stoic, almost unbelieving that all this had descended upon his
head, as if it were happening , let us say, to an acquaintance, or to
some distant relative; it was in sheer quantity of woe
incomprehensible. It was also ridiculous, unjust, and because he
had always been a religious manan affront to God. This,
Manischewitz fanatically believed amid all his suffering. When,
however, his burden had grown too crushingly heavy to be borne
alone, he eased himself into a chair and with shut hollow eyes
prayed: My dear God, my soul, sweetheart, did I deserve this to
happen to me? But recognizing the worthlessness of this
thought, he compelled himself to put complaint aside and prayed
humbly for assistance: Give to Leah back her health, and give to
me, for myself, that I should not feel pain in every step I make.
Help now, or tomorrow we are dead. This I dont have to tell
you. And Manischewitz, aching all over and grief-stricken,
wept.
Manischewitzs flat, which he had moved into after the
disastrous fire, was a meagre one, furnished with a few sticks of
chairs, a table, and bed, in one of the poorer sections of the city.
There were three rooms: a living room, small, poorly papered; an
apology for a kitchen, with a wooden icebox; and the
comparatively large bedroom where Leah lay in a second-hand
bed, panting for breath. The bedroom was the warmest room of
the house and it was here, after his outburst to God, that

Manischewitz, by the light of two small bulbs overhead, sat

reading his Jewish newspaper. He was not truly reading, because
his thoughts were everywhere but on the print. However the print
offered a convenient resting place for his eyes; and a word or
two, when he permitted himself to comprehend them, indeed had
the effect of aiding him momentarily to forget his troubles. After
a while he discovered, to his surprise, that he was actively
scanning the news, searching for an item of great interest to him.
Exactly what its contents would be he could not sayuntil he
realized with astonishment that he was expecting to discover
something regarding himself. At that moment he gazed up with
the distinct impression that someone had entered the apartment,
though he could not remember having heard the sound of the
door. Manischewitz looked around: the room was still, Leah
sleeping peacefully. Half-frightened, he observed her until he
became convinced she was not dead; then, still disturbed by the
thought of an unannounced visitor, he stumbled into the living
room, and there had the shock of his life, for at the table sat a
burly Negro reading a newspaper he had folded up to fit into one
hand.
What do you want here? Manischewitz cried out in fright.
The Negro put down the paper and glanced up with a gentle
smile. Good evening. He seemed not to be sure of himself, as
if he had happened into the wrong house. He was a large man,
bonily built, with a heavy head covered by a hard derby hat,
which he made no attempt to remove. His eyes seemed sad, but
his lips, above which he wore a slight moustache, were on the
verge of laughter; he was not otherwise prepossessing. The cuffs
of his sleeves, Manischewitz noted, were frayed to the lining,
and the dark suit was badly fitted. He had very large feet.
Recovering from his fright, Manischewitz guessed he was being
visited by a case worker from the Welfare Departmentsome
came at nightfor he had recently applied for relief.
Therefore he lowered himself into a chair opposite the Negro,
returning, as well as he was able, the mans somewhat troubled
although pleasant smile. The former tailor sat stiffly but patiently
at the table, waiting for the investigator to take out his pad and
pencil and begin asking questions; but before long he became
convinced the man intended to do nothing of the sort.
Who are you? Manischewitz asked uneasily.
If I may, insofar as one is able to, identify myself, I bear the
name of Alexander Levine.
Despite himself, a trace of smile appeared on
Manischewitzs bitter lips.
You said Levine? he politely inquired.
The Negro nodded. That is exactly right.
Carrying the jest a bit further, Manischewitz asked, You are
maybe Jewish?
All my life I was, most willingly.
Manischewitz hesitated. He had heard of black Jews, but had
never met one. It gave an unusual sensation.
Recognizing in afterthought something strange about the
tense of Levines remark, he said doubtfully, You aint Jewish
any more?
Levine, at this point, removed his hat, but immediately
replaced it. He said quietly, I have recently been discarnated
into an angel. As such I offer you my humble assistance, if to
offer is within my province and abilityin the best sense. He
lowered his eyes in apology. Which calls for added explanation:
I am what I am granted to be, and at present the completion is in
the future.
What kind of angel is this? Manischewitz gravely asked.
A bona fide angel of God, within prescribed limitations,
answered Levine, not to be confused with the members of any
sect, order, or organization here on earth operating under a
similar name.
Manischewitz was thoroughly disturbed. He had been
expecting something but not quite this. What sort of mockery

was it ? provided Levine was an angelof a faithful servant who

had from childhood lived in the synagogues and houses of study,
concerned with His word?
To test Levine he asked, Then where are your wings?
The Negro blushed as well as he was able. Manischewitz
understood this from his expression. Under certain
circumstances we lose privileges and prerogatives upon returning
to earth no matter for what purpose, or endeavouring to assist
whosoever.
So tell me, Manischewitz said triumphantly, how did you
get here?
I was transmitted.
Still troubled, the tailor said, If you are a Jew, say the
blessing for bread.
Levine recited it in sonorous Hebrew.
Although moved by the familiar words, Manischewitz still
could not believe he was dealing with an angel.
Somewhat angrily he demanded, If you are an angel, show
me proof.
Levine wet his lips. Frankly, I cannot perform either
miracles or near miracles, due to the fact that I am in a condition
of probation. How long that will persist or even consist, I admit,
depends on the outcome.
Manischewitz racked his brains for some means of causing
Levine positively to reveal his true identity, when the Negro
spoke again:
It was given me to understand that both you and your wife
require assistance of a salubrious nature?
The tailor could not rid himself of the feeling that he was the
butt of some jokester. Is this what a Jewish angel looks like? he
thought. This I am not convinced.
But he asked one last question. So if God sends to me an
angel, why a black? Why not a white that there are so many of
them?
It was my turn to go next, Levine explained.
Manischewitz could not be convinced. I think you are a
faker.
Levine slowly rose.. His eyes showed disappointment and
worry. Mr. Manischewitz, he said tonelessly, if you should
desire me to be of assistance to you any time in the near future,
or possibly before, I can be foundhe cast a quick glance at his
fingernailsin Harlem.
He was by then gone.
The next day Manischewitz felt some relief from his
backache and was able to work four hours at pressing. The day
after, he put in six; and the third day four again. Leah sat up a
little and asked for some halvah to suck. But on the fourth day
the stabbing, breaking ache returned to his back, and Leah once
again lay supine, breathing with blue-lipped difficulty.
Manischewitz was miserably disappointed at the return of
his active pain, and suffering. He had hoped for a longer interval
of easement, long enough to have some thought other than of
himself and his troubles. Day by day, hour by hour, minute after
minute, he lived in pain, with pain as his only memory, and
questioned the necessity of it, inveighed against it, and
occasionally though with affection, against God. Why so much,
Gottenyu? If He wanted to teach His servant a lesson for some
reason, some cause the nature of His natureto teach him, say,
for reasons of his weakness, his neglect of God during his years
of prosperitygive him a little lesson, why then, any one of the
tragedies that had happened to him, any one would have sufficed
to chasten him. But all together the loss of his means of
livelihood, of both his children, the health of Leah and himself
that was too much to ask one frail-boned man to endure. Who,
after all, was Manischewitz that he had been given so much to
suffer? A tailor. Certainly not a man of talent. Upon him
suffering was largely wasted. It went nowhere, into nothing: into
more pain. His pain did not earn him bread, nor fill the cracks in

the wall, nor lift, in the middle of the night, the kitchen table;
only lay upon him, sleepless, so sharply oppressively that he
could many times have shrieked yet not heard himself through all
the misery.
In this mood he gave no thought to Mr. Alexander Levine, but at
moments when the pain wavered, momentarily slightly
diminishing, he sometimes wondered if he had been mistaken to
dismiss him. A black Jew and angel to boothard to believe, but
suppose he had been sent to succour him, and he, Manischewitz,
was in his blindness too blind to comprehend? It was this thought
that set him on the knifepoint of agony.
Therefore the tailor, after much self-questioning and doubt,
decided he would seek the self-styled angel in Harlem. Of course
he had great difficulty, because he had not asked for specific
directions, and all movement was tedious to him. The subway
took him to 116th Street, and from there he wandered in a dark
world. It was vast and its lights lit nothing. Everywhere were
shadows, often moving. Manischewitz hobbled along painfully,
with the aid of a cane; and not knowing where to seek in the
blackened tenement buildings, looked fruitlessly into store
windows. In the stores he saw people and everybody was black.
It was an amazing thing to observe. When he was too tired, too
unhappy to go farther, Manischewitz stopped in front of a tailors
store. Out of familiarity with the appearance of it, and with some
heartbreak, he entered. The tailor, an old skinny Negro with a
mop of woolly gray hair, was sitting cross-legged on his
workbench, sewing a pair of full-dress pants that had a razor rent
all the way down the seat.
Youll excuse me, please, gentleman, said Manischewitz,
admiring the tailors deft, thimbled fingerwork, but you know
maybe somebody by the name of Alexander Levine?
The tailor, who, Manischewitz thought, seemed somewhat
antagonistic to him, scratched his scalp.
Caint say I ever heered dat name.
Alex-ander Lev-ine, Manischewitz pronounced slowly.
Caint say I heered.
Discouraged, Manischewitz was about to depart when he
remembered to say: He is an angel, maybe.
Oh him, said the tailor, clucking. He hang out in dat
honkytonk down a ways. He pointed with a skinny finger and
returned to the split pants.
Manischewitz crossed the street against a red light and was
almost killed by a taxi. On the block; after the next, the fourth
store from the corner was a cabaret, and the name in sparkling
lights was Bellas. Ashamed to go in, Manischewitz gazed
through the neonlighted window, and when the dancing couples
parted and drifted away, he discerned, at a table towards the rear,
Levine.
He was sitting by himself, a cigarette butt dangling from the
corner of his mouth, playing solitaire with a dirty pack of cards,
and Manischewitz felt a touch of pity for him, for Levine had
deteriorated in appearance. His derby hat was dented and had a
white smudge across the top. His ill-fitting suit had grown
shabbier, as if he had been sleeping in it. His shoes and the
bottoms of his trousers were caked with with mud, and his face
covered by an impenetrable stubble the colour of licorice.
Manischewitz, though dreadfully disappointed, was about to
enter anyway, when a fat-breasted Negress in a purple evening
gown appeared before Levines table, and with much laughter
through many white teeth, broke into a vigorous sinuous
shimmy. Levine looked straight at Manischewitz with a haunted
expression, but the tailor was too paralysed to move or
acknowledge it. As Bellas heavy gyrations continued, Levine
rose, his eyes lit in excitement. She embraced him with vigour,
both his hands going around her big restless buttocks, and they
tangoed together across the floor, loudly applauded by the other
customers. She seemed to have lifted Levine off his feet and his

large shoes hung lifeless as they danced. They slid past the
window where Manischewitz, white-faced, stood staring in.
Levine winked slyly and the tailor fled home.
Leah lay at deaths door. Through shrunken lips she muttered
concerning her girlhood, the sorrows of the marriage bed, the
loss of her babies, yet wept to live. Manischewitz tried not to
listen, but even without ears he would have heard her thoughts. It
was not a gift. The doctor panted up the stairs, a broad but bland,
unshaven man (it was Sunday) and shook his head. A day at
most, or two. He left at once, not without mercy, to spare himself
Manischewitzs multiplied despair; the man who never stopped
hurting. He would someday get him into a public home.
Manischewitz visited a synagogue and there spoke to God,
but God was strangely absent. The tailor searched his heart and
found no hope. When she died he would live dead. He
considered taking his life although he knew he never would. Yet
it was something to consider. Considering, you existed in dregs.
He railed against Godshouted his name without love. Can you
love a rock, a broom, an emptiness? Baring his breast, he smote
the naked bones, cursing himself for having believed.
That afternoon, asleep in a chair, he dreamed of Levine. He
was standing before a faded mirror, preening small, decaying
opalescent wings. This means, mumbled Manischewitz, as he
broke out of sleep, that it is possible he could be an angel.
Begging a neighbour lady to look in on Leah, occasionally wet
her lips with a drop of water, he drew on his thin coat, gripped
his walking stick, changed some pennies for a subway token, and
rode to Harlem. He recognized this act as the last desperate one
of woe: to go without belief, seeking a black magician to restore
his wife to invalidism. Yet if there was no choice, he did at last
what was chosen.
He hobbled to Bellas but the place had changed hands. It
was now, as he breathed, a synagogue in a store. In the front,
towards him, were several rows of empty wooden benches. In
the rear stood the Ark, its portals of rough wood covered with
many coloured sequins; under it a long table on which lay the
sacred scroll unrolled, illuminated by the dim light of a bulb on a
chain overhead. Around the table, as if frozen to it and the scroll,
which they all touched with their fingers, sat four Negros
wearing black skullcaps. Now as they read the Holy Word,
Manischewitz could, through the plate-glass window, hear the
singsong chant of their voices. One of them was old, with a grey
beard. One was bubble-eyed. One was humpbacked. The fourth
was a boy, no older than thirteen. Their heads moved in rhythmic
swaying. Touched by this sight from his childhood and youth,
Manischewitz entered and stood silent in the rear.
Neshoma, said bubble eyes, pointing to a word with a
stubby finger. Now what dat?
That means soul, said the boy. He wore glasses.
Lets git on wid de commentary, said the old man.
Aint necessary, said the humpback. Souls is immaterial
substance. Thats all. The soul is derived in that manner. The
immateriality is derived from the substance, and they both,
casually and otherwise, derived from the soul. There can be no
higher.
Thats the highest.
Over de top.
Way, way.
Wait a minute, said bubble eyes. I dont see what is dat
immaterial substance. How come de one gits hitched to de
odder? Speak up, man. He addressed the humpback.
Ask me something hard. Because it is substanceless
immateriality. It couldnt be closer together, like the organs of
the body under one skin.
Hear now, said the old man.
All you done is switched de words.

It is the primum mobile, the substanceless substance from

which comes all things that were incepted in the ideayou, me,
and everything and body else.
Now how dat happen? Make it sound simple.
It de speerit, said the old man. On de face of de water
moved de speerit. An dat was good. It say so in de Book. From
de speerit ariz de man.
But now listen here. How come it become substance, if it
all de time a spirit?
God alone done dat.
Holy! Holy! Praise His Name.
But has dis spirit got some kind of a shade or colour?
asked bubble eyes, deadpan.
Man, of course not. It colourless.
Then how come we is coloured? he said, with a triumphant
glare.
Aint got nought to do wid dat.
I still like to know.
God put the spirit in all things, answered the boy. He put
it in the green leaves an the red flowers. He put it in little gold
fishes in the water an in the big blue sky. Thats how come it
came to us.
Amen.
Praise Lawd and utter loud His speechless name.
Blow de bugle till it break de sky.
They fell silent, intent upon the next word. Manischewitz
approached.
Youll excuse me, he said. I am looking for Alexander
Levine. You know him maybe?
Thats the angel, said the boy.
Oh, him, snuffed bubble eyes.
Youll find him at Bellas. Its the establishment right across
the street, the humpback said.
Manischewitz explained that he could not stay, thanked them
all, and limped across the street. It was already night. The city
was dark and he could barely find his way.
But Bellas was bursting with strains of blues. Through the
window Manischewitz recognized the dancing crowd and among
them sought Levine. He was sitting loose-lipped at Bellas side
table. They were tippling from an almost empty whiskey fifth.
Levine had shed his old clothes, wore a shiny new checkered
suit, pearl-gray derby, cigar, and big two-tone button shoes. To
the tailors dismay, a drunken gaze had settled upon Levines
formerly dignified face. He leaned toward Bella, tickled her ear
lobe with his pinky, and whispered words that sent her into gates
of
raucous
laughter.
She
fondled
his
knee.
Manischewitz, girding himself, pushed open the door and was
not well received.
This place reserved.
Beat it, pale puss.
Exit, Yankel, Semitic trash.
He gasped, but moved towards the table where Levine sat,
the crowd breaking before him as he hobbled forward.
Mr. Levine, he spoke in a trembly voice. Is here
Manischewitz.
Levine glared through bleary eyes.
Speak yo piece, son.
Manischewitz shivered. His back plagued him. Cold tremors
tormented his crooked legs.
Youll excuse me. I would like to talk to you in a private
place. He looked around, but people were everywhere and all of
them listening.
Speak, Ah is a private puson.
Bella laughed piercingly. Stop it, boy, you killin me.
Manischewitz, no end disturbed, considered leaving, but
Levine addressed him:
What is the pupose of yo communication with yos truly?

The tailor wet his cracked lips. You are a Jew. This I am
sure.
Levine rose, his nostrils flaring.
Anythin else yo got to say?
Manischewitzs tongue was in torment.
Speak now, or foever hold yo peace.
Tears blinded the tailors eyes. Was ever man so tried?
Should he say he believed a half-drunken Negro to be an angel?
The silence turned to stone.
Manischewitz was recalling scenes of his youth, as a wheel
in his mind whirred: believe, do not, yes, no, yes, no. The pointer
pointed to yes, to between yes and no, to no, no it was yes. He
sighed. One had still to make a choice.
I believe you are also an angelfrom God. He said it
simply but in a broken voice. Yet he thought, If you said it it was
said. If you believed it you must say it. If you believed, you
believed.
The hush broke. Everybody talked but the music commenced
and they went on dancing. Bella, grown bored, picked up the
cards and dealt herself a hand.
Levine burst into tears.
How you have humiliated me.
Manischewitz sincerely apologized.
Waitll I freshen up. Levine went to the mens room and
returned in his old clothes.
No one said goodbye as they left.
They rode to the flat via subway. As they walked up the
stairs Manischewitz pointed with his cane to his door.
Thats all been taken care of, Levine said. You best go in
now.
Disappointed that it was all over, yet torn by curiosity,
Manischewitz followed the angel up four flights of stairs to the
roof. When he got there the door was padlocked.
Luckily he could see through a small broken window. He
heard a strange noise, as though a vibration of wings, and when
he strained for a wider view, could have sworn he saw a dark
figure borne aloft on strong-pinioned, magnificent black wings.
A feather drifted down. Manischewitz gasped as it turned white,
but it was only snowing. He rushed downstairs. In the flat, Leah
wielded a dust mop under the bed and upon the cobwebs on the
wall.
A wonderful thing, Leyka, Manischewitz said. There are
Jews everywhere.
What has made the Jewish writers conspicuous in American
literature is their sensitivity to the value of man . . . Personally, I
handle the Jew as a symbol of the tragic experience of man
existentially. I try to see the Jew as a universal man. Everyman is
a Jew though he may not know it. The Jewish drama is a . . .
symbol of the fight for existence in the highest possible human
terms. Jewish history is Gods gift of drama.
Bernard Malamud, as quoted in The Story and Its
Writer,Ann Charters, ed., (Boston, 1991): 879
Bernard Malamud, Angel Levine
1) How does Malamud use irony as a way of universalizing the main
characters experience?
2) How does the storys big city setting accentuate the authors exploration of the
themes of human suffering and redemption?
3) What message might Malamud be seeking to convey by his juxtaposition of
images of depravity, holiness, and humor?
4) How does the author play with the theme of Jewish identity?
5) Does the story suggest the presence of any sense of community, Jewish or
otherwise, within the stark urban environment in which Manischewitz, the
main character, resides?

4
Were either portrayed as either the noble savage or the
ignoble savage. In most peoples minds, we only exist in the
nineteenth century.
Nobody ever asked Raymond Carver to speak for every white
guy.
I dont believe in writers block. I think its laziness and/or
fear.
Ive heard it said that Indians shouldnt become involved in
high-stakes gambling because it tarnishes our noble heritage.
Personally, Ive never believed in the nobility of poverty.
Personally, I believe in the nobility of breakfast, lunch and
dinner.

This Is
What
It
Means
to Say
Phoenix, Arizona
by Sherman Alexie
Just after Victor lost his job at the BIA, he also found out that his
father had died of a heart attack in Phoenix, Arizona. Victor
hadnt seen his father in a few years, only talked to him on the
telephone once or twice, but there still was a genetic pain, which
was soon to be pain as real and immediate as a broken bone.
Victor didnt have any money. Who does have money on a
reservation, except the cigarette and fireworks salespeople? His
father had a savings account waiting to be claimed, but Victor
needed to find a way to get to Phoenix. Victors mother was just
as poor as he was, and the rest of his family didnt have any use
at all for him. So Victor called the Tribal Council.
Listen, Victor said. My father just died. I need some money to
get to Phoenix to make arrangements.
Now, Victor, the council said. You know were having a
difficult time financially.
But I thought the council had special funds set aside for stuff
like this.
Now, Victor, we do have some money available for the proper
return of tribal members bodies. But I dont think we have
enough to bring your father all the way back from Phoenix.

Well, Victor said. It aint going to cost all that much. He had
to be cremated. Things were kind of ugly. He died of a heart
attack in his trailer and nobody found him for a week. It was
really hot, too. You get the picture.
Now, Victor, were sorry for your loss and the circumstances.
But we can really only afford to give you one hundred dollars.
Thats not even enough for a plane ticket.
Well, you might consider driving to Phoenix.
I dont have a car. Besides, I was going to drive my fathers
pickup back up here.
Now, Victor, the council said. We;re sure there is somebody
who could drive you to Phoenix. Or is there somebody who
could lend you the rest of the money?
You know there aint nobody around with that kind of money.
Well, were sorry, Victor, but thats the best we can do.
Victor accepted the Tribal Councils offer. What else could he
do? So he signed the proper papers, picked up his check, and
walked over to the Trading Post to cash it.
While Victor stood in line, he watched Thomas Builds-the-Fire
standing near the magazine rack, talking to himself. Like he
always did. Thomas was a storyteller that nobody wanted to
listen to. Thats like being a dentist in a town where everybody
has false teeth.
Victor and Thomas Builds-the-Fire were the same age, had
grown up and played in the dirt together. Ever since Victor could
remember, it was Thomas who always had something to say.
Once, when they were seven years old, when Victors father still
lived with the family, Thomas closed his eyes and told Victor this
story: Your fathers heart is weak. He is afraid of his own
family. He is afraid of you. Late at night he sits in the dark.
Watches the television until theres nothing but that white noise.
Sometimes he feels like he wants to buy a motorcycle and ride
away. He wants to run and hide. He doesnt want to be found.
Thomas Builds-the-Fire had known that Victors father was
going to leave, knew it before anyone. Now Victor stood in the
Trading Post with a one-hundred-dollar check in his hand,
wondering if Thomas knew that Victors father was dead, if he
knew what was going to happen next. Just then Thomas looked
at Victor, smiled, and walked over to him.
Victor, Im sorry about your father, Thomas said.
How did you know about it? Victor asked.
I heard it on the wind. I heard it from the birds. I felt it in the
sunlight. Also, your mother was just in here crying.
Oh, Victor said and looked around the Trading Post. All the
other Indians stared, surprised that Victor was even talking to
Thomas. Nobody talked to Thomas anymore because he told the
same damn stories over and over again. Victor was embarassed,
but he thought that Thomas might be able to help him. Victor felt
a sudden need for tradition.
I can lend you the money you need, Thomas said suddenly.
But you have to take me with you.
I cant take your money, Victor said. I mean, I havent hardly
talked to you in years. Were not really friends anymore.
I didnt say we were friends. I said you had to take me with
you.
Let me think about it.
Victor went home with his one hundred dollars and sat at the
kitchen table. He held his head in his hands and thought about
Thomas Builds-the-Fire, remembered little details, tears and
scars, the bicycle they shared for a summer, so many stories.
***

Thomas Builds-the-Fire sat on the bicycle, waited in Victors

yard. He was ten years old and skinny. His hair was dirty because
it was the Fourth of July.
Victor, Thomas yelled. Hurry up. Were going to miss the
fireworks.
After a few minutes, Victor ran out of his house, jumped the
porch railing, and landed gracefully on the sidewalk.
And the judges award him a 9.95, the highest score of the
summer, Thomas said, clapped, laughed.
That was perfect, cousin, Victor said. And its my turn to ride
the bike.
Thomas gave up the bike and they headed for the fair-grounds. It
was nearly dark and the fireworks were about to start.
You know, Thomas said. Its strange how us Indians celebrate
the Fourth of July. It aint like it was our independence
everybody was fighting for.
You think about things too much, Victor said. Its just
supposed to be fun. Maybe Junior will be there.
Which Junior? Everybody on this reservation is named Junior.
And they both laughed.
The fireworks were small, hardly more than a few bottle rockets
and a fountain. But it was enough for two Indian boys. Years
later, they would need much more.
Afterwards, sitting in the dark, fighting off mosquitoes, Victor
turned to Thomas Builds-the-Fire.
Hey, Victor said. Tell me a story.
Thomas closed his eyes and told this story: There were these
two Indian boys who wanted to be warriors. But it was too late to
be warriors in the old way. All the horsees were gone. So the two
Indian boys stole a car and drove to the city. They parked the
stolen car in front of the police station and then hitchhiked back
home to the reservation. When they got back, all their friends
cheered and their parents eyes shone with pride. You were very
brave, everybody said to the two Indian boys. Very brave.
Ya-hey, Victor said. Thats a good one. I wish I could be a
warrior.
Me, too, Thomas said.
They went home together in the dark, Thomas on the bike now,
Victor on foot. They walked through shadows and light from
streetlamps.
Weve come a long ways, Thomas said. We have outdoor
lighting.
All I need is the stars, Victor said. And besides, you still think
about things too much.
They separated then, each headed for home, both laughing all the
way.
***
Victor sat at his kitchen table. He counted his one hundred
dollars again and again. He knew he needed more to make it to
Phoenix and back. He knew he needed Thomas Builds-the-Fire.
So he put his money in his wallet and opened the front door to
find Thomas on the porch.
Ya-hey, Victor, Thomas said. I knew youd call me.
Thomas walked into the living room and sat down on Victors
favorite chair.
Ive got some money saved up, Thomas said. Its enough to
get us down there, but you have to get us back.
Ive got this hundred dollars, Victor said. And my dad had a
savings account Im going to claim.
How much in your dads account?
Enough. A few hundred.
Sounds good. When we leaving?
***

When they were fifteen and had long stopped being friends,
Victor and Thomas got into a fistfight. That is, Victor was really
drunk and beat Thomas up for no reason at all. All the other
Indian boys stood around and watched it happen. Junior was
there and so were Lester, Seymour, and a lot of others. The
beating might have gone on until Thomas was dead if Norma
Many Horses hadnt come along and stopped it.
Hey, you boys, Norma yelled and jumped out of her car.
Leave him alone.
If it had been someone else, even another mna, the Indian boys
wouldve just ignored the warnings. But Norma was a warrior.
She was powerful. She could have picked up any two of the boys
and smashed their skulls together. But worse than that, she would
have dragged them all over to some tipi and made them listen to
some elder tell a dusty old story.
The Indian boys scattered, and Norma walked over to Thomas
and picked him up.
Hey, little man, are you okay? she asked.
Thomas gave her a thumbs up.
Why they always picking on you?
Thomas shook his head, closed his eyes, but no stories came to
him, no words or music. He just wanted to go home, to lie in his
bed and let his dreams tell his stories for him.
***
Thomas Builds-the-Fire and Victor sat next to each other in the
airplane, coach section. A tiny white woman had the window
seat. She was busy twisting her body into pretzels. She was
flexible.
I have to ask, Thomas said, and Victor closed his eyes in
embarassment.
Dont, Victor said.
Excuse me, miss, Thomas asked. Are you a gymnast or
something?
Theres no something about it, she said. I was first alternate
on the 1980 Olympic team.
Really? Thomas asked.
Really.
I mean, you used to be a world-class athlete? Thomas asked.
My husband still thinks I am.
Thomas Builds-the-Fire smiled. She was a mental gymnast, too.
She pulled her leg straight up against her body so that she
couldve kissed her kneecap.
I wish I could do that, Thomas said.
Victor was ready to jump out of the plane. Thomas, that crazy
Indian storyteller with ratty old braids and broken teeth, was
flirting with a beautiful Olympic gymnast. Nobody back home
on the reservation would ever believe it.
Well, the gymnast said. Its easy. Try it.
Thomas grabbed at his leg and tried to pull it up into the same
position as the gymnast. He couldnt even come close, which
made Victor and the gymnast laugh.
Hey, she asked. You two are Indian, right?
Full-blood, Victor said.
Not me, Thomas said. Im half magician on my mothers side
and half clown on my fathers.
They all laughed.
What are your names? she asked.
Victor and Thomas.
Mine is Cathy. Pleased to meet you all.
The three of them talked for the duration of the flight. Cathy the
gymnast complained about the government, how they screwed
the 1980 Olympic team by boycotting.
Sounds like you all got a lot in common with Indians, Thomas
said.
Nobody laughed.

After the plane landed in Phoenix and they had all found their
way to the terminal, Cathy the gymnast smiled and waved goodbye.
She was really nice, Thomas said.
yeah, but everybody talks to everybody on airplanes, Victor
said. Its too bad we cant always be that way.
You always used to tell me I think too much, Thomas said.
Now it sounds like you do.
Maybe I caught it from you.
Yeah.
Thomas and Victor rode in a taxi to the trailer where Victors
father died.
Listen Victor said as they stopped in front of the trailer. I
never told you I was sorry for beating you up that time.
Oh, it was nothing. We were just kids and you were drunk.
Yeah, but Im still sorry.
Thats all right.
Victor paid for the taxi and the two of them stood in the hot
Phoenix summer. They could smell the trailer.
This aint going to be nice, Victor said. You dont have to go
in.
Youre going to need help.
Victor walked to the front door and opened it. The stink rolled
out and made them both gag. Victors father had lain in that
trailer for a week in hundred-degree temperatures before anyone
found him. And the only reason anyone found him was because
of the smell. They needed dental records to identify him. Thats
exactly what the coroner said. They needed dental records.
Oh, man, Victor said. I dont know if I can do this.
Well, then dont.
But there might be something valuable in there.
I thought his money was in the bank.
It is. I was talking about pictures and letteres and stuff like
that.
Oh, Thomas said as he held his breath and followed Victor into
the trailer.

Thomas Builds-the-Fire closed his eyes and told this story: I

remember when I had this dream that told me to go to Spokane,
to stand by the Falls in the middle of the city and wait for a sign..
I knew I had to go there but I didnt have a car. Didnt have a
license. I was only thirteen. So I walked all the way, took me all
day, and I finally made it to the Falls. I stood there for an hour
waiting. Then your dad came walking up. What the hell are you
doing here? he asked me. I said, Waiting for a vision. Then your
father said, All youre going to get here is mugged. So he drove
me over to Dennys, bought me dinner, and then drove me home
to the reservation. For a long time I was mad because I thought
my dreams had lied to me. But they didnt. Your dad was my
vision. Take care of each other is what my dreams were saying.
Take care of each other.
Victor was quiet for a long time. He searched his mind for
memories of his father, found the good ones, found a few bad
ones, added it all up, and smiled.
My father never told me about finding you in Spokane, Victor
said.
He said he wouldnt tell anybody. Didnt want me to get in
trouble. But he said I had to watch out for you as part of the
deal.
Really?
Really. Your father said you would need the help. He was
right.
Thats why you came down here with me, isnt it? Victor
asked.
I came because of your father.
Victor and Thomas climbed into the pickup, drove over to the
bank, and claimed the three hundred dollars in the savings
account.
***

When Victor was twelve, he stepped into an underground wasp

nest. His foot was caught in the hole, and no matter how hard he
struggled, Victor couldnt pull free. He might have died there,
stung a thousand times, if Thomas Builds-the-Fire had not come
by.
Run, Thomas yelled and pulled Victors foot from the hole.
They ran then, hard as they ever had, faster than Billy Mills,
faster than Jim Thorpe, faster than the wasps could fly.
Victor and Thomas ran until they couldnt breathe, ran until it
was cold and dark outside, ran until they were lost and it took
hours to find their way home. All the way back, Victor counted
his stings.
Seven, Victor said. My lucky number.

Thomas Builds-the-Fire could fly.

Once, he jumped off the roof of the tribal school and flapped his
arms like a crazy eagle. And he flew. For a second, he hovered,
suspended above all the other Indian boys who were too smart or
too scared to jump.
Hes flying, Junior yelled, and Seymour was busy looking for
the trick wires or mirrors. But it was real. As real as the dirt when
Thomas lost altitude and crashed to the ground.
He broke his arm in two places.
He broke his wing, Victor chanted, and the other Indian boys
joined in, made it a tribal song.
He broke his wing, he broke his wing, he broke his wing, all
the Indian boys chanted as they ran off, flapping their wings,
wishing they could fly, too. They hated Thomas for his courage,
his brief moment as a bird. Everybody has dreams about flying.
Thomas flew.
One of his dreams came true for just a second, just enough to
make it real.

***

***

Victor didnt find much to keep in the trailer. Only a photo album
and a stereo. Everything else had that smell stuck in it or was
useless anyway.
I guess this is all, Victor said. It aint much.
Better than nothing, Thomas said.
Yeah, and I do have the pickup.
Yeah, Thomas said. Its in good shape.
Dad was good about that stuff.
Yeah, I remember your dad.
Really? Victor asked. What do you remember?

Victors father, his ashes, fit in one wooden box with enough left
over to fill a cardboard box.
He was always a big man, Thomas said.
Victor carried part of his father and Thomas carried the rest out
to the pickup. They set him down carefully behind the seats, put
a cowboy hat on the wooden box and a Dodgers cap on the
cardboard box. Thats the way it was supposed to be.
Ready to head back home, Victor asked.
Its going to be a long drive.
Yeah, take a couple days, maybe.
We can take turns, Thomas said.

***

Okay, Victor said, but they didnt take turns. Victor drove for
sixteen hours straight north, made it halfway up Nevada toward
home before he finally pulled over.
Hey, Thomas, Victor said. You got to drive for a while.
Okay.
Thomas Builds-the-Fire slid behind the wheel and started off
down the road. All through Nevada, Thomas and Victor had been
amazed at the lack of animal life, at the absence of water, of
movement.
Where is everything? Victor had asked me more than once.
Now when Thomas was finally driving they saw the first animal,
maybe the only animal in Nevada. It was a long-eared jackrabbit.
Look, Victor yelled. Its alive.
Thomas and Victor were busy congratulating themselves on their
discovery when the jackrabbit darted out into the road and under
the wheels of the pickup.
Stop the goddamn car, Victor yelled,
and Thomas did stop, backed the pickup
to the dead jackrabbit.
Oh, man, hes dead, Victor said as he
looked at the squashed animal.
Really dead.
The only thing alive in this whole state
and we just killed it.
I dont know, Thomas said. I think it
was suicide.
Victor looked around the desert, sniffed
the air, felt the emptiness and loneliness,
and nodded his head.
Yeah, Victor said. It had to be
suicide.
I cant believe this, Thomas said. You
drive for a thousand miles aint even any
bugs smashed on the windshield. I drive
for ten seconds and kill the only living
thing in Nevada.
Yeah, Victor said. Maybe I should
drive.
Maybe you should.
***
Victor and Thomas made it back to the reservation just as the sun
was rising. It was the beginning of a new day on earth, but the
same old shit on the reservation.
Good morning. Thomas said.
Good morning.
The tribe was waking up, ready for work, eating breakfast,
reading the newspaper, just like everybody else does. Willene
LeBret was out in her garden wearing a bathrobe. She waved
when Thomas and Victor drove by.
Crazy Indians made it, she said to herself and went back to her
roses.
Victor stopped the pickup in front of Thomas Builds-the-Fires
HUD house. They both yawned, stretched a little, shook dust
from their bodies.
Im tired, Victor said.
Of everything, Thomas added.
They both searched for words to end the journey. Victor needed
to thank Thomas for his help, for the money, and make the
promise to pay it all back.
Dont worry about the money, Thomas said. It dont make
any difference anyhow.
Probably not, enit? Nope.
Victor knew that Thomas would remain the crazy storyteller who
talked to dogs and cars, who listened to the wind and pine trees.
Victor knew that he couldnt really be friends with Thomas, even

after all that had happened. It was cruel but it was real. As real as
the ashes, as Victors father, sitting behind the seats.
I know how it is, Thomas said. I know you aint going to treat
me any better than you did before. I know your friends would
give you too much shit about it.
Victor was ashamed of himself. Whatever happened to the tribal
ties, the sense of community? The only real thing he shared with
anybody was a bottle and broken dreams. He owed Thomas
something, anything.
Listen, Victor said and handed Thomas the cardboard box
which contained half of his father. I want you to have this.
Thomas took the ashes and smiled, closed his eyes, and told this
story: Im going to travel to Spokane Falls one last time and
toss these ashes into the water. And your father will rise like a
salmon, leap over the bridge, over me, and find his way home. It
will be beautiful. His teeth will shine like silver, like a rainbow.

He will rise, Victor, he will rise.

Victor smiled.
I was planning on doing the same thing with my half, Victor
said. But I didny imagine my father looking anything like a
salmon. I thought itd be like cleaning the attic or something.
Like lettings things go after theyve stopped having any use.
Nothing stops, cousin, Thomas said. Nothing stops.
Thomas Builds-the-Fire got out of the pickup and walked up his
driveway. Victor started the pickup and he began to drive home.
Wait, Thomas yelled suddenly from his porch. I just got to
ask one favor.
Victor stopped the pickup, leaned out the window, and shouted
back. What do you want?
Just one time when Im telling a story somewhere, why dont
you stop and listen? Thomas asked.
Just once?
Just once.
Victor waved his arms to let Thomas know that the deal was
good. It was a fair trade, and that was all Victor had ever wanted
from his whole life. So Victor drive his fathers pickup toward
home while Thomas went into his house, closed the door behind
him, and heard a new story come to him in the silence
afterwards.
from American Short Stories Since 1945
edited by John G. Parks
2002 Oxford University Press, New York

http://www.barriolife.com/stories/alexie.html

An Essay on Casinos by Sherman

Alexie
Love, hunger, money... and other not-so-facetious
reasons
why the Spokane Indians want to bet on casinos
by Sherman Alexie
Ive just returned from the Spokane Tribes casino-and-gambling
mecca at the western edge of our reservation, and I may have to
enter the federal Witness Relocation Program because I have
seen and know too much. I couldnt believe it. I had gone there
expecting to see a few slot machines and some sweaty smalltown gamblers. Instead, there were dozens of suspicious-looking
men in expensive suits shaking hands with our Spokane tribal
councilmen.
Its the Mafia, I whispered into the tape recorder that I had
carefully hidden beneath the bill of my Washington Redskins
baseball hat. Risking life and
limb, I maneuvered closer to the
wiseguys and councilmen. They
barely noticed me, of course,
because nobody, neither Indian
nor white, ever pays attention to
poets.
The Family really admires what
youre doing out there, one of
the wiseguys said to the
councilmen. His diction was
perfect. We believe your
reservation could become a
lucrative
member
of
our
network.
My true identity couldve been
discovered
at
any
time.
Confidently, I ordered a Diet
Pepsi without ice, shaken, not
stirred.
Where do you want us to sign?
the councilmen asked and took
out the pens that they all saved
for special occasions.
Sign here. And initial here and
here.
Unable to read the fine print, I inched closer and closer - too
close, in fact.
What seems to be the problem? one of the wiseguys asked as
he grabbed me by the front of my Atlanta Braves T-shirt.
Who is this young man? the head wiseguy asked.
Him? the councilmen asked, and looked at me. Hes just a
poet.
Prove it, the head wiseguy demanded of me.
My love is like a red, red rose, I blurted. I waited for the
response. Had all my years of creative-writing classes finally
paid off? The head wiseguy looked me over, slapped my face
gently, pinched my cheek.
Leave him alone, he said to the wiseguy holding me. Hes just
a poet. Give him a dollar and a free drink.
I took my dollar and voucher for another Pepsi and went my
way. However, I had time to read the fine print on one of those
contracts and it said the terms of this agreement would be valid
as long as the grasses grow, the winds blow, and the rivers flow.
Help me. Im writing this from a seedy hotel room in an eastern
Washington city. I know too much. I know that the Mafia is on

the Spokane Indian Reservation and that theyre making treaties.

I know the Mafia will break those treaties and only the United
States Government is allowed to break treaties with Indians. Im
caught in a crossfire. Help me. Im just a poet.
Gambling has always been
about trust and the loss
of trust. Its never been
about money. Gambling is
nothing new for the Indians.
Gambling is traditional
and began when Columbus arrived
in our country. Indians started
to roll the dice every time
we signed another treaty
but weve always been the losers
because the dice were loaded
and the treaties broken
by random design. Now
weve got our own game
of Reservation Roulette
and Id advise the faithful
to always bet on red.

However, I have the distinct feeling that America is not placing

any bets on the survival of Indians. America will not even allow
Indians to become citizens of the 20th century. Were trapped
somewhere between Custer and Columbus, between the noble
and savage. Ive heard it said that Indians shouldnt become
involved in high-stakes gambling because it tarnishes our noble
heritage. Personally, Ive never believed in the nobility of
poverty. Personally, I believe in the nobility of breakfast, lunch
and dinner.
Indians need money.
Forget the discussions about self-hate or cultural dislocation.
Forget the loss of land and language. Most Indians cannot even
begin to think about those kinds of complicated issues. They
dont have the time. They have to spend most of their time
worrying about where their next meal is coming from. They
worry about how love and hunger can get so mixed up. Most
Indians dont have time or energy enough to listen to me or you.
As Billie Holiday said, Youve got to have something to eat and
a little love in your life before you can hold still for anybodys
damned sermon.
Indians need
the money, Indians need

the money, the money

because we all need
all of us (meaning
me and you) need
the money. Indians
need it more
because we have less
of everything
except our stories and poems
but you cant buy
a can of Spam
with a metaphor. We need
the money, the money
because money is Americas
religion, because money is
prayer and hymn, because
a dollar bill can fill
our empty stomachs
like a good savior will.
Ive also heard so much talk
about
the
morality
of
gambling. How immoral is the
Washington State Lottery?
How immoral is Grand Coulee
Dam? How immoral are the
beer and tobacco companies?
Those questions have their
answers buried somewhere
deep in the heart of capitalism,
and the casino on the Spokane
Indian Reservation is proof that the Spokanes have embraced
capitalism. There was a demand for a product (gambling) and the
Spokane Indians have produced a supply (casino).
Does that frighten me? Of course. But I think its more important
to ask the non-Indians why they are frightened of it.
Is it because of the imagined threat of gangster influence? The
profits from reservation gambling are small change on a Mafia
scale.
Is it because of the supposed threat to the noble image of
Indians? There isnt much non-Indian complaint about the
Washington Redskins or the fact that Tonto is still monosyllabic
on television every day of the year.
Is it really because of the immorality of gambling? Capitalism
has always rewarded immorality, regardless of race, gender or
religion.
I think it has more to do with power. As Indians make money we
also gain power. As we gain power we develop a political voice.
We can then use that voice to demand that treaties be honored.
We can demand that this country be held accountable for what it
did to us and what it continues to do to us. We can make those
demands because well have the power. We can make those
demands because well have the money. Well have the money
that used to belong to you.
from High Country News (www.hcn.org),
September
19,
1994.
Online
at
www.hcn.org/1994/sep19/dir/essay.html

northwest of Spokane. Approximately 1,100 Spokane Tribal

members live there. Alexies father is a Coeur dAlene Indian,
and his mother is a Spokane Indian.
Born hydrocephalic, with water on the brain, Alexie underwent a
brain operation at the age of 6 months and was not expected to
survive. When he did beat the odds, doctors predicted he would
live with severe mental retardation. Though he showed no signs
of this, he suffered severe side effects, such as seizures and
uncontrollable bed-wetting, throughout his childhood. In spite of
all this, Alexie learned to read by age three, and devoured novels,
such as John Steinbecks The Grapes of Wrath, by age five. All
these things ostracized him from his peers and he was often the
brunt of other kids jokes on the reservation.
As a teenager, after finding his mothers name written in a
textbook he was assigned at the Wellpinit school, Alexie made a
conscious decision to attend high school off the reservation in
Reardan, WA, where he knew he would get a better education. At
Reardan High he was the only Indian...except for the school
mascot. There he excelled academically and became a star
player on the basketball team.
He graduated from Reardan High and went on to attend Gonzaga
University in Spokane on scholarship in 1985. After two years at
Gonzaga, he transferred to Washington State University (WSU)
in Pullman.
Alexie planned to be a doctor until he fainted three times in
human anatomy class and needed a career change. That change
was fueled when he stumbled into a poetry workshop at WSU.
Encouraged by poetry teacher Alex Kuo, Alexie excelled at
writing and realized hed found his new career choice. Shortly
after graduating in American Studies from WSU, Alexie received
the Washington State Arts Commission Poetry Fellowship in
1991 and the National Endowment for the Arts Poetry
Fellowship in 1992.
Not long after receiving his second fellowship, and just one year
after he left WSU, two of his poetry collections, The Business
of Fancydancing and I Would Steal Horses, were
published. Alexie had a problem with alcohol that began soon
after he started college at Gonzaga, but after learning that
Hanging Loose Press agreed to publish The Business of
Fancydancing, he immediately gave up drinking, at the age of
23, and has been sober ever since.
Alexie continued to write prolifically and his first collection of
short stories, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in
Heaven, was published by Atlantic Monthly Press in 1993. For
his collection he received a PEN/Hemingway Award for Best
First Book of Fiction, and was awarded a Lila Wallace-Readers
Digest Writers Award.

Biography

Alexie was named one of Grantas Best of Young American

Novelists and won the Before Columbus Foundations American
Book Award and the Murray Morgan Prize for his first novel,
Reservation Blues, published in 1995 by Atlantic Monthly
Press. His second novel, Indian Killer, published in 1996, also
by Atlantic Monthly Press, was named one of Peoples Best of
Pages and a New York Times Notable Book.

Sherman J. Alexie, Jr., was born in October 1966. A

Spokane/Coeur dAlene Indian, he grew up on the Spokane
Indian Reservation in Wellpinit, Washington, about 50 miles

Alexie occasionally does reading and stand-up performances

with musician Jim Boyd, a Colville Indian. Alexie and Boyd also
collaborated to record the album Reservation Blues, which

contains the songs from the book of the same name. One of the
Reservation Blues songs, Small World, also appeared on
Talking Rain: Spoken Word & Music from the Pacific Northwest
and Honor: A Benefit for the Honor the Earth Campaign. In
1996 Boyd and Alexie opened for the Indigo Girls at a concert to
benefit the Honor the Earth Campaign.
In 1997, Alexie embarked on another artistic collaboration. Chris
Eyre, a Cheyenne/Arapaho Indian, discovered Alexies writing
while doing graduate work at New York Universitys film school.
Through a mutual friend, they agreed to collaborate on a film
project inspired by Alexies work.
The basis for the screenplay was This is What it Means to Say
Phoenix, Arizona, a short story from The Lone Ranger and
Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. Shadow Catcher Entertainment
produced the film. Released as Smoke Signals at the Sundance
Film Festival in January 1998, the movie won two awards: the
Audience Award and the Filmmakers Trophy.
After success at Sundance, Smoke Signals found a distributor,
Miramax Films, and was released in New York and Los Angeles
on June 26 and across the country on July 3. In 1999 the film
received a Christopher Award, an award presented to the
creators of artistic works which affirm the highest values of the
human spirit. Alexie was also nominated for the Independent
Feature Project/West 1999 Independent Spirit Award for Best
First Screenplay.
In the midst of releasing Smoke Signals, Alexie competed in his
first World Heavyweight Poetry Bout competition in June
1998. He went up against world champion Jimmy Santiago Baca
and won the Bout, and then went on to win the title again over
the next three years, becoming the first poet to hold the title for
three and four consecutive years.
Known for his exceptional humor and performance ability,
Alexie made his stand-up debut at the Foolproof Northwest
Comedy Festival in Seattle, WA, in April 1999, and was the
featured performer at the Vancouver International Comedy
Festivals opening night gala in July 1999.
In 1998, Alexie participated with seven others in the PBS
Lehrer News Hour Dialogue on Race with President
Clinton. The discussion was moderated by Jim Lehrer and
originally aired on PBS on July 9, 1998. Alexie has also been
featured on Politically Incorrect , 60 Minutes II, and NOW with
Bill Moyers, for which he wrote a special segment on insomnia
and his writing process called Up All Night.
In February 2003, Alexie participated in the Museum of
Tolerance project, Finding Our Families, Finding Ourselves,
an exhibit showcasing the diversity within the personal histories
of several noted Americans, and that celebrates the shared
experiences common to being part of an American family and
encourages visitors to seek out their own histories, mentors and
heroes. This project was featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show,
Our Big American Family, which originally aired in January
2003, on which Alexie was a guest.
Alexie was the guest editor for the Winter 2000-01 issue of
Ploughshares, a prestigious literary journal. He was a 1999 O.
Henry Award Prize juror, was one of the judges for the 2000
inagural PEN/Amazon.com Short Story Award, and a juror for
both the Poetry Society of Americas 2001 Shelley Memorial

Award and the Poets and Writers Writers Exchange 2001

Contest. He currently serves as a mentor in the PEN Emerging
Writers program.
He was a member of the 2000 and 2001 Independent Spirit
Awards Nominating Committees, and has seved as a creative
adviser to the Sundance Institute Writers Fellowship Program
and the Independent Feature Films West Screenwriters Lab.
Alexie was the commencement speaker for the University of
Washingtons 2003 commencement ceremony. In October 2003
he received Washington State Universitys highest honor for
alumni, the Regents Distinguished Alumnus Award.
Alexie has published 16 books to date, including his most recent
collection of short stories, Ten Little Indians.

What It Means to Be Sherman Alexie

The toughest Indian writer in the world angles for a bigger
audience.
by Russ Spencer

Sherman Alexies second-floor Seattle office is bordered by

redwoods and cedar and has three pieces of art on the walls. Two
of them are what you would expect. One is the original artwork
from his second short-story collection, First Indian on the Moon.
The other is a signed and framed print of the poem
Thanksgiving at Snake Butte by the pre-eminent Indian author
James Welch, one of Alexies literary heroes.
Then theres the black-and-white photograph to the left of his
desk. Its a portrait of Kurt Cobain, the grunge-rock superhero
who revitalized the moribund early-90s pop-culture scene with
his band Nirvana and then, in 1994, killed himself with a shotgun
blast to the head. The photo is a surprise at first, but then you
realize it fits. The sense of being an outsider, the anger, the
motivation. Seattle.
He saved us all, Alexie says. He came and blew away all that
shit that was going on.
Alexie isnt as famous as Cobain, but he wants to be. He started
as what he likes to call a small literary writer from Seattle, but
he was remarkably prolific and had an appetite for success. His
college writing professor, Alex Kuo, once said that he probably
had ten students with more talent than Alexie. But Alexie, Kuo
said, had a dedication that other students with perhaps more
talent didnt have.
That dedication has paid off. One year after he graduated from
college in 1991, two books of his poetry were published, I Would
Steal Horses and The Business of Fancydancing, and as the
legend goes, their acceptance prompted him to kick five years of
debilitating drinking in one night. He has since published five
more books of poetry. His first book of prose, a short-story

collection titled The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven,

was published in 1993, and he followed in 1995 with his first
novel, Reservation Blues. Indian Killer came out a year later and
became a New York Times Notable Book. Then he devoted his
time to producing the 1998 film Smoke Signals and working on
his new collection, The Toughest Indian in the World. Along the
way, he won awards from PEN, the National Endowment for the
Arts, the Ernest Hemingway Foundation and many others. In
1998 and 1999, he was named by both Granta and The New
Yorker as one of the best American fiction writers under forty. He
has been embraced by Hollywood, as wellhe is now working
on three screen adaptations of novels, including his own
Reservation Blues. And he won both the 1998 and 1999 World
Heavyweight Championship Poetry Bout at the Taos Poetry
Circus in New Mexico.
***
I identify strongly with him, Alexie says of Cobain. Smalltown guy, poor, makes himself into this huge rock star.
Alexie was born just six months before Cobain, a couple of
hundred scrub-brush miles away from Cobains tiny hometown
of Aberdeen, on the 150,000-acre Spokane Indian Reservation in
eastern Washington. Like Cobain, his antipathy toward the social
and racial oppression of mainstream America drove much of his
early work. With Alexies success, though, he has begun moving
beyond his early, anger-driven prose into a kind of mythopoetic
writing style, which has come stridently into focus with The
Toughest Indian in the World.
Concurrently, Alexiethough he describes himself as an
introverthas purposefully developed a fast-talking, highly
entertaining onstage comic persona. At public appearances, he
embarks on quick-witted monologues, taking serious aim at
pretty much every race he can, but reserving a disproportionate
amount of attention for what he calls crazy white people. He
gleefully targets New Age white women who come floating
onto the reservation healing everything in their path and jokes
about white people who expect him to read coyote stories, speak
in a slow monotone and stare off into the distance as if
constantly receiving visions.
Alexie memorizes his own stories and then acts them out,
improvising new lines along the way, making the reading into a
kind of free-form Beat performance. He has developed this side
of his work, he says, specifically to further his career and in part
because he was often turned off by writers who appeared live
and read their work, no matter how brilliant, with a monotone
delivery. I care about my writing so much, and Im so involved
in it and so emotionally connected to it, and I want that passion,
that caring, that hatred of it, that incredible relationship I have
with my own work, I want people to know about that, he says.
I want them to feel it when Im up in front of them talking about
what I do.
Its all undertaken to accomplish one central goal, he says, and
that is to get his books read by twelve-year-old reservation kids,
who, like him, grew up either with heroes who had been created
by the white media or no heroes at all. In order for the Indian
kid to read me, Alexie says, pop culture is where I should be.
Literary fiction is very elitist. The fifteen or twenty thousand
literary-book buyers in this country, Im very happy for them,
and Im happy they buy my books, by and large. But there is a
whole other population out there I want to reach. And so for me,
what kind of art can I create that gets to them? I dont want to

have an elitist career. Ive won awards, Ive gotten a lot of

attention, Ive been in The New Yorker, Im very happy with all
that. Im very proud. But I would consider myself a failure if
more people didnt read me. Id rather be accessible than win a
MacArthur.
With the success, of course, its become harder and harder for
Sherman Alexie to live up to the image the public has of him as
the toughest Indian writer in the world. Both whites and Indians
come at him with expectations. He butts up against these
expectations and complains about them vociferously, at the same
time using them to his advantage. There have been few Indian
writers with the kind of mainstream ambitions as Alexie, and
hes the first to admit that he has worked the Indian angle for all
its worth. Its a really crowded world out there, and everybody
is clamoring for attention and you use what youve got, he says.
And what Ive got that makes me original is that Im a rez boy.
***
Alexies father is Coeur dAlene Indian, and his mother is
Spokane Indian. One of six siblings, he was born October 7,
1966, in the tiny reservation town of Wellpinit. Soon after his
birth, he was diagnosed with hydrocephalus, a condition in
which expanding cranial fluid puts too much pressure on the
brain. At six months old, Alexie underwent drastic surgery. The
doctors told his parents that if he survived at all, which was
doubtful, he would most likely be mentally handicapped. As a
result of the surgery, he dealt with seizures and uncontrollable
bed-wetting late into childhood, eventually becoming what he
describes as a math geek who played Dungeons and Dragons by
himself in the basement. He was smart and tall, though, so he
went to Reardan, a white high school, where he played on the
basketball team and was the only real Indian on the Reardan
Indians. He went on to college at Washington State University in
Pullman and, after taking a writing class, gave up his pre-med
plans.
On May 15, Alexie returned to Aunties Bookstore in Spokane,
the place he had gone to buy books and games as a child. This
time he was there to give a reading, and he read the story Dear
John Wayne from his new book. In the third row sat his mother
and father, two brothers, two sisters and two nieces. There were
people he had known from all periods of his life, childhood,
college and adulthood in Seattle. There was the woman who
worked at the Safeway near his crummy apartment in college,
whom he would see every day when he went to the grocery store,
counting his pennies along the way, to buy something to eat.
Seeing her was a symbolic moment, he says. I had this big
crush on her, and I never told her. Now I can tell her.
In other words, Alexie has arrived. There were five hundred
people at that reading, and another couple of hundred had to be
turned away. Success kills some pop stars, but its bringing
Alexie to lifein some ways, making him larger than life.
The success of Smoke Signals certainly helped. Cobbled together
from situations and characters first developed in The Lone
Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heavenprimarily from the story
This is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizonait is a roadtrip movie about Northwest Indians Victor Joseph and Thomas
Builds-A-Fire, who drive to the Southwest to take possession of
the ashes of Victors dead father. Alexie wrote the screenplay and
produced the movie, which was picked up by Miramax after
winning the Audience Award and the Filmmakers Trophy at the
1998 Sundance Film Festival. It became the first Indian-

produced, Indian-directed, Indian-written feature film ever

distributed in the United States. And as Alexie likes to point out,
The Indians werent played by Italians with long hair.
It also showed Alexie the cultural power of film, something he
never experienced with his books, and that gave him his biggest
taste yet of the pop-culture presence he desires. Thomas Buildsa-Fire, the character, has become a huge cultural character in the
Indian world, Alexie says. I get photographs of Indian kids
who dressed as him for Halloween. His lines in the movie have
become pop-cultural phrases. In the Indian world, we just dont
have that. Our heroes have always been guys with guns. And
now, to have this cultural hero who is this androgynous little
storytelling bookworm geekI think thats wonderful.
His fiction has since become bigger, more daring, more surreal.
He now traffics in huge metaphors and characters that engage in
strange, archetypal and at times wildly desperate bids for
intimacy or a sense of personal context. As such, The Toughest
Indian in the World has elicited wildly divergent appraisals.
While The New Yorker has given it a kind of ueberblessing by
running two of the books stories in the past year, The New York
Times panned it. Publishers Weekly gave it a starred review,
stating Alexies stories continually surprise, revealing him once
again as a master of his craft. But others have accused him of
fashioning those same surprises just for effect.
In Toughest Indian, there is a road-trip story, South by
Southwest, similar in many key ways to Smoke Signals, but
Victor and Thomas have been replaced by a nutty white guy
named Seymour and a fat Indian that Seymour nicknames
Salmon Boy. They kiss in the front seat of a 1965 Chevrolet
Malibu on their way to a McDonalds in Tucson, Arizona. In
Alexies preceding work, the novel Indian Killer, there was no
kissing going on between Indians and white guys. There wasnt
even any handshaking. An Indian guy was mutilating white guys
with a knife and leaving owl feathers on their bodies.
Seymour and Salmon Boy meet when Seymour attempts to rob a
pancake house, Pulp Fiction-style. He takes $42 in change from
the customers and then says he needs someone to go with him to
Arizona, someone who will fall in love with him along the way.
Salmon Boy is the only volunteer.
Are you gay? Seymour asks. Im not gay.
No sir, I am not a homosexual, Salmon Boy says. I am not a
homosexual, but I do believe in the power of love.
Alexie carries out the story, as he carries out all of the stories in
the book, with his own brand of magic realism, as if these
werent modern short stories at all, but indigenous folk tales that
have been passed down through the ages. He mixes mythic
references to salmon and constellations with the tragedies and
foibles of real Indian life, with all of its juxtapositions,
misunderstandings and occasional victories. He weaves in and
out of Indian stereotypes, setting them up, teasing the reader with
them, destroying them, and then being courageous enough to
refer back to them again, as if, within the weave of what is
thought to be true of pre-colonial Indians and what you see of
todays Indians, lies the ultimate truth. Its a trickster sleight of
hand that messes with reality and allows Alexie to get away with
stories that feel purposefully timeless.
***

Alexie does a lot of his writing at 3 a.m. at the International

House of Pancakes in the university district of Seattle, close to
his office and not too far from his home, where he lives with his
wife, Diane, a college counselor and Hidatsa Indian, and their
five-year-old son. He has been an insomniac since he was a
child. In those days, he would play games. Now, when hes up
late, he writes. When hes not traveling, his Seattle life is quiet
he is limited to the writing he does during the day, at an office
shared with an assistant he has known since college. He spends
time with his family in the evenings and meets up with his
buddies for basketball every Tuesday after work.
He says all of his stories are born out of a central image that
expands as he writes, and the image for Seymour and Salmon
Boy came one night at the IHOP. An Indian and a white guy
walked in together, and they were obviously great friends, he
recalls. They were laughing and a little intoxicated and not
sloppy or obnoxious, just having a great time. And they looked
so sweet together. They werent lovers, there was none of that
energy, but they seemed so close and so intimate with each other
that it was really touching.
Homosexuality informs many of the stories in The Toughest
Indian in the World. The title story is about an Indian journalist
who picks up an Indian boxer hitchhiking. The tired, conflicted
writer is in awe of what he perceives as the fighters mythic
purity. Youd have been a warrior in the old days, enit? the
journalist says. You wouldve been a killer. You wouldve stole
everybodys horses. The story explodes, though, when they
share a hotel room and, late at night, the fighterwho, it turns
out, is gayclimbs into the writers bed and coaxes the
journalist into a new experience.
Im becoming more urban and also spending more and more
time in the art world, which, you know, is heavily populated by
homosexuals, Alexie says. So simply, my experiences have
grown, so the characters represented in my fiction will grow
accordingly. And one of the things, one of the hatreds that
bothers me the most is homophobia. So in some sense I wanted
to use my fiction as a way of addressing that directly. And
celebrating [homosexuality] in all of its forms. And including it
as just another aspect of love.
Love? From the guy who still talks about his fantasies of killing
the white guys who sat in the back row of his high-school
classes? A couple of the reviews found the story cynical or a
parody. And I meant it to be a very sweet story, he says. I was
trying to do that. It is certainly difficult for anybody to love
anybody, but we usually do OK. These arent happy stories
necessarily. But I think they are positive stories.
If this isnt the kind of thing one would expect from Alexie, well,
hes fine with that. I always want to be a moving target, he
says.
That quality may stem from a certain sense of personal
protectionism. In the crowd at Aunties Bookstore, a lot of his
old acquaintances from the reservation were on hand, and some
were most decidedly not supporters of his work. Alexie has been
dogged throughout his career by accusations from those at the
reservation who say that he is selling them up the river,
misrepresenting reservation life for his own gain, embarrassing
them. The word that keeps coming back is responsibility,
Alexie says. They ask me to represent them, until the point
where Im not an artist. Im a politician, or not even that, a
propagandist. Im supposed to be making public-service

announcements, rather than creating art. And I hate that. That

kind of pressure is terrible.
At one point after his reading, a reservation Indian woman
approached the microphone in the crowd. Alexie said later he
had been estranged from her since age nine. Old long feuds over
old long things, he said. The woman asked why, instead of
shooting fictional narrative film like Smoke Signals, he didnt
film a documentary about the reservation, so that the American
public could see how it really is.
A few minutes later, a white man approached the mike and
asked, Do you hate white people?
These questions follow Alexie wherever he goes. And hes not
going to escape them, because what they both spring from
informs who he has made himself to bean Indian writer. It is
both his reason to write and what he battles most strongly
against. Every single one of the stories in his new book is about
Indians and whites trying to overcome the stereotypes of who
and what they are supposed to be. And thats Alexies own
challenge these days.
On his book jackets in the past, Alexie has worn the same stoic
too-cool-for-school Indian mask that he himself makes fun of.
He calls it the ethnic stare. On his new book, though, we see a
man without the mask. He wears a look of concern, but also of
gentleness, vulnerability and, ultimately, pride. It was taken by
Rex Rystedt, the same Seattle photographer who took the Cobain
portrait on his wall. One looks at the image and wonders, Is this
the introvert? Or the guy who becomes the Indian Richard Pryor
on stage? The insomniac scratching out verse at 3 a.m. in the
Seattle IHOP? Or the screenwriter who takes lunch at Sunset
Strip cafes? The poor rez boy who enjoys the power and
privilege he once railed against? The guy who started as a
outsider poet? Or the one who now wants to be a mainstream
pop-culture icon? A man who may not be telling the whole truth
about the modern American Indian but is at least telling his own?
Sherman Alexie defied expectations from his first breath. Now,
he does it for the American literary world and, increasingly, the
American public, as well.
Book Magazine, July/August 2000

On Sherman Alexie
Kenneth Lincoln
With Sherman Alexie, readers can throw formal questions out the
smokehole (as in resistance to other modern verse innovators,
Whitman, Williams, Sexton, or the Beats). Parodic antiformalism
may account for some of Alexies mass maverick appeal. This
Indian gadfly jumps through all the hoops, sonnet, to villanelle,
to heroic couplet, all tongue-in-cheeky. Im sorry, but Ive met
thousands of Indians, he told Indian Artist magazine, Spring
1998, and I have yet to know of anyone who has stood on a
mountain waiting for a sign. A reader enters the land of MTV
and renascent AIM: a cartoon Pocahontas meets Beavis and Butthead at the forests edge, Sitting Bull takes on Arnold
Schwarzenegger at Wounded Knee 73. The Last Real Indian has
a few last words.
A stand-up comedian, the Indian improvisator is the performing
text, obviating too close a textual reading: youngish man, sixfoot-two or so, born in 1966 at the height of hippie nativism,

from Wellpinit, Washington, now living in Seattle and taking the

fin de siecle literary world by storm (an Indian Oscar Wilde?).
After a century of benign neglect, Indian literature has hit an
inflationary spiral with six-figure book deals and million-dollar
movies. New York publishers have been humping this sassy, talkback satirist as the last essentialist hold-out, a commercially
successful Crazy Horse of mass marketing. The most
prodigious Native American writer to date, Alexie told a
Chicago Sun reporter asking about his brassy novel, Indian
Killer, October 1996, to which the reporter queried, Indian
dujour? Our young hero replied, If so, its been a very long
day. How about Indian du decade? Millennial Indian
extraordinaire? The reporter raised the controversy over Granta
naming Alexie one of the twenty Best Young American
Novelists for Reservation Blues (not a novel), and Sherman
snapped: To say I was on the list because Im an Indian is
ridiculous: Im one of the most critically respected writers in the
country. So the Granta critics . . . essentially, fuck em (October
31, 1996, New Citys Literary Supplement). Starting with Native
American writers, Alexies competition includes no less than
Allen, Erdrich, Harjo, Hogan, Momaday, Ortiz, Silko,
TallMountain, Tapahonso, Welch, and Whiteman, among others
(not to mention non-Indians like Toni Morrison, Norman Mailer,
Cormac McCarthy, or Rita Dove). If most critically respected
in a specific fictional genre of Indian Killer (thriller violence
with racial undertones), his closest rivals are Tony Hillerman,
Gerald Vizenor, Mickey Spillane, and Stephen King, an
acknowledged model, John Steinbeck and the Brady Bunch
tossed in. Hes young, says my elder brother back home, hell
ripen, given time.
A breed Spokane and Coeur dAlene, not just anybody, but
thirteen-sixteenths blood, according to his poetry: I write about
the kind of Indian I am: kind of mixed up, kind of odd, not
traditional. Im a rez kid whos gone urban (Indian Artist). What
kind of an Indian is this?a photogenic black mane of hair,
dark-framed bifocal glasses, high-school class president,
bookworm nose broken six times by bullies (he reminisces),
English lit college degree from Eastern Washington State (after
passing out as a pre-med student in his anatomy class, twice).
His work is wizened with poetic anger, ribald love, and whipsaw
humor. The crazy-heart bear is dancing comically, riding a
wobbly unicycle, tossing overripe tomatoes at his audience.
This late in the 2Oth century, the poet says in Red Blues, we
still make the unknown ours by destroying it. His firecat
imagination plays tricks on the reader, for our supposed good, for
its own native delight and survival. You almost / believe every
Indian is an Indian, the poet swears to MarIon Brando.
Sherman: not So much a rhymer in the old sense, as a circus
juggler Who can eat apples, he says, while juggling. A college
graduate who played basketball sixteen hours a day to keep from
boozing with his cronies: Seymour chugging beer as a poet
writes poetry (up to the last one that kills you) and Lester dead
drunk in the convenience store dumpster. Alexies sister and
brother-in-law, passed out in a trailer, died by fire when a
window curtain blew against a hot plate.
The boy mimed everyone in his family and still wont Stop
talking. I was a divisive presence on the reservation when I was
seven, he told an LA Times reporter, December 17, 1996. I was
a weird, eccentric, very arrogant little boy. The writing doesnt
change anybodys opinion of me. Promoting his new movie,
Smoke Signals (coproduced with Cheyenne-Arapaho director
Chris Eyre), the writer describes himself today as mouthy,
opinionated and arrogant, a court jesters cross of Caliban,
Groucho Marx, and Lears Fool, but underneath, Im a
sweetheart (Denver Post, October 20, 1997). Hes the best

native example yet of Lewis Hydes wiley hinge-maker,

Trickster, the infant Prince of Thieves, Hermes stealing into
Olympus to claim legitimacy: Wandering aimlessly, stupider
than the animals, he is at once the bungling host and the agile
parasite; he has no way of his own but he is the Great Imitator
who adopts the many ways of those around him. Unconstrained
by instinct, he is the author of endlessly creative and novel
deceptions, from hidden hooks to tracks that are impossible to
read.
Artistic grist and ironic survival are inseparable in this verse,
tracing a short lifetime of basketball (a team captain ball hog
in high school), beer, TV, rez cars falling apart, pony dreams,
fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) babies, and fancy-dancing drunks.
You call it genocide; I call it economics, Custer snorts. A
warm-up for fiction and the movies, poetics are wrapped up in
the politics of native poverty , torqued metrics, and ethnic
protest: dime store Indin princesses and back-alley vision
questers, 7-11 heroes and Vietnam vets, Marlon Brando and
Crazy Horse. No insurance CEO or village doctor, Alexie has the
near fatal, comic bravado of surviving an everyday rez, where
every day is a blow to the stomach and a blaze of understanding.
Being Indian means youre hanging on for dear life, hanging in
there with catastrophic humor, kicking back at sunset, staggering
through the 49 to dawn, laughing your ass off and on again (the
short fiction says), and accepting that bottom line of your
neighbors butt next to you, misplaced, displaced, re-relocated
into the present Red reality, so real that it hurts. So unreal in its
hurtful beauty, so surreal that it makes you blink and smile to see
another dawn. How do you explain the survival of all of us who
were never meant to survive? Its a long walk from Sitting Bull
bearing hard times to Charlie Blackbird surviving. Alexie
takes to Internet chat rooms for essential defenses of native
sovereignty and intercultural access to America s power
structures, particularly publishing and the movies.
So, from Momadays visionary form, through Welchs shamanic
rhythm, heres a surreal trickster savage in two-dimensional
poetic cartoon. Rather than close reading or parsing the lines, his
work elicits charged reaction, critical gut response, positive or
negative argument. Reading Alexies work triggers a recoil from
the shock of Indian reality, like looking into the Sun Dance sun,
going blind, and slowly regaining sight, stars and blackspots and
sunbursts floating across the field of perception, so you know its
your perception, anyway, at last, of reality: whiskey salmon
absence, the poem Citizen Kane ends. Firewater, relocation,
vanishing American. The images, concretely charged as Pounds
Vorticist objects, are loaded in disconnections: the poison where
food swarms, desperate homing, the absence that starves Indians
to death. Rosebud is not a childs movie sled but a desperately
poor Sioux reservation in the Dakotas.
But, I mean, I really love movies. I always have, Alexie said in
Making Smoke (Aboriginal Voices May-June 1998). I love
movies more than I love books, and believe me, I love books
more than I love every human being, except the dozen or so
people in my life who love movies and books just as much as I
do. His favorite films are Midnight Cowboy, The Graduate, and
Aliens. The writer goes on, I mean, screenplays are more like
poetry than like fiction. Screenplays rely on imagery to carry the
narrative, rather than the other way around. And screenplays
have form. Like sonnets, actually. Just as theres [sic]
expectations of form, meter, and rhyme in a sonnet, there are the
same kinds of expectations for screenplays. There are two
dimensions in Alexies work, screenplay to verse, often no more
than two characters in the short fiction, The Lone Ranger and
Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. His work is mostly minimalist drama,
back to the first Greek plays, alazon to eiron, dreamer to realist,

fool to cynic. Toss in commedia dellarte, Punch and Judy,

Laurel and Hardy, Amos and Andy, Lewis and Martin, Red
Ryder and Little Beaver. The embedded third dimension of this
post-holocaustal comedy is cultural landscape, for lack of a
better term, devastated native homestead. So a third character
might be salvage-surrealist, Old Man absent and implied, as with
Welchs winter-in-the-blood Napi. The third- dimensional axis
then is Indin humor, a vanishing point of survival in the canvas
of a hidden spirit world, including Trickster mimics, all around
and behind us. Alexie takes Welchs foxy shaman a skitter-step
forward to tease Mary Austin: Sweetheart, history / doesnt
always look like horses.
Poetry comes on not so much a text as a comic ruse, a razored
one-liner, a readers riff to wake up America. The world is Indian
as a coyote magician who makes every ordinary day a trick of
survival, a vanishing act, a raw joke. A readers breath catches in
the throat and comes out laughing strange, still . . . a breath it is,
of life. It gets you going, brothers and sisters, a buzzing, rattling,
weeping, yipping imagination. Cry so hard you begin to laugh:
run so fast you lap your shadow: dream so hard you cant sleep:
think so hard you startle awake like a child. Maia gave birth to a
wily boy, the Homeric hymn begins, flattering and cunning, a
robber and cattle thief, a bringer of dreams, awake all night,
waiting by the gates of the cityHermes, who was soon to earn
himself quite a reputation among the gods, who do not die.
Crossing Ginsberg with Creeley, Hughess Crow with
Berryrnans Mistah Bones, Alexie brews a homeboy devils own
humor. The voice makes junkyard poetry out of broke-down
reality, vision out of delirium tremens, prayer out of laughter.
When my father first smiled, the poet recalls, it scared the shit
out of me. . . .
Indin vaudeville, then, stand-up comedy on the edge of despair;
A late-twentieth-century, quasi-visionary clown tells the truth
that hurts and heals in one-liners cheesy as the Marx Brothers,
trenchant as Lenny Bruce, tricky as Charlie Hills BIA
Halloween Trick or Treaty. The, stand-up poet marvels in
dismay, Imagine Coyote accepts / the Oscar for lifetime
achievement. Theres an old trickster-teacher role here in a
young Indians hands-jokes draw the line, cut to the quick, sling
the bull, open the talk. White Men Cant Drum, Alexie
announced in Esquire Magazine, October 1992, roasting the
new-age mens movement, all the Wannabe fuss and fustian.
How do you explain the survival of all of us who were never
meant to survive? asks the verse straight man.
There is nothing we cannot survive, the poet swears. Surviving
war is the premise. In The Summer of Black Widows (1996),
Alexies sixth poetry collection in as many years (composing by
computer), Father and Farther (also performed on the rock
cassette, Reservation Blues) recalls a drunken basketball coach
and a losing team. Listen, his father slurs, I was a paratrooper
in the war.
Which war? the boy-poet asks.
All of them, he said. Quincentennial facts: Native Americans
as a composite are the only in-country ethnic group that the U.S.
has declared war against, 1860-1890. Some existing 560
reservations, 315 in the lower forty-eight states, are natively seen
from inside as occupied POW camps. Think of it as the delayed
stress of contemporary Indian America: the post- traumatic shock
of surviving Columbus to Cotton Mather, Buffalo Bill Cody to
Andy Jackson, Chivington to Custer. Goddamn, the general
says, again and again, saber is a beautiful word, in ironic cut
against Audens penchant for scissors. World War I Indian

volunteers, as cited, gained Native Americans dual citizenship in

1924. Code Talkers in World War II made natives national
heroes. Korea, Vietnam, and Desert Storm s chemical poisoning
brought tribal veterans into millennial terror.
In 1993, the UCI.A American Indian Studies Center published
Old Shins & New Skins as no. 9 in the Native American Poetry
Series. Old shirts, not stuffed new suits: new skins, Redskins
reborn, sloughing old skins. There are always two sides to
things, bicultural ironies to new-age lies, & the blessed
ampersand, hip shorthand to a coded new tongue, the with-it
Indin poet. Theres no text set here as such, but more a radical
riff, something spilled over, a virus, a toxin released, a
metastasizing anger. Its a reservation of my mind, the poet
says. The opening epithet equates, Anger x Imagination =
poetry, in the amplitude & invention of the angry young Indian.
One shot short of death, Seymour says, drink as you write free
verse, no matter if our failures are spectacular. Maverick
Trixter talks back, makes a different kind of poetry for people
with differences: it was not written for the white literary
establishment, Adrian Louis says in the foreword to Old Skins
& New Shins.
A double buckskin language frays the edges of bicultural
America, questions the multiple meanings of reservation, red,
risk, Cody & Crazy Horse, Marlon Brando & John Wayne, Christ
& Custer, who died for your sins. The critic is left with notes to
bumper-sticker poetics, insult & antagonism, the fractious comehither. Poetry as disruptive tease, a sideshow of historical truth &
poetic hyperbole. Or, to borrow from the social sciences,
privileged license: tribal teasing tests boundaries, deepens
resilience, insures survival, bets on renewal. Not without the
warrior history of Old English insults, flytyngs, hurled across a
river a thousand years ago in The Battle ofMaldon. LA South
Central Blacks doin the dozens, Yer granmother wears combat
boots! The Last Poets in Harlem chant, Niggers like to fuck each
other. . . . El Paso Hispanics drive slow n low riders. Inventories
of abuses, imagined & otherwise: hunger of imagination, poverty
of memory, toxicity of history, all in the face of cultural genocide
and racial misrepresentation and out-right extermination, to
challenge musty stereotypes of vanishing, savage, stoic, silent,
shamanic, stuperous Indians. Poetry is never bread enough &
doesnt pay the bills, damned from beginning to end, Williams
says. Who could quibble aesthetics in this setting?
money is free if you re poor enough
Are there any connections with canonical American poetry? Start
with Langston Hughess essentialist pride in the Harlem
Renaissance, I, too, sing America, not just Walt Whitman
fingering leaves of grass, or Carl Sandburg shouldering Chicago.
Allen Ginsberg howled his native place in the 1950s: the
marginalized, dispossessed, discriminated, hipster, homosexual,
Jewish, offbeat antihero. Its an old revolutionary American
motif, the lost found, the last first, the underdog bites back.
Sylvia Plaths rage and exhibitionist daring to die for us as Lady
Lazarus: Out of the ash / I rise with my red hair / And I eat men
like air. Ted Roethkes lost-son, lyric blues: Thrum-thrum, who
can be equal to ease? / Ive seen my fathers face before / Deep
in the belly of a thing to be. John Berrymans brilliant mad
comic pain: These songs were not meant to be understood, you
understand, / They were meant to terrify & comfort. / Lilac was
found in his hand.
A kind of Indian antipoetry breaks form at the millennial end.
Alexie pushes against formalist assumptions of what poetry
ought to be, knocks down aesthetic barriers set up in xenophobic
academic corridors, and rebounds as cultural performance. He

can play technique with mock sonnet, breezy villanelle, unheroic

couplet, tinkling tercet, quaky quatrain in any-beat lines. The
rhymer trades on surreal images and throwaway metaphors in a
drunken villanelle: Trail of Tears . . . trail of beers. The rush of
his poems is an energy released, stampeding horses, raging fires,
stomping shoes: the poet as fast & loose sharpster in accretive
repetition. Alexie likes catalogues, anaphoral first-word
repetitions, the accumulative power of oral traditions. There is
something freeing about all thisfree to imagine, to improvise,
to make things up, to wonder, to rage on. Sharpening wits on
quick wit, his poetry runs free of restrictive ideas about Indians,
poems, ponies, movies, shoes, dreams, dumpsters, reservations,
angers, losses. His lines break free of precious art . . . but free for
what, that matters? Do we care? the hard questions come
tumbling. Do we remember, or listen closely, or think carefully,
or wonder fully, or regard deeply enough?
Readers certainly learn about New Rez Indins who shoot hoop,
stroke pool, fancy dance, drink beer, snag girls, hustle, hitch, rap,
joke, cry, rhyme, dream, write everything down. These Computer
Rad Skins write verse that does not stay contained in formal
repose: does not pull away, or shimmer in the night sky, or
intimidate the common reader, but comes on full as a poetry that
begs visceral response. Often cartoonish, a gag, a point-of-view
gimmick, more like Virtual lndian. There is no possible way
to sell your soul for poetry, Alexie said in LA (December 17,
1996), because nobodys offering. The devil doesnt care about
poetry. No one wants to make a movie out of a poem. This
trickster has made one movie, as mentioned, and cast another
from Indian Killer.
Call it a reactive aesthetics, kinetic pop art, protest poetics to
involve and challenge late-century readerscajoled, battered,
insulted, entertained, humored, angered to respond. A poetry that
gets us up off our easy chairs. Tribal jive, that is, streetsmart,
populist, ethnocentric, edged, opinionated, disturbed, fired up as
reservation graffiti, a la John Trudells Venice, California, rock
lyrics, a Cherokee-breed Elvis as Baby Boom Che. Alexie
joins the brash, frontier braggadocio of westering America,
already out west a long time, ironically, a tradition in itself,
shared with Whitman, Lawrence, Stein, Mailer, Kesey, Kerouac,
Ginsberg, Vonnegut, Bellow, Heinemann, Mamet. Huckster, con
man, carny barker, stand-up comedian, Will Rogers to Jonathan
Winters, Cheech & Chong to Charlie Hill. The impudence of the
anti-poetic Red Rapster, daring us not to call this poetry. Im not
a rapper, Russell Means crows of his punk album, Electric
Warrior, Im a Rapaho!
Youll almost / believe every Indian is an Indian, Alexie carries
on.
Frybread . . . Snakes . . . Forgiveness
Excerpted from a longer essay, Futuristic Hip Indian: Alexie.
From Sing With the Heart of a Bear: Fusions of
Native and
American Poetry, 1890-1999. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2000. Copyright 2000 by The
Board of Regents of
the University of California.

General Commentary by Sherman Alexie

Alexie on his poetic inspiration

[Alex Kuos poetry workshop] was the first place I ever read
contemporary poems, especially contemporary American Indian

poems. And I read one poem in particular that was revolutionary

and revelatory. The line was, Im in the resrvation of my mind.
It was by Adrian Louis, a Paiute Indian poet. For me, that was
like, In the beginning . . . It was , Because I could not stop for
death, death kindly stopped for me . . . It was I sing the body
electric . . . It was all that and more. It was the first line I ever
read in any work, any fiction anywhere that ever applied to
something I knew. Literally, it was this flash of lightning, roll of
thunder, Bert Parks parking, Bob Barker barking, where I
understood everything that I ever wanted to be. At that moment.
When I read that line. It was really like that, like a light switch.
And at that moment I knew I wanted to be a writer.
from Bob Ivry, From the Reservation of His Mind. Bergen
Record 28 June 1998.
http://www.bergen.com/yourtime/ytsmoke199806282.htm

(S.A.) It was my first semester poetry manuscript. Part of the

assignment was to submit to literary magazines. The one I liked
in the Washington State library was Hanging Loose magazine. I
liked that it started the same year I was born. The magazine, the
press and I are the same age. Over the next year and a half they
kept taking poems of mine to publish. Then they asked if I had a
manuscript. I said, Yes! and sent it in.
It was a thousand copies. I figured Id sell a hundred and fifty to
my family. My mom would buy a hundred herself and that would
be about it. But, it took off. I never expected it. Sometimes I
think it would have been nicer if it had not been as big, because
my career has been a rocket ride. Theres a lot of pressure.
from Thomson Highway, Spokane Words: An Interview with
Sherman Alexie
http://jupiter.lang.osaka-u.ac.jp/~krkvls/salexie.html

Alexie on Poetry [Interview with Thomson Highway]

(S.A.) I started writing because I kept fainting in human anatomy
class and needed a career change. The only class that fit where
the human anatomy class had been was a poetry writing
workshop. I always liked poetry. Id never heard of, or nobodyd
ever showed me, a book written by a First Nations person, ever. I
got into the class, and my professor, Alex K[u]o, gave me an
anthology of contemporary Native American poetry called Songs
From This Earth on Turtles Back. I opened it up and--oh my
gosh--I saw my life in poems and stories for the very first time.
(T.H.) Who were some of the writers in the book?
(S.A.) Linda Hogan, Simon Ortiz, Joy Harjo, James Welch,
Adrian Lewis. There were poems about reservation life: fry
bread, bannock, 49s, fried baloney, government food and terrible
housing. But there was also joy and happiness. Theres a line by
a Paiute poet named Adrian Lewis that says, Oh, Uncle Adrian,
Im in the reservation of my mind. I thought, Oh my God,
somebody understand me!: At that moment I realized, I can do
this! Thats when I started writing--in 1989.
(T.H.) The poetry that you would have studied in American
Studies, for instance, the poetry of Wallace Stevens or e.e.
cummings or Emily Dickinson never influenced you at all?
(S.A.) Of course it did. I loved that stuff. I still love it. Walt
Whitman and Emily Dickinson are two of my favorites. Wallace
Stevens leaves me kind of dry, but the other poets, theyre still a
primary influence. I always tell people my literary influences are
Stephen King, John Steinbeck, and my mother, my grandfather
and the Brady Bunch.

Alexie on Heroes
Ive always been picky about heroes. Like most American males,
Ive always admired athletes, particularly basketball players. I
admired Julius Erving and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar not only for
their athletic abilities, but for who they seemed to be off the
court. They seemed to be spiritual, compassionate, and gracious
people. Neither has done nor said anything over the years to
contradict my image of them.
Unlike many American males, I always admired writers as much
as I admired athletes. I loved books and the people who wrote
books. John Steinbeck was one of my earliest heroes because he
wrote about the poor. Stephen King became a hero because he
wrote so well of misfit kids, the nerds and geeks. Growing up on
my reservation, I was a poor geek, so I had obvious reasons to
love Steinbeck and King. I still love their novels, but I have no
idea if they were/are spiritual, compassionate, and gracious men.
There is so much spirit, compassion, and grace in their work, I
want to assume that Steinbeck and King were/are good people. I
would be terribly disappointed to find out otherwise. . . .
Most of my heroes are just decent people. Decency is rare and
underrated. I think my writing is somehow just about decency.
Still, if I was keeping score, and I like to keep score, I would say
the villains in the world are way ahead of the heroes. I hope my
writing can help even the score.
from Laura Baratto, On Tour: Writers on the Road with New
Books. Hungry Mind Review Summer 1995: 22.
http://www.bookwire.com/hmr/Review/htour.html

(T.H.) Then you moved on to short stories.

(S.A.) Id written a couple of them in college. After my first
book of poems, The Business of Fancy Dancing, was published
by Hanging Loose Press in Brooklyn, New York, I got a great
New York Times book review. The review called me one of the
major lyric voices of our time. I was a 25-year old Spokane
Indian guy working as a secretary at a high school exchange
program in Spokane, Washington when my poetry editor faxed
that review to me. I pulled it out of the fax machine beside my
desk and read, ...one of the major lyric voices of our time. I
thought, Great! Where do I go from here!? After that, the
agents started calling me.
(T.H.) Where did the book of poetry come from?

Alexie on Indian Literature

Reflecting oral storytelling traditions, in which repetition exists
not for memorization but to deepen meaning with each iteration,
Alexies writing returns to certain themes, such as the fire that
killed his sister and brother-in-law. In his most recent collection
of poetry, The Summer of Black Widows (Hanging Loose Press,
1996), one section is entitles Sister Fire, Brother Smoke. . . .
When asked why he made the switch from poetry to prose, from
short stories to novels, from writing to film, Alexie immediately
responds with two answers: sales and access. Novels and film
pay the bills better than poetry, and with the broader sales he can
get his work out to more people, particularly Indian youth. . . .

As I have been working with the film, Alexie says, Ive come
to realize sitting in a movie theater is the contemporary
equivalent of sitting around the fire listening to a storyteller. . . .
And because of this, Indian peoples, all peoples, will respond
more powerfully to movies than to books. . . .
Another of Alexies concerns is that Indian literatures are
erroneously assumed by non-Indian readers to represent social
and historical realities in ways that other readers do not. When
readers expectations take an anthropological turn, writers are put
in the awkward position of being expected to represent their
tribes, communities, and Native America. Most of us [Indian
writers] are outcasts, Alexie says. We dont really fit within the
Indian community, so we write to try to fit in and sound Indian.
So its ironic that we become spokespeople for Indian country,
that we are supposed to be representative of our tribes. . . .
What does Alexie want to see within the ranks of Indian writers?
I want us to write about the way we live. He wants Indian
writers to write from their own lived experiences, not some
nostalgic and romanticized notion of what it means to be Indian.
When I see words like the Creator, Father Sky, Mother Earth,
Four Legends, I almost feel like were colonizing ourselves.
These words, this is how were supposed to talkwhat it means
to be Indian in white America. But its not who we really are; its
not what it means to be Navajo or Spokane or Cour dAlene.
from Susan Berry Brill de Ramirez, Fancy Dancer: A Profile of
Sherman Alexie. Poets and Writers
January/February 1999: 54-59.

Alexie on
the Responsibilities of Native writers
EK: Would you speak to what you see as our responsibility is as
Native
Writers?
Do
you
see
that
responsibility
restricting/constricting certain avenues of creativity?
SA: We do have a cultural responsibility above and beyond what
other people do, more than other ethnic group, simply because
we are so misrepresented and misunderstood and appropriated.
We have a serious responsibility to tell the truth. And to act
as . . . role models. We are more than just writers. We are
storytellers. We are spokespeople, We are cultural ambassadors.
We are politicians. We are activists. We are all of these simply by
nature of what we do, without even wanting to be. So were not
like these other writers who can just pick up and choose their
expressions. Theyve chosen for us , and we have to be aware of
that. I also think that we have a responsibility to live up to our
words. As Native writers, we certainly talk the talk about the
things that everybody should do, but if youre going to write
about racism, I dont think you should be a racist.
If youre going to write about sexism and exploitation, then I
dont think you should be a sleeping around. If youre going to
write about violence and colonialism, then I dont think you
should be doing it to your own family. So, I think we have a
serious responsibility as Native writers to live traditionally in a
contemporary world. And I dont think that a lot of us do.
EK: What do you think prevents us from doing that?
SA: A lot of it is our own dysfunctions. While we may have more
responsibilities because of what we do, that does not

automatically make us healthy. Part of the danger in being an

artist of whatever color is that you fall in love with your
wrinkles. The danger is that if you fall in love with your wrinkles
then you dont want to get rid of them. You start to glorify them
and perpetuate them. If you write about pain, you can end up
searching for more pain to write about, that kind of thing; that
self-destructive route. We need to get away from that. We can
write about pain and anger without having it consume us, and we
have to learn how to do that in our lives as individuals before we
can start doing that as writers.
from E. K. Caldwell, Interview: Sherman Alexie.

Selected Critical Excerpts on Sherman Alexie

Susan Berry Brill de Ramirez
Alexies poems and stories in First Indian on the Moon embrace
both discursive and conversive styles in a conjunction that is
inevitably disjunctive, disconcerting, and effective in
communicating his worlds and words. Alexie . . . writes in a
powerful voice that speaks of the realities of worlds that
continually push each other to the point of discursive and actual
implosion. Whether the results are burning cars, a trailer fire,
alcoholism, domestic or racial violence, smallpox blankets,
broken treaties, or human alienation, the process is always the
same: The clash of worlds that rarely gives more than temporary
(and in fact illusory) respite from the unfulfilled dreams and
lived pain that is on either side of the divide. . . .
Throughout Alexies writing, he displays a critically discursive
stance against virtually anyone and anything. This is an equal
opportunity anger that perceives both the weaknesses and
failures of both Indian and white worlds. . . . Alexie lives and
writes on the interstices between the divergent stories of both
worlds, what he refers to as the in-between / between tipi and
HUD house / between magic and loss (43). . . .
And yet, the interstice is not only a place of pain and anguish,
but also a place in which lives are born and lived with joy as well
as pain. When human lives come together in the loves and joys
of fancydancers, basketball player, and lovers, then the
conversive magic of human interrelationships transforms the
interstice into the here and now as meaningful as any. . . . The
reservation dreams of fancydancers and basketball players are
the same dreams of all human beings trapped within the
discursive lies of oppositional relations, relative (in) significance,
subjective power, and objective weakness. . . . The dreams of
treaties that wont be broken, the dreams of loves that will mend
the torn weavings of broken relationships and families, the
dreams of the conversive power of myth, all these survive even
beyond the pain of loss. . . .
from Susan Berry Brill de Ramirez, Contemporary American
Indian Literatures & the Oral Tradition. Tucson: University of
Arizona Press, 1999. 190-93.

Ron McFarland
There is a combativeness that distinguishes Alexies often
polemical poems, for he is, in a way, at war. In most of his

writing, sooner or later, Alexie is a polemicist, which is to say,

a warrior, and there is nearly always controversy and
argument, implied or direct, in his poems and stories. . . . Do
you ever worry about anger becoming a negative force? the
Bellante brothers asked [in a Bloomsbury Review interview].
Citing Gandhi, Alexie answered that anger could be a positive
force: Anger without hope, anger without love, or anger without
compassion are allconsuming. Thats not my kind of anger. Mine
is very specific and directed. . . .
The Indians in Alexies poems do not speak with raven spirits or
go on vision quests. They are not haunted by spirit animals . . .
and they are not visited by Kachina spirits. . . . In fact, it is more
appropriate to think of them in psychological rather than spiritual
terms. They have been uprooted from the animistic world. . . .
The power of Alexies poems comes from the world at hand. . . .
Alexies other collections of poetry are even more problematic
with respect to form (and he is a very conscious, though only
rarely conventional, formalist). The forty-two items that make up
The Business of Fancydancing (counting the four Indian Boy
Love Songs as one poem, as it is listed in the contents)
comprise twenty-eight poems and fourteen prose pieces, one of
which is a nine-page story and eight of which run just a
paragraph and could be considered prose poems, though I am
inclined to regard them as sudden fiction. Old Shirts & New
Skins consists of fifty items, as many as forty of which are
obviously poems. But is Snapping the Fringe a prose piece
consisting of about thirteen very short paragraphs, or a poem
consisting of almost thirty lines (depending on the format) and
using indentation in favor of stanza breaks? Although mixed
genres like prose poetry always leave me feeling a bit uneasy, I
am inclined to think it is his best effort in that mode. Old Shirts
& New Skins, then, including such conventional forms as the
sestina (The Naming of Indian Boys) and the villanelle
(Poem), is the closest Alexie has come so far [prior to 1996] to
a book made up of poems alone. . . .
In Split Decisions . . . Alexie employs a sort of round form
which he also uses in several stories, including My Heroes
Have Never Been Cowboys. In this form a word or phrase in
the last line of one section or stanza is repeated somewhere in the
first line of the next, and at the end of the poem a key word or
phrase is echoed from the first line so that the effect is circular.
In Split Decisions Alexie blends the free verse line with prose
sections . . . [so that] poetry and prose, line and sentence, appear
to move toward each other. . . .
When he was asked by the interviewers for Bloomsbury Review
if the transition from poet to writer of fiction was difficult for
him, Alexie answered that it was not difficult, that my poems
are stories. Theres a very strong narrative drive in all my
poetry. . . . As the interviewers noted from the outset, Alexie is
a storyteller [with] an unmistakable poetic streak. His powers
as a poet are primarily narrative, and after that rhetorical, and
with that, perhaps as a sub-species, polemical. . . .
Alexies is a rhetoric, whether in his poems or in his fiction, that
reflects pain and anger, a rhetoric that could give way to
bitterness. What keeps that from happening and makes the pain
and anger bearable for the reader . . . is not so much the hope,
love, and compassion to which he refers in the interview, but
humor. Predictably, this humor is rarely gentle or playful (though
it can be that at times), but most often satirical. . . .
Alexies poems are filled with such moments of painful or
poignant humor which may be described as serious or dark. .

. . The impact is not so much like the escape or release offered by

comedy as the catharsis provided by tragedy.
from Ron McFarland, Another Kind of Violence: Sherman
Alexies Poems. American Indian Quarterly 21.2
(Spring
1997): 251-64.

5
Tim OBrien
Tim OBrien is from
small
town
Minnesota. He was
born in Austin on
October 1, 1946, a
birth date he shares
with several of his
characters, and grew
up in Worthington ,
Turkey Capital of the
World.
He matriculated at
Macalester College.
Graduation in 1968
found him with a BA
in political science and a draft notice.
OBrien was against the war, but reported for service and was
sent to Vietnam with what has been called the unlucky
Americal division due to its involvement in the My Lai massacre
in 1968, an event which figures prominently in In the Lake of the
Woods.. He was assigned to 3rd Platoon, A Co., 5th Batt. 46th
Inf., as an infantry foot soldier. OBriens tour of duty was 196970.
After Vietnam he became a graduate student at Harvard. No
doubt he was one of very few Vietnam veterans there at that
time, much less Combat Infantry Badge (CIB) holders. Having
the opportunity to do an internship at the Washington Post, he
eventually left Harvard to become a newspaper reporter.
OBriens career as a reporter gave way to his fiction writing
after publication of his memoir If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box
Me Up and Send Me Home.
Tim OBrien is now a visiting professor and endowed chair at
Southwest Texas State University where he teaches in the
Creative Writing Program.

scholars seldom know how to label, varyingly calling it a novel,

a short story collection, or a meta-fiction. OBrien has continued
to craft books stunning in their diverse approaches and
successful in their ability to capture the American experience,
allowing his work to boast regular appearances on national and
international best seller lists. His most recent novel is July, July.
OBriens writing has appeared in The New Yorker,
Ploughshares, Harpers, The Atlantic, and has been included in
several editions of Best American Short Stories and O. Henry
Prize Stories. He has been awarded fellowships from the
Guggenheim Foundation and the National Foundation for the
Arts. He currently teaches at Southwest Texas State University
in San Marcos, Texas.
Fiction:
July, July (2002)
Tomcat in Love (1998)
In the Lake of the Woods (1994)
The Things They Carried (1990)
Nuclear Age (1985)
Going After Cacciato (1978)
Northern Lights (1975)
Nonfiction:
If I Die in a Combat Zone (1973)

As a story teller and as a person who trusts story, I think a good

story addresses not just the head, but the whole human body: the
tear ducts, the scalp, the back of your neck and spine, even the
stomach.
Tim OBrien Shares Writings and Experiences at Davidson by
Bill Giduz, 2001
Well, I had a desire to write from the time I was a little kid and
then something collided with that desirenamely Vietnamand
I had to write about it. It moved from desire to imperative. I
couldnt not write.
The What If Game in Atlantic, 2002

Tim OBrien is
frequently cited by
writers and readers
alike as the finest
novelist
of
his
generation. He is
almost
uniformly
regarded as the
preeminent voice to
chronicle
the
American Vietnam
experience. Winner
of the National
Book Award in
1979 for his novel
Going
After
Cacciato, OBrien
may be best known
for his book The
Things
They
Carried,
so
legendary a literary accomplishment that not only was it a finalist
for the Pulitzer and the National Book awards, a winner of the
Paris Prize and the Heartland Prize, it is a book that critics and

The way I look at it is that anything is fair game. I mean, if

youre an artist you cant not write about a subject for fear of
exploiting it. Theres a danger, I suppose, of exploitation, but
youve got to take the risk and say Im going to write a book that
means something to me and might mean something to other
people.
OBrien, where art thou? by Hillary Schroeder for the Stanford
Daily Cardinal, 2002
Thats how I spend my days for four years in a row. Im just
sitting here in my underwear trying to write a book.
OBrien Reveals All for Robert Birnbaum & IdentityTheory,
2002

The Things They Carried

by Tim OBrien
First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried letters from a girl
named Martha, a junior at Mount Sebastian College in New
Jersey. They were not love letters, but Lieutenant Cross was
hoping, so he kept them folded in plastic at the bottom of his
rucksack. In the late afternoon, after a days march, he would dig
his foxhole, wash his hands under a canteen, unwrap the letters,
hold them with the tips of his fingers, and spend the last hour of
fight pretending. He would imagine romantic camping trips into
the White Mountains in New Hampshire. He would sometimes
taste the envelope flaps, knowing her tongue had been there.
More than anything, he wanted Martha to love him as he loved
her, but the letters were mostly chatty, elusive on the matter of
love. She was a virgin, he was almost sure. She was an English
major at Mount Sebastian, and she wrote beautifully about her
professors and roommates and midterm exams, about her respect
for Chaucer and her great affection for Virginia Woolf. She often
quoted lines of poetry; she never mentioned the war, except to
say, Jimmy, take care of yourself. The letters weighed ten
ounces. They were signed Love, Martha, but Lieutenant Cross
understood that Love was only a way of signing and did not
mean what he sometimes pretended it meant. At dusk, he would
carefully return the letters to his rucksack. Slowly, a bit
distracted, he would get up and move among his men, checking
the perimeter, then at full dark he would return to his hole and
watch the night and wonder if Martha was a virgin.
The things they carried were largely determined by
necessity. Among the necessities or near-necessities were P-38
can openers, pocket knives, heat tabs, wrist watches, dog tags,
mosquito repellent, chewing gum, candy, cigarettes, salt tablets,
packets of Kool-Aid, lighters, matches, sewing kits, Military
payment Certificates, C rations, and two or three canteens of
water. Together, these items weighed between fifteen and twenty
pounds, depending upon a mans habits or rate of metabolism.
Henry Dobbins, who was a big man, carried extra rations; he was
especially fond of canned peaches in heavy syrup over pound
cake. Dave Jensen, who practiced field hygiene, carried a
toothbrush, dental floss, and several hotel-size bars of soap hed
stolen on R&R in Sydney, Australia. Ted Lavender, who was
scared, carried tranquilizers until he was shot in the head outside
the village of Than Khe in mid-April. By necessity, and because
it was SOP, they all carried steel helmets that weighed five
pounds including the liner aid camouflage cover. They carried
the standard fatigue jackets and trousers. Very few carried
underwear. On their feet they carried jungle boots-2.1 pounds
and Dave Jensen carried three pairs of socks and a can of Dr.
Scholls foot powder as a precaution against trench foot. Until he
was shot, Ted Lavender carried six or seven ounces of premium
dope, which for him was 2 necessity. Mitchell Sanders, the RT0,
carried condoms. Norman Bowker carried a diary. Rat Kiley
carried comic books. Kiowa, a devout Baptist, Carried an
illustrated New Testament that had been presented to him by his
father, who taught Sunday school in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
As a hedge against bad times, however, Kiowa also carried his
grandmothers distrust of the white man, his grandfathers old
hunting hatchet. Necessity dictated. Because the land was mined
and booby-trapped, it was SOP for each man to carry a steelcentered, nylon-covered flak jacket, which weighed 6.7 pounds,
but which on hot days seemed much heavier. Because you could
die so quickly, each man carried at least one large compress
bandage, usually in the helmet band for easy access. Because the

nights were cold, and because the monsoons were wet, each
carried a green plastic poncho that could be used as a raincoat or
groundsheet or makeshift tent. With its quilted liner, the poncho
weighed almost two pounds, but it was worth every ounce. In
April, for instance, when Ted Lavender was shot, they used his
poncho to wrap him up, then to carry him across the paddy, then
to lift him into the chopper that took him away.
They were called legs or grunts.
To carry something was to hump it, as when Lieutenant
Jimmy Cross humped his love for Martha up the hills and
through the swamps. In its intransitive form, to hump, meant
to walk, or to march, but it implied burdens far beyond the
intransitive.
Almost everyone humped photographs. In his wallet,
Lieutenant Cross carried two photographs of Martha. The first
was a Kodachrome snapshot signed Love, though he knew
better. She stood against a brick wall. Her eyes were gray and
neutral, her lips slightly open as she stared straight-on at the
camera. At night, sometimes, Lieutenant Cross wondered who
had taken the picture, because he knew she had boyfriends,
because he loved her so much, and because he could see the
shadow of the picture taker spreading out against the brick wall.
The second photograph had been clipped from the 1968 Mount
Sebastian yearbook. It was an action shotwomens volleyball
and Martha was bent horizontal to the floor, reaching, the
palms of her hands in sharp focus, the tongue taut, the expression
frank and competitive. There was no visible sweat. She wore
white gym shorts. Her legs, he thought, were almost certainly the
legs of a virgin, dry and without hair, the left knee cocked and
carrying her entire weight, which was just over one hundred
pounds. Lieutenant Cross remembered touching that left knee. A
dark theater, he remembered, and the movie was Bonnie and
Clyde, and Martha wore a tweed skirt, and during the final scene,
when he touched her knee, she turned and looked at him in a sad,
sober way that made him pull his hand back, but he would
always remember the feel of the tweed skirt and the knee beneath
it and the sound of the gunfire that killed Bonnie and Clyde, how
embarrassing it was, how slow and oppressive. He remembered
kissing her goodnight at the dorm door. Right then, he thought,
he shouldve done something brave. He shouldve carried her up
the stairs to her room and tied her to the bed and touched that left
knee all night long. He shouldve risked it. Whenever he looked
at the photographs, he thought of new things he shouldve done.
What they carried was partly a function of rank, partly of
field specialty.
As a first lieutenant and platoon leader, Jimmy Cross
carried a compass, maps, code books, binoculars, and a .45caliber pistol that weighed 2.9 pounds fully loaded. He carried a
strobe fight and the responsibility for the lives of his men.
As an RTO, Mitchell Sanders carried the PRC-25 radio, a
killer, twenty-six pounds with its battery.
As a medic, Rat Kiley carried a canvas satchel filled with
morphine and plasma and malaria tablets and surgical tape and
comic books and all the things a medic must carry, including
M&Ms for especially bad wounds, for a total weight of nearly
twenty pounds.
As a big man, therefore a machine gunner, Henry Dobbins
carried the M-60, which weighed twenty-three pounds unloaded,
but which was almost always loaded. In addition, Dobbins
carried between ten and fifteen pounds of ammunition draped in
belts across his chest and shoulders.
As PFCs or Spec 4s, most of them were common grunts
and carried the standard M-16 gas-operated assault rifle. The
weapon weighed 75 pounds unloaded, 8.2 pounds with its full
twenty-round magazine. Depending on numerous factors, such as
topography and psychology, the riflemen carried anywhere from
twelve to twenty magazines, usually in cloth bandoliers, adding

on another 8.4 pounds at minimum, fourteen pounds at

maximum. When it was available, they also carried M-16
maintenance gearrods and steel brushes and swabs and tubes
of LSA oilall of which weighed about 2 pound. Among the
grunts, some carried the M-79 grenade launcher, 5.9 pounds
unloaded, a reasonably fight weapon except for the ammunition,
which was heavy. A single round weighed ten ounces. The
typical load was twenty-five rounds. But Ted Lavender, who was
scared, carried thirty-four rounds when he was shot and killed
outside Than Khe, and he went down under an exceptional
burden, more than twenty pounds of ammunition, plus the flak
jacket and helmet and rations and water and toilet paper and
tranquilizers and all the rest, plus the unweighed fear. He was
dead weight. There was no twitching or flopping. Kiowa, who
saw it happen, said it was like watching a rock fall, or a big
sandbag or somethingjust boom, then downnot like the
movies where the dead guy rolls around and does fancy spins
and goes ass over teakettlenot like that, Kiowa said, the poor
bastard just flat-fuck fell. Boom. Down. Nothing else. It was a
bright morning in mid-April. Lieutenant Cross felt the pain. He
blamed himself. They stripped off Lavenders canteens and
ammo, all the heavy things, and Rat Kiley said the obvious, the
guys dead, and Mitchell Sanders used his radio to report one
U.S. KIA and to request a chopper. Then they wrapped Lavender
in his poncho. They carried him out to a dry paddy, established
security, and sat smoking the dead mans dope until the chopper
came. Lieutenant Cross kept to himself. He pictured Marthas
smooth young face, thinking he loved her more than anything,
more than his men, and now Ted Lavender was dead because he
loved her so much and could not stop thinking about her. When
the dust-off arrived, they carried Lavender aboard. Afterward
they burned Than Khe. They marched until dusk, then dug their
holes, and that night Kiowa kept explaining how you had to be
them how fast it was, how the poor guy just dropped like so
much concrete, Boom-down, he said. Like cement.
In addition to the three standard weapons-the M-60, M-16,
and M-79-they carried whatever presented itself, or whatever
seemed appropriate as a means of killing or staying alive. They
carried catch-as-catch can. At various times, in various
situations, they carried M-14s and CAR-15s and Swedish Ks
and grease guns and captured AK-47s and ChiComs and RPGs
and Simonov carbines and black-market Uzis and .38-caliber
Smith & Wesson handguns and 66 mm LAWs and shotguns and
silencers and blackjacks and bayonets and C-4 plastic explosives.
Lee Strunk carried a slingshot; a weapon of last resort, he called
it. Mitchell Sanders carried brass knuckles. Kiowa carried his
grandfathers feathered hatchet. Every third or fourth man
carried a Claymore antipersonnel mine-3.5 pounds with its firing
device. They all carried fragmentation grenades-fourteen ounces
each. They all carried at least one M-18 colored smoke grenade
twenty-four ounces. Some carried CS or tear-gas grenades.
Sonic carried white-phosphorus grenades. They carried all they
could bear, and then some, including a silent awe for the terrible
power of the things they carried.
In the first week of April, before Lavender died, Lieutenant
Jimmy Cross received a good-luck charm from Martha. It was a
simple pebble. An ounce at most. Smooth to the touch, it was a
milky-white color with flecks of orange and violet, oval-shaped,
like a miniature egg. In the accompanying letter, Martha wrote
that she had found the pebble on the Jersey shoreline, precisely
where the land touched water at high tide, where things came
together but also separated. It was this separate-but-together
quality, she wrote, that had inspired her to pick up the pebble and
to carry it in her breast pocket for several days, where it seemed
weightless, and then to send it through the mail, by air, as a token
of her truest feelings for him. Lieutenant Cross found this

romantic. But he wondered what her truest feelings were,

exactly, and what she meant by separate-but-together. He
wondered how the tides and waves had come into play on that
afternoon along the Jersey shoreline when Martha saw the pebble
and, bent down to rescue it from geology. He imagined bare feet.
Martha was a poet, with the poets sensibilities, and her feet
would be brown and bare the toenails unpainted, the eyes chilly
and somber like the ocean in March, and though it was painful,
he wondered who had been with her that afternoon. He imagined
a pair of shadows moving along the strip of sand where things
came together but also separated. It was phantom jealousy, he
knew, but he couldnt help himself. He loved her so much. On
the march, through the hot days of early April, he carried the
pebble in his mouth, turning it with his tongue, tasting sea salts
and moisture. His mind wandered. He had difficulty keeping his
attention on the war. On occasion he would yell at his men to
spread out the column, to keep their eyes open, but then he
would slip away into daydreams, just pretending, walking
barefoot along the Jersey shore, with Martha, carrying nothing.
He would feel himself rising. Sun and waves and gentle winds,
all love and lightness.
What they carried varied by mission.
When a mission took them to the mountains, they carried
mosquito netting, machetes, canvas tarps, and extra bugjuice.
If a mission seemed especially hazardous, or if it involved
a place they knew to be bad, they carried everything they could.
In certain heavily mined AOs, where the land was dense with
Toe Poppers and Bouncing Betties, they took turns humping a
twenty-eight-pound mine detector. With its headphones and big
sensing plate, the equipment was a stress on the lower back and
shoulders, awkward to handle, often useless because of the
shrapnel in the earth, but they carried it anyway, partly for safety,
partly for the illusion of safety.
On ambush, or other night missions, they carried peculiar
little odds and ends. Kiowa always took along his New
Testament and a pair of moccasins for silence. Dave Jensen
carried night-sight vitamins high in carotene. Lee Strunk carried
his slingshot; ammo, he claimed, would never be a problem. Rat
Kiley carried brandy and M&Ms. Until he was shot, Ted
Lavender carried the starlight scope, which weighed 63 pounds
with its aluminum carrying case. Henry Dobbins carried his
girlfriends panty hose wrapped around his neck as a comforter.
They all carried ghosts. When dark came, they would move out
single file across the meadows and paddies to their ambush
coordinates, where they would quietly set up the Claymores and
lie down and spend the night waiting.
Other missions were more complicated and required
special equipment. In mid-April, it was their mission to search
out and destroy the elaborate tunnel complexes in the Than Khe
area south of Chu Lai. To blow the tunnels, they carried onepound blocks of pentrite high explosives; four blocks to a man,
sixty-eight pounds in all. They carried wiring, detonators, and
battery-powered clackers. Dave Jensen carried earplugs. Most
often, before blowing the tunnels, they were ordered by higher
command to search them, which was considered bad news, but
by and large they just shrugged and carried out orders. Because
he was a big man, Henry Dobbins was excused from tunnel duty.
The others would draw numbers. Before Lavender died there
were seventeen men in the platoon, and whoever drew the
number seventeen would strip off his gear and crawl in headfirst
with a flashlight and Lieutenant Crosss .45-caliber pistol. The
rest of them would fan out as security. They would sit down or
kneel, not facing the hole, listening to the ground beneath them,
imagining cobwebs and ghosts, whatever was down there-the
tunnel walls squeezing in-how the flashlight seemed impossibly
heavy in the hand and how it was tunnel vision in the very
strictest sense, compression in all ways, even time, and how you

had to wiggle in-ass and elbows-a swallowed-up feeling-and how

you found yourself worrying about odd thingswill your
flashlight go dead? Do rats carry rabies? If you screamed, how
far would the sound carry? Would your buddies hear it? Would
they have the courage to drag you out? In some respects, though
not many, the waiting was worse than the tunnel itself.
Imagination was a killer.
On April 16, when Lee Strunk drew the number seventeen,
he laughed and muttered something and went down quickly. The
morning was hot and very still. Not good, Kiowa said. He looked
at the tunnel opening, then out across a dry paddy toward the
village of Than Khe. Nothing moved. No clouds or birds or
people. As they waited, the men smoked and drank Kool-Aid,
not talking much, feeling sympathy for Lee Strunk but also
feeling the luck of the draw, You win some, you lose some, said
Mitchell Sanders, and sometimes you settle for a rain check. It
was a tired line and no one laughed.
Henry Dobbins ate a tropical chocolate bar. Ted Lavender
popped a tranquilizer and went off to pee. After five minutes,
Lieutenant Jimmy Cross moved to the tunnel, leaned down, and
examined the darkness. Trouble, he thoughta cave-in maybe.
And then suddenly, without willing it, he was thinking about
Martha. The stresses and fractures, the quick collapse, the two of
them buried alive under all that weight. Dense, crushing love.
Kneeling, watching the hole, he tried to concentrate on Lee
Strunk and the war, all the dangers, but his love was too much
for him, he felt paralyzed, he wanted to sleep inside her lungs
and breathe her blood and be smothered. He wanted her to be a
virgin and not a virgin, all at once. He wanted to know her.
Intimate secrets: why poetry? Why so sad? Why that grayness in
her eyes? Why so alone? Not lonely, just aloneriding her bike
across campus or sitting off by herself in the cafeteria. Even
dancing, she danced aloneand it was the aloneness that filled
him with love. He remembered telling her that one evening. How
she nodded and looked away. And how, later, when he kissed her.
She received the kiss without returning it, her eyes wide open,
not afraid, not a virgins eyes, just flat and uninvolved.
Lieutenant Cross gazed at the tunnel. But he was not there.
He was buried with Martha under the white sand at the Jersey
shore. They were pressed together, and the pebble in his mouth
was her tongue. He was smiling. Vaguely, he was aware of how
quiet the day was; the sullen paddies, yet he could not bring
himself to worry about matters of security. He was beyond that.
He was just a kid at war, in love. He was twenty two years old.
He couldnt help it.
A few moments later Lee Strunk crawled out of the tunnel.
He came up grinning, filthy but alive. Lieutenant Cross nodded
and closed his eyes while the others clapped Strunk on the back
and made jokes about rising from the dead.
Worms, Rat Kiley said. Right out of the grave. Fuckin
zombie.
The men laughed. They all felt great relief.
Spook City, said Mitchell Sanders.
Lee Strunk made a funny ghost sound, a kind of moaning,
yet very happy, and fight then, when Strunk made that high
happy moaning sound, when he went Ahhooooo, right then Ted
Lavender was shot in the head on his way back from peeing. He
lay with his mouth open. The teeth were broken. There was a
swollen black bruise under his left eye. The cheekbone was gone.
Oh shit, Rat Kiley said, the guys dead. The guys dead, he kept
saying, which seemed profoundthe guys dead. I mean really.
The things they carried were determined to some extent by
superstition. Lieutenant Cross carried his good-luck pebble.
Dave Jensen carried a rabbits foot. Norman Bowker, other-wise
a very gentle person, carried a thumb that had been presented to
him as a gift by Mitchell Sanders. The thumb was dark brown,
rubbery to the touch, and weighed four ounces at most. It had

been cut from a VC corpse, a boy of fifteen or sixteen. Theyd

found him at the bottom of an irrigation ditch, badly burned, flies
in his mouth and eyes. The boy wore black shorts and sandals. At
the time of his death he had been carrying a pouch of rice, a rifle,
and three magazines of ammunition.
You want my opinion, Mitchell Sanders said, theres a
definite moral here.
He put his hand oil the dead boys wrist. He was quiet for a
time, as if counting a pulse, then he patted the stomach, almost
affectionately, and used Kiowas hunting hatchet to remove the
thumb.
Henry Dobbins asked what the moral was.
Moral?
You know. Moral.
Sanders wrapped the thumb in toilet paper and handed it
across to Norman Bowker. There was no blood. Smiling, he
kicked the boys head, watched the files scatter, and said, Its like
with that old TV showPaladin. Have gun, will travel.
Henry Dobbins thought about it.
Yeah, well, he finally said. I dont see no moral.
There it is, man.
Fuck off.
They carried USO stationery and pencils and pens. They
carried Sterno, safety pins, trip flares, signal flares, spools of
wire, razor blades, chewing tobacco, liberated joss sticks and
statuettes of the sniffing Buddha, candles, grease pencils, The
Stars and Stripes, fingernail clippers, Psy Ops leaflets, bush hats,
bolos, and much more. Twice a week, when the resupply
choppers came in, they carried hot chow in green Mermite cans
and large canvas bags filled with iced beer and soda pop. They
carried plastic water containers, each with a two gallon capacity.
Mitchell Sanders carried a set of starched tiger fatigues for
special occasions. Henry Dobbins carried Black Flag insecticide.
Dave Jensen carried empty sandbags that could be filled at night
for added protection. Lee Strunk carried tanning lotion. Some
things they carried in common. Taking turns, they carried the big
PRC-77 scrambler radio, which weighed thirty pounds with its
battery. They shared the weight of memory. They took up what
others could no longer bear, Often, they carried each other, the
wounded or weak. They carried infections. They carried chess
sets, basketballs, Vietnamese English dictionaries, insignia of
rank, Bronze Stars and Purple Hearts, plastic cards imprinted
with the Code of Conduct. They carried diseases, among them
malaria and dysentery. They carried lice and ringworm and
leeches and paddy algae and various rots and molds. They
carried the land itselfVietnam, the place, the soda powdery
orange-red dust that covered their boots and fatigues and faces.
They carried the sky. The whole atmosphere, they carried it, the
humidity, the monsoons, the stink of fungus and decay, all of it,
they carried gravity. They moved like mules. By daylight they
took sniper fire, at night they were mortared, but it was not
battle, it was just the endless march, village to village, without
purpose, nothing won or lost. They marched for the sake of the
march. They plodded along slowly, dumbly, leaning forward
against the heat, unthinking, all blood and bone, simple grunts,
soldiering with their legs, toiling up the hills and down into the
paddies and across the rivers and up again and down, just
humping, one step and then the next and then another, but no
volition, no will, because it was automatic, it was anatomy, and
the war was entirely a matter of posture and carriage, the hump
was everything, a kind of inertia, a kind of emptiness, a dullness
of desire and intellect and conscience and hope and human
sensibility. Their principles were in their feet. Their calculations
were biological. They had no sense of strategy or mission. They
searched the villages without knowing what to look for, nor
caring, kicking over jars of rice, frisking children and old men,
blowing tunnels, sometimes setting fires and sometimes not, then

forming up and moving on to the next village, then other

villages, where it would always be the same. They carried their
own lives. The pressures were enormous. In the heat of early
afternoon, they would remove their helmets and flak jackets,
walking bare, which was dangerous but which helped ease the
strain. They would often discard things along the route of march.
Purely for comfort, they would throw away rations, blow their
Claymores and grenades, no matter, because by nightfall the
resupply choppers would arrive with more of the same, then a
day or two later still more, fresh watermelons and crates of
ammunition and sunglasses and woolen sweatersthe resources
were stunningsparklers for the Fourth of July, colored eggs for
Easterit was the great American war chestthe fruits of
sciences, the smokestacks, the canneries, the arsenals at Hartford,
the Minnesota forests, the machine shops, the vast fields of corn
and wheat they carried like freight trains; they carried it on their
backs and shouldersand for all the ambiguities of Vietnam, all
the mysteries and unknowns, there was at least the single abiding
certainty that they would never be at a loss for things to carry.
After the chopper took Lavender away, Lieutenant Jimmy
Cross led his men into the village of Than Khe. They burned
everything. They shot chickens and dogs, they trashed the village
well, they called in artillery and watched the wreckage, then they
marched for several hours through the hot afternoon, and then at
dusk, while Kiowa explained how Lavender died, Lieutenant
Cross found himself trembling.
He tried not to cry. With his entrenching tool, which
weighed five pounds, he began digging a hole in the earth.
He felt shame. He hated himself He had loved Martha more
than his men, and as a consequence Lavender was now dead, and
this was something he would have to carry like a stone in his
stomach for the rest of the war.
All he could do was dig. He used his entrenching tool like
an ax, slashing, feeling both love and hate, and then later, when it
was full dark, he sat at the bottom of his foxhole and wept. It
went on for a long while. In part, he was grieving for Ted
Lavender, but mostly it was for Martha, and for himself, because
she belonged to another world, which was not quite real, and
because she was a junior at Mount Sebastian College in New
Jersey, a poet and a virgin and uninvolved, and because he
realized she did not love him and never would.
Like cement, Kiowa whispered in the dark. I swear to God
boom-down. Not a word.
Ive heard this, said Norman Bowker.
A pisser, you know? Still zipping himself up. Zapped while
zipping.
All right, fine. Thats enough.
Yeah, but you had to see it, the guy just
I heard, man. Cement. So why not shut the fuck up?
Kiowa shook his head sadly and glanced over at the hole
where Lieutenant Jimmy Cross sat watching the night. The air
was thick and wet. A warm, dense fog had settled over the
paddies and there was the stillness that precedes rain.
After a time Kiowa sighed.
One thing for sure, he said. The lieutenants in some deep
hurt. I mean that crying jagthe way he was carrying onit
wasnt fake or anything, it was real heavy-duty hurt. The man
cares.
Sure, Norman Bowker said.
Say what you want, the man does care.
We all got problems.
Not Lavender.
No, I guess not, Bowker said. Do me a favor, though.
Shut up?
Thats a smart Indian. Shut up.

Shrugging, Kiowa pulled off his boots. He wanted to say

more, just to lighten up his sleep, but instead he opened his New
Testament and arranged it beneath his head as a pillow. The fog
made things seem hollow and unattached. He tried not to think
about Ted Lavender, but then he was thinking how fast it was, no
drama, down and dead, and how it was hard to feet anything
except surprise. It seemed unchristian. He wished he could find
some great sadness, or even anger, but the emotion wasnt there
and he couldnt make it happen. Mostly he felt pleased to be
alive. He liked the smell of the New Testament under his check,
the leather and ink and paper and glue, whatever the chemicals
were. He liked hearing the sounds of night. Even his fatigue, it
felt fine, the stiff muscles and the prickly awareness of his own
body, a floating feeling. He enjoyed not being dead. Lying there,
Kiowa admired Lieutenant Jimmy Crosss capacity for grief. He
wanted to share the mans pain, he wanted to care as Jimmy
Cross cared. And yet when he closed his eyes, all he could think
was Boom-down, and all he could feel was the pleasure of
having his boots off and the fog curling in around him and the
damp soil and the Bible smells and the plush comfort of night.
After a moment Norman Bowker sat up in the dark.
What the hell, he said. You want to talk, talk. Tell it to me.
Forget it.
No, man, go on. One thing I hate, its a silent Indian.
For the most part they carried themselves with poise, a kind
of dignity. Now and then, however, there were times of panic,
when they squealed or wanted to squeal but couldnt. When they
twitched and made moaning sounds and covered their heads and
said Dear Jesus and flopped around on the earth and fired their
weapons blindly and cringed and sobbed and begged for the
noise to stop and went wild and made stupid promises to
themselves and to God and to their mothers and fathers, hoping
not to die. In different ways, it happened to all of them.
Afterward, when the firing ended, they would blink and peek up.
They would touch their bodies, feeling shame, then quickly
hiding it. They would force themselves to stand. As if in slow
motion, frame by frame, the world would take on the old logicabsolute silence, then the wind, then sunlight, then voices. It was
the burden of being alive. Awkwardly, the men would reassemble
themselves, first in private, then in groups, becoming soldiers
again. They would repair the leaks in their eyes. They would
check for casualties, call in dust-offs, light cigarettes, try to
smile, clear their throats and spit and begin cleaning their
weapons. After a time someone would shake his head and say,
No lie, I almost shit my pants, and someone else would laugh,
which meant it was bad, yes, but the guy had obviously not shit
his pants, it wasnt that bad, and in any case nobody would ever
do such a thing and then go ahead and talk about it. They would
squint into the dense, oppressive sunlight. For a few moments,
perhaps, they would fall silent, lighting a joint and tracking its
passage from man to man, inhaling, holding in the humiliation.
Scary stuff, one of them might say. But then someone else would
grin or flick his eyebrows and say, Roger-dodger, almost cut me
a new asshole, almost.
There were numerous such poses. Some carried themselves
with a sort of wistful resignation, others with pride or stiff
soldierly discipline or good humor or macho zeal. They were
afraid of dying but they were even more afraid to show it.
They found jokes to tell.
They used a hard vocabulary to contain the terrible
softness. Greased, theyd say. Offed, lit up, zapped while
zipping. It wasnt cruelty, just stage presence. They were actors
and the war came at them in 3-D. When someone died, it wasnt
quite dying, because in a curious way it seemed scripted, and
because they had their fines mostly memorized, irony mixed
with tragedy, and because they called it by other names, as if to
encyst and destroy the reality of death itself. They kicked

corpses. They cut off thumbs. They talked grunt lingo. They told
stories about Ted Lavenders supply of tranquilizers, how the
poor guy didnt feel a thing, how incredibly tranquil he was.
Theres a moral here, said Mitchell Sanders.
They were waiting for Lavenders chopper, smoking the
dead mans dope.
The morals pretty obvious, Sanders said, and winked. Stay
away from drugs. No joke, theyll ruin your day every time.
Cute, said Henry Dobbins.
Mind-blower, get it? Talk about wiggy. Nothing left, just
blood and brains.
They made themselves laugh.
There it is, theyd say, over and over, as if the repetition
itself were an act of poise, a balance between crazy and almost
crazy, knowing without going. There it is, which meant be cool,
let it ride, because oh yeah, man, you cant change what cant be
changed, there it is, there it absolutely and positively and fucking
well is.
They were tough.
They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might
die. Grief, terror, love, longingthese were intangibles, but the
intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had
tangible weight. They carried shameful memories. They carried
the common secret of cowardice barely restrained, the instinct to
run or freeze or hide, and in many respects this was the heaviest
burden of all, for it could never be put down, it required perfect
balance and perfect posture. They carried their reputations. They
carried the soldiers greatest fear, which was the fear of blushing.
Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to. It
was what had brought them to the war in the first place, nothing
positive, no dreams of glory or honor, just to avoid the blush of
dishonor. They died so as not to die of embarrassment. They
crawled into tunnels and walked point and advanced under fire.
Each morning, despite the unknowns, they made their legs move.
They endured. They kept humping. They did not submit to the
obvious alternative, which was simply to close the eyes and fall.
So easy, really. Go limp and tumble to the ground and let the
muscles unwind and not speak and not budge until your buddies
picked you up and lifted you into the chopper that would roar
and dip its nose and carry you off to the world. A mere matter of
falling, yet no one ever fell. It was not courage, exactly; the
object was not valor. Rather, they were too frightened to be
cowards.
By and large they carried these things inside, maintaining
the masks of composure. They sneered at sick call. They spoke
bitterly about guys who had found release by shooting off their
own toes or fingers. Pussies, theyd say. Candyasses. It was
fierce, mocking talk, with only a trace of envy or awe, but even
so, the image played itself out behind their eyes.
They imagined the muzzle against flesh. They imagined the
quick, sweet pain, then the evacuation to Japan, then a hospital
with warm beds and cute geisha nurses.
They dreamed of freedom birds.
At night, on guard, staring into the dark, they were carried
away by jumbo jets. They felt the rush of takeoff Gone! they
yelled. And then velocity, wings and engines, a smiling
stewardess-but it was more than a plane, it was a real bird, a big
sleek silver bird with feathers and talons and high screeching.
They were flying. The weights fell off; there was nothing to bear.
They laughed and held on tight, feeling the cold slap of wind and
altitude, soaring, thinking Its over, Im gone!they were naked.
They were light and freeit was all lightness, bright and fast and
buoyant, light as light, a helium buzz in the brain, a giddy
bubbling in the lungs as they were taken up over the Clouds and
the war, beyond duty, beyond gravity and mortification anti
global entanglementsSin loi! They yelled, Im sorry,
motherfuckers, but Im out of it, Im goofed, Im on a space
cruise, Im gone!and it was a restful, disencumbered sensation,

just riding the fight waves, sailing; that big silver freedom bird
over the mountains and oceans, over America, over the farms and
great sleeping cities and cemeteries and highways and the
Golden Arches of McDonalds. It was flight, a kind of fleeing, a
kind of falling, falling higher and higher, spinning off the edge of
the earth and beyond the sun and through the vast, silent vacuum
where there were no burdens and where everything weighed
exactly nothing. Gone! they screamed, Im sorry but Im gone!
And so at night, not quite dreaming, they gave themselves over
to lightness, they were carried, they were purely borne.
On the morning after Ted Lavender died, First Lieutenant
Jimmy Cross crouched at the bottom of his foxhole and burned
Marthas letters. Then he burned the two photographs. There was
a steady rain falling, which made it difficult, but he used heat
tabs and Sterno to build a small fire, screening it with his body,
holding the photographs over the tight blue flame with the tips of
his fingers.
He realized it was only a gesture. Stupid, he thought.
Sentimental, too, but mostly just stupid.
Lavender was dead. You couldnt burn the blame.
Besides, the letters were in his head. And even now,
without photographs, Lieutenant Cross could see Martha playing
volleyball in her white gym shorts and yellow T-shirt. He could
see her moving in the rain.
When the fire died out, Lieutenant Cross pulled his poncho
over his shoulders and ate breakfast from a can.
There was no great mystery, he decided.
In those burned letters Martha had never mentioned the
war, except to say, Jimmy take care of yourself. She wasnt
involved. She signed the letters Love, but it wasnt love, and
all the fine lines and technicalities did not matter.
The morning came up wet and blurry. Everything seemed
part of everything else, the fog and Martha and the deepening
rain.
It was a war, after all.
Half smiling, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross took out his maps.
He shook his head hard, as if to clear it, then bent forward and
began planning the days march. In ten minutes, or maybe
twenty, he would rouse the men and they would pack up and
head west, where the maps showed the country to be green and
inviting. They would do what they had always done. The rain
might add some weight, but otherwise it would be one more day
layered upon all the other days.
He was realistic about it. There was that new hardness in
his stomach.
No more fantasies, he told himself.
Henceforth, when lie thought about Martha, it would be
only to think that she belonged elsewhere. He would shut down
the daydreams. This was not Mount Sebastian, it was another
world, where there were no pretty poems or midterm exams, a
place where men died because of carelessness and gross
stupidity. Kiowa was right. Boom-down, and you were dead,
never partly dead.
Briefly, in the rain, Lieutenant Cross saw Marthas gray
eyes gazing back at him.
He understood.
It was very sad, he thought. The things men carried inside.
The things men did or felt they had to do.
He almost nodded at her, but didnt.
Instead he went back to his maps. He was now determined
to perform his duties firmly and without negligence. It wouldnt
help Lavender, he knew that, but from this point on he would
comport himself as a soldier. He would dispose of his good-luck
pebble. Swallow it, maybe, or use Lee Strunks slingshot, or just
drop it along the trail. On the march he would impose strict field
discipline. He would be careful to send out flank security, to
prevent straggling or bunching up, to keep his troops moving at

the proper pace and at the proper interval. He would insist on

clean weapons. He would confiscate the remainder of Lavenders
dope. Later in the day, perhaps, he would call the men together
and speak to them plainly. He would accept the blame for what
had happened to Ted Lavender. He would be a man about it. He
would look them in the eyes, keeping his chin level, and he
would issue the new SOPs in a calm, impersonal tone of voice,
an officers voice, leaving no room for argument or discussion.
Commencing immediately, hed tell them, they would no longer
abandon equipment along the route of march. They would police
up their acts. They would get their shit together, and keep it
together, and maintain it neatly and in good working order.
He would not tolerate laxity. He would show strength,
distancing himself.
Among the men there would be grumbling, of course, and
maybe worse, because their days would seem longer and their
loads heavier, but Lieutenant Cross reminded himself that his
obligation was not to be loved but to lead. He would dispense
with love; it was not now a factor. And if anyone quarreled or
complained, he would simply tighten his lips and arrange his
shoulders in the correct command posture. He might give a curt
little nod. Or he might not. He might just shrug and say Carry on,
then they would saddle up and form into a column and move out
toward the villages west of Than Khe. (1986)
R&R rest and rehabilitation leave; SOP standard operating
procedure; RTO radio and telephone operator; M&M joking term
for medical supplies; KIA killed in action; AOs areas of
operation; Sin loi Sorry

How to Tell a True War Story

from The Things They Carried
In a true war story, if theres a moral at all, its like the thread
that makes the cloth. You cant tease it out. You cant extract the
meaning without unraveling the deeper meaning. And in the end,
really, theres nothing much to say about a true war story, except
maybe Oh. True war stories do not generalize. They do not
indulge in abstraction or analysis.
For example: War is hell. As a moral declaration the old truism
seems perfectly true, and yet because it abstracts, because it
generalizes, I cant believe it with my stomach. Nothing turns
inside.
It comes down to gut instinct. A true war story, if truly told,
makes the stomach believe.

This one does it for me. Ive told it before - many times, many
versions - but heres what actually happened.
We crossed that river and marched west into the mountains. On
the third day, my friend Curt Lemon stepped on a boobytrapped
artillery round. He was playing catch with Rat Kiley, laughing,
and then he was dead. The trees were thick; it took nearly an
hour to cut an LZ for the dustoff.
Later, higher in the mountains, we came across a baby VC water
buffalo. What it was doing there I dont know - no farms, no
paddies - but we chased it down and, got a rope around it and led

it along to a deserted village where we set up for the night. After

supper Rat Kiley went over and stroked its nose.
He opened up a can of C rations, pork and beans, but the baby
buffalo wasnt interested.
Rat shrugged.
He stepped back and shot it through the right front knee.
The animal did not make a sound. It went down hard, then got up
again, and Rat took careful aim and shot off an ear. He shot it in
the hindquarters and in the little hump at its back. He shot it
twice in the flanks. It wasnt to kill; it was to hurt. He put the
rifle muzzle up against the mouth and shot the mouth away.
Nobody said much. The whole platoon stood there watching,
feeling all kinds of things, but there wasnt a great deal of pity
for the baby water buffalo. Curt Lemon was dead. Rat Kiley had
lost his best friend in the world. Later in the week Rat would
write a long personal letter to the guys sister, who would not
write back, but for now, it was simply a question of pain. He shot
off the tail. He shot away -chunks of meat below the ribs. All
around us there was the smell of smoke and filth and greenery,
and the evening was humid and very hot. Rat went to automatic.
He shot randomly, almost casually, quick little spurts in the belly.
Then he reloaded, squatted down, and shot it in the left front
knee. Again the animal fell hard and tried to get up, but this time
it couldnt quite make it. It wobbled and went down sideways.
Rat shot it in the nose. He bent forward and whispered
something, as if talking to a pet, then he shot it in the throat. All
the while the baby water buffalo was silent, or almost silent, just
a little bubbling sound where the nose had been. It lay very still.
Nothing moved except the eyes, which were enormous, the
pupils shiny black and dumb.
Rat Kiley was crying. He tried to say something, but them
cradled his rifle and went off by himself.
The rest of us stood in a ragged circle around the baby buffalo.
For a long time no one spoke. We had witnessed some- thing
essential, something brand-new and profound, a piece of the
world so startling there was not yet a word for it.
Somebody kicked the baby buffalo.
It was still alive, though just barely, just in the eyes. Amazing,
Dave Jensen said. My whole life, I never seen anything like it.
[...] Never? Not hardly. Not once.
Kiowa and Mitchell Sanders picked up the baby buffalo. They
hauled it across the open square, hoisted it up, and dumped it in
the village well.
Afterward, we sat waiting for Rat to get himself together.
Amazing, Dave Jensen kept saying. A new wrinkle. I never
seen it before.
Mitchell Sanders took out his yo-yo. Well, thats Nam, he said.
Garden of Evil. Over here, man, every sins ret fresh and
original.

How do you generalize?

War is hell, but thats not the half of it, because war is mystery
and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness
and pity and despair and longing and love. War is nasty; war is
fun. War is thrilling; war is drudgery. War makes you a man; war
makes you dead.
The truths are contradictory. It can be argued, for instance, that
war is grotesque. But in truth war is also beauty. For all its
horror, you cant help but gape at the awful majesty of combat.
You stare out at tracer rounds unwinding through the dark like
brilliant red ribbons. You crouch in ambush as a cool, impassive
moon rises over the nighttime paddies. You admire the fluid
symmetries of troops on the move, the great sheets of metal-fire
streaming down from a gunship, the illumination rounds, the
white phosphorus, the purply orange glow of napalm, the
rockets red glare. Its not pretty, exactly. Its astonishing. It fills
the eye. It commands you. You hate it, yes, but your eyes do not.
Like a killer forest fire, like cancer under a microscope, any
battle or bombing raid or artillery barrage has the aesthetic purity
of absolute moral indifference - a powerful, implacable beauty and a true war story will tell the truth about this, though the truth
is ugly.
To generalize about war is like generalizing about peace. Almost
everything is true. Almost nothing is true. Though its odd,
youre never more alive than when youre almost dead. You
recognize whats valuable. Freshly, as if for the first time, you
love whats best in yourself and in the world, all that might be
lost. At the hour of dusk you sit at your foxhole and look out on a
wide river turning pinkish red, and at the mountains beyond, and
although in the morning you must cross the river and go into the
mountains and do terrible things and maybe die, even so, you
find yourself studying the fine colors on the river, you feel
wonder and awe at the setting of the sun, and you are filled with
a hard, aching love for how the world could be and always
should be, but now is not.
Mitchell Sanders was right. For the common soldier, at least, war
has the feel - the spiritual texture - of a great ghostly fog, thick
and permanent. There is no clarity. Everything swirls. The old
rules are no longer binding, the old truths no longer true. Right
spills over into wrong. Order blends into chaos, hate into love,
ugliness into beauty, law into anarchy, civility into savagery. The
vapors suck you in. You cant tell where you are, or why youre
there, and the only certainty is absolute ambiguity.
In war you lose your sense of the definite, hence your sense of
truth itself, and therefore its safe to say that in a true war story
nothing is absolutely true.

Often in a true war story there is not even a point, or else the
point doesnt hit you until, say, twenty years later, in your sleep,
and you wake up and shake your wife and start telling the story
to her, except when you get to the end youve forgotten the point
again. And then for a long time you lie there watching the story
happen in your head. You listen to your wifes breathing. The
wars over. You close your eyes. You smile and think, Christ,
whats the point?

This one wakes me up.

In the mountains that day, I watched Lemon turn sideways. He

laughed and said something to Rat Kiley. Then he took a funny
half step, moving from shade into bright sunlight, and the boobytrapped artillery round blew him into a tree. The parts were just
hanging there, so Dave Jensen and I were ordered to shinny up
and peel him off. I remember the white bone of an arm. I
remember pieces of skin and something wet and yellow. The
gore was horrible, and stays with me. But what wakes me up
twenty years later is Dave Jensen singing Lemon Tree as we
threw down the parts.

You can tell a true war story by the questions you ask. Somebody
tells a story, lets say, and afterward you ask, Is it true? and if
the answer matters, youve got your answer.
For example, weve all heard this one. Four guys go down a trail.
A grenade sails out. One guy jumps on it and takes the blast and
saves his three buddies.
Is it true?
The answer matters.
Youd feel cheated if it never happened. Without the grounding
reality, its just a trite bit of puffery, pure Hollywood, untrue in
the way all such stories are untrue. Yet even if it did happen - and
maybe it did, anythings possible even then you know it cant be
true, because a true war story does not depend upon that kind of
truth. Absolute occurrence is irrelevant. A thing may happen and
be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the
truth. For example: Four guys go down a trail. A grenade sails
out. One guy jumps on it and takes the blast, but its a killer
grenade and everybody dies anyway. Before they die, though,
one of the dead guys says, The fuck you do that for? and the
jumper says, Story of my life, man, and the other guy starts to
smile but hes dead.
Thats a true story that never happened.

Twenty years later, I can still see the sunlight on Curt Lemons
face. I can see him turning, looking back at Rat Kiley, then he
laughed and took that curious half step from shade into sunlight,
his face brown and shining, and when his foot touched down, in
that instant, he mustve thought it was the sunlight that was
killing him. It was not the sunlight. It was a rigged 105 round.
But if I could ever get the story right, how the sun seemed to
gather around him and pick him up and lift him into that tree, if I
could somehow recreate the fatal whiteness of that light, the
quick glare, the obvious cause and effect, then you would believe
the last thing Curt Lemon believed, which for him mustve been
the final truth. Sunlight was killing him.

Now and then, when I tell this story, someone will come up to
me afterward and say she liked it. Its always a woman. Usually
its an older woman of kindly temperament and humane politics.
Shell explain that as a rule she hates war stories; she cant
understand why people want to wallow in all the blood and gore.
But this one she liked. The poor baby buffalo, it made her sad.

Sometimes, even, there are little tears. What I should do, shell
say, is put it all behind me.
Find new stories to tell.
I wont say it but Ill think it.
Ill picture Rat Kileys face, his grief, and Ill think, You dumb
cooze.
Because she wasnt listening.
It wasnt a war story. It was a love story.
But you cant say that. All you can do is tell it one more time,
patiently, adding and subtracting, making up a few things to get
at the real truth. No Mitchell Sanders, you tell her. No Curt
Lemon, no Rat Kiley. No baby buffalo. No trail junction. No
baby buffalo. Its all made up. Beginning to end. Every goddamn
detail - the mountains and the river and especially that poor
dumb baby buffalo. None of it happened. None of it. And even if
it did happen, it didnt happen in the mountains, it happened in
this little village on the Batangan Peninsula, and it was raining
like crazy, and one night a guy named Stink Harris woke up
screaming with a leech on his tongue. You can tell a true war
story if you just keep on telling it. And in the end, of course, a
true war story is never about war. Its about sunlight. Its about
the special way that dawn spreads out on a river when you know
you must cross that river and march into the mountains and do
things you are afraid to do. Its about love and memory. Its about
sorrow.
Its about sisters who never write back and people who never
listen.
[TIM OBRIEN, The Things They Carried, New York 1990,
pp.84-91]

Writing Vietnam
Tim OBrien, Presidents Lecture, 21 April 1999
The Brown University Department of English and Creative
Writing Program hosted a conference on Writing Vietnam
from April 21 to April 23, 1999.
[]
Tim OBrien: Thank you. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you, its a pleasure to be here tonight. Ive got a really bad
cold-both of my ears are stopped up; I can barely hear my own
voice. Ive got people in the audience kind of going like this and
like this (gestures with hands) to kind of modulate my volume.
When I began preparing this little talk, I was very quickly
reminded that one of the reasons I became a fiction writer is I
dont know anything. I dont mean this in a falsely humble sense.
I mean, quite literally, that I have very little to offer you in the
way of abstraction or generalization; the sort of thing that can be
communicated in a Presidents Lecture. Im not a literary
historian, Im not a critic, Im not a teacher. I spend my days, and
a good many of my nights, writing stories. And I dont devote a
lot of time or a lot of energy worrying about the hows or the
whys of it all, instead taking a kind of lazy mans conviction in
the belief that stories require no justification; they just are. Its a

conviction, too, I suppose, that abstraction and generalization are

precisely the reverse of what I do as a storyteller. Abstraction
may make your head believe, but a good story, well told, will
also make your kidneys believe, and your scalp and your tear
ducts, your heart, and your stomach, the whole human being. In
any case, after, I dont know, twenty aborted attempts to
compose a lecture for tonight, I finally gave it up, and decided to
spend my time with you doing what I do best, which is to tell
stories. I did, however, save a few nuggets from my original
efforts at a lecture. I just want to share them with you; itll only
take about four seconds:
Number one: writing never gets easier, it gets harder. You cant
repeat yourself. Unlike, say, a professional surgeon, you cannot
perform precisely the same operation with the same protocol in
case after case, and even for a surgeon, this would be risky, if
ones first patient happened to end up in a mortuary. Number 2:
use active verbs. Avoid ridiculous similes. For example: do not
write, her neck was like a swans, long and graceful. Instead
write, she honked. Three: avoid unintentional puns. Do not
write, she came in a Jeep. Four (I did that in the Atlantic
monthly, believe it or not): Four: avoid alliteration. Do not write,
quote, The red, rollicking river of his tongue rubbed me the
wrong way. Instead write, He kissed me with conviction, or,
perhaps, more simply, He kissed me. I gagged. Finally, as my
last salvageable little jewel, I thought it might be helpful to begin
by stating the obvious, or what should be obvious, a writer must,
above all, write. Joseph Conrad, in a letter to a friend, describes
his daily routine: I sit down religiously every morning. I sit
down for eight hours every day, and the sitting down is all. Note
Conrad says he sits down to write every day. Saturdays, Sundays,
religiously, he says. Beyond anything, it seems to me, a writer
performs this sitting-down act primarily in search of those rare,
very intense moments of artistic pleasure that are as real in their
way as the pleasures that can come from any other sourcethe
rush of endorphins, for instance, that accompanies the making of
a nice little bit of dialogue. And this isnt to say that writing isnt
painfuland it is, most of the timebut at the same time, there
is no pleasure without the pain. As much as writing hurts, it
carries with it, at times, content, satisfaction, which, in part, I
think, is what Conrad is getting at when he says, The sitting
down is all. In my own case, I get up at about six-thirty, seven
oclock every day, try to be at work by eight, work until about
one oclock in the afternoon, work out for a couple of hours -.
Uh, lifting weights is my hobby, but even when Im doing that,
Im still writing in my head, going over a bit of dialogue, kind of
mumbling aloud, or trying to come up with just that right word
thats been eluding me during the morning hours. Take shower,
go back to work, and write until about six oclock at night. I
work on Christmas, I work at New Years, my birthday, my
girlfriends birthdayits all I do. And yet, as monotonous as it
might sound to you, it gives me great, great pleasure.
Now, what I thought I -. Thats sort of the end of the little
prepared thing Id done. What I want to do with you now is to do
is to tell you, basically, two stories. Uh, the pair of stories are
kind of wedded together by the common theme, that I hope will
sort of soak through by osmosis. I grew up, as President [E.
Gordon] Gee said, in a small prairie town in southern Minnesota,
population, what, nine thousand or so? If you look in a dictionary
under the word boring, you will find a little pen-and-ink
illustration of Worthington, Minnesota, where I grew up. On one
side of town, of the highway coming into town, youll see
soybeans, on the other side of the highway, fields of corn. Its a
place that gives new meaning to the word flat. The town, for
reasons unknown, took pride, and to this day still takes pride, in
calling itself The Turkey Capital of the World. Uh, why they

took pride in this Im not quite sure. Every September in my

home town, on September fifteenth there is an event called
Turkey Day. And what Turkey Day consists of is the farmers
will put their turkeys in their trucks, uh, drive them into town,
dump them in front of the Esso gas station on one end of Main
Street, and then theyll herd the turkeys up Main Street, and we,
the citizens of Worthington, will all sit on the curbs and watch
the turkeys go by (laughs). And then wed go home. Thats our
big day! Well, you can imagine what the rest of the days are like.
Imagine yourself as a nine year old, ten year old kid, growing up
in this godforsaken place; a place, by the way thats no better and
no worse than any town like it across this country of ours; a town
full of chatty housewives and holier than thou ministers, and the
Kiwanis boys with their, you know, their white belts and their
white shoes, and the country club set, a town that congratulates
itself, day after day, on its own ignorance of the world: a town
that got us into Vietnam. Uh, the people in that town sent me to
that war, you know, couldnt spell the word Hanoi if you
spotted them three vowels. They couldnt do it. In any case, they
sent mewell, again, imagine yourself as a nine year old, in my
case, boy, growing up in this place. What do you do to escape it?
Well, one way to escape it, I found, was through books and
through reading, and I spent a great deal of my youth in the
Nobles County Library, on Fourth Street in Worthington,
reading books like, you know, Huckleberry Finn, and Tom
Sawyer, but also stuff that was essentially crap: books like The
Hardy Boys, as an example, for which, you know, the avenue
towards literature really doesnt matter much, as long as you like
reading, I suppose. It matters later. Then it didnt.
I spent most of my summers as a kid playing a crappy shortstop
for the Ben Franklin-store Little League teamcouldnt field,
couldnt hit, couldnt run, couldnt throwotherwise, a pretty
good shortstop. I remember coming off of Little League practice
one afternoon in July. It probably was nineteen fifty-eight, a
particularly disastrous, even catastrophic day on the, on the
baseball field, and going into the library-it was one of these little
Carnegie libraries that dot small-town America, a place that, if I
were to close my eyes right now, I couldI would be there. I
could see the ceiling fan spinning as youre walking in, and the
smell of Johnsons paste wax on the floor, and those smells of
library smells, of paper and books and ink and glue. A kind of,
the atmosphere was a kind of place that, as you enter it, instantly
makes your bowels kind of relax. You know the feeling, dont
you? Kind of peaceful, at-home feeling. Well, on this day, I
found a book calledit was as instrumental in my becoming a
writer as, say, Marquez or Faulknerthe book was entitled
Larry of the Little League. I read this book in, what, a half an
hour or so, but what a half an hour! This kid Larry could do
everything I couldnt do: he could field, hit, run, and throw. I
finished the book, marched over to the librarian, asked for a pad
of paper and a pen, which she gave to me, went back to my desk,
and over the course of the next hour and a half, at age nine,
possibly ten, composed the first novel of my life, or what I
thought of as a novel. The title was Timmy of the Little
League, essentially a rip-off of Larry. ItI remember on the
my mom and dad, I think, still have this aborted effortI
remember on page ten or so of thisit was hand-written, in big
handwriting, but on page ten or so, uh, the Worthington Ben
Franklin team won the Worthington, uh, Little League, you
know, championship. And I, in the character of Timmy, got the
game-winning hit. On page twenty or so, the team went up to
Minneapolis-St. Paul Little League championship, where the
Worthington Ben Franklin team defeated a team from Edina, this
kind of ritzy-ditzy, rich peoples suburbyou guys would fit in
therea place we really despised, and again, the game-winning

hit was by little Timmy, and at the end of the book, on page thirty
or whatever it was, when I called it????, the team went to
Williamsport, Pennsylvania, where they defeated Taiwan, like,
eighty to nothing, and again, the game-winning hit was mine.
Well, I tell you this story for a reason; the reason being that
writers often forget or neglect to talk about those sources that
have very little to do with, you know the Shakespeares, andall
of which is important, I dont mean to denigrate that for an
instant, but of equal importance in some ways is that experience
in childhood, a source of loneliness and frustration I felt growing
up in this town, escape through books, and a discovery of writing
through a book like Larry of the Little League. I learned other
practical lessons, I might add, in writing that book, that I dont
often talk about --. I certainly dont talk about them in
interviews, but among them being that I was writing in that book
the story, not of what was, the world I lived in, but the story of
what could have been or should have been, which is what fiction
is all about. And I could have been a good shortstop, I should
have beenI wasnt. But in that book I became another person,
assumed a new identity, and lived in another world, the world of
success, in this case; a world outside of Worthington, Minnesota,
and many years lateruh, what, twenty or something like that
I wrote a novel called Going After Cacciato, my sort of first
successful book, that the premise of which was essentially that of
Timmy of the Little League- a book about a soldier walking
away from Vietnam, heading for Paris. Uh, I didnt do it, but I
could have, and more importantly, I should have, because, you
know, I was so opposed to that war. Whats to stop me in the
could-have part? You know, Ive got the weapon, the water, the
rationsthe weapon to get more water and rations andit cant
be any more dangerous than Vietnam, just walking over those
mountains, and heading through Thailand, and ending up in
Paris.
As a fiction writer, I do not write just about the world we live in,
but I also write about the world we ought to live in, and could,
which is a world of imagination. I grew up, I left Worthington,
went to college at a place called Macalaster College in St. Paul,
Minnesota, and during my four years in college, the Vietnam War
began more and more raising its head. The war was escalating
rapidly, and I spent my four years in Macalaster doing two things
sort of simultaneously, and they were contradictory things. One
was kind of trying to ignore it all, hoping it would go away, that
it wouldnt capture me as a person. I had kind of a smug attitude
about it all, thinking, well, Im a good student, and smart, and
they wont take me as a soldier, I really believed that it was
impossible. But by the time I became a senior I began to realize
that it was more and more possible. I rang some doorbells for
Gene McCarthy, running as a peace candidate. Uh, I was student
body president, tried to use that as a, you know, in a minor kind
of way, as a way of showing my opposition to the war. Stood in
peace vigils on campusI graduated in May of nineteen sixtyeight, which now seems a lifetime ago, returned to Worthington
for the summer. I remember coming off the golf course in an
afternoon in mid-June and going to the mailbox, and finding in
the mailbox my draft notice. I took it into the kitchen where my
mother and father were having lunch, and I dropped it on the
table. My father looked at it, and my mom looked at it, and I
looked at it, and there was an absolute silence in that kitchen.
They knew about my feelings toward the war, how much I
despised it, but they also knew I was a child of Worthington, this
place, this Turkey Capital place I just told you about. My father
had been a sailor in World War Two; my mother was a Wave,
you know, a kind of Navy woman. Uh, there was a tradition of
service to country in my family.

Well, anyway, a long time passed in that kitchen; it might have

been a half an hour, when no one spoke. My mother fiddled at
the stove, and my dad would you know, just sort of ate his soup,
and, uh, finally he looked up at me and said, What are you
going to do? And I said, I dont know. Wait. Which was what
I did for the rest of the summer of nineteen sixty-eight. I took a
job in a meat-packing plant in my hometown, where I worked on
an assembly line eight hours a day, or more properly, a
disassembly line. It was a pig factory. The hogs were butchered
in one part of the plant, they were strung up by their hind hocks,
on a kind of high conveyer belt, and as they came by, my job
was, I held ait looked like a machine gunit was a thing that
was this big, it weighed maybe eighty pounds, and it was
suspended from the ceiling by a heavy rubber cord strong
enough to actually hold it, but it had some give to it, you could
move this thing around. And as the hogs came by, the heads had
been cut off, theyd been split open down the belly and pried
open, so the blood had all congealed in the neck cavitythey
were upside downand my job was to get rid of the blood clots,
essentially, these kind of big, grapefruit-sized clots of blood. And
to do this, Id take this machine which had a roller brush on one
end and a trigger on this end, and Id put the roller brush into the
pigs, uh, neck cavity, pull the trigger, the brush would spin,
water would come out, and these clots of blood would, uh, would
dissolve into kind of a fine red mist. I spent the summer,
essentially, breathing pig blood. Not a nice job. And especially
not a nice job when one has a draft notice tucked away in a back
pocket.
My dreams, obviously, were dreams of slaughter that summer
blood dreams. On top of everything else, I might add, I smelled
like a pork chop. You couldnt get that pig factory smell out of
your skin and your hair. You know, youd shower at the plant and
then again at home, but you really did smell like bacon or a pork
chop as youd spend your nights, you know, cruising around this
small town in your fathers car, stopping at the A&W for a root
beer, and staring at the town lake, wondering whats going to
become of me when the summer is over. Well, Ive told this story
before, and Ive written about it in The Things They Carried, as
some of you know, that read it. But parts of the story are hard to
tell, and now Im at one of those points. Near the end of the
summer, something happened to me that, to this day, I dont fully
understand. One day, at a pig line, as I was pulling this trigger,
something exploded in my stomach. It felt like a water balloon
that popped open inside of me. It was a leaky, gaseous, watery
feelinga feeling of, uh, real despair. I nearly began crying. I
immediately put this gun down, walked out of the plant without
taking a shower, got in my dads car, drove home, uh, went in the
house, and just stood in that kitchen, the kitchen I told you about,
lookingmy mom and dad werent home, I dont know where
they were that afternoon. Uh, I went down into the basement
where my room was, and I packed a bag, filled it up with
clothingI had a passport from a trip to Europe the previous
summer. I got back in my moms car, and took off.
For those of you who dont know the geography, Minnesota is on
the Canadian border, and eight hours later, after a drive I
essentially forget, a blurry drive, just pure velocity, I found
myself in a place called International Falls, Minnesota, up on the
Minnesota-Canadian border. I hadnt planned any of this-I had
sort of half-daydreamed about it, but never seriously. By that
time it was close to midnight; I spent the night in the car, uh, in
a-a closed-down gas station-very --. It was a sleepless night. In
the morning, as dawn began to break, I got-I started the car, and I
began driving east, along the Rainy River, which is a river that
physically separates, uh, Minnesota from Canada. Its not just a
river: its as wide as a lake, in parts. Its a big river. Um, I was

looking for a way across, you know, a bridge. Within a half an

hour or so, I came across a closed-down, uh, resort along the
river, a place called the Tip-Top Lodge. It wasnt really a lodge:
it was a sort of-ten yellow cabins along the river. Tourist season
was over by then, so the place was abandoned, but I stopped
anyway, thinking, well, Ill think it over for one last night before
I walk away from my own life and from the world I knew. I went
up to the main building and knocked on the door. A little man
came to the door. He was really a small guy, he was like a foot
tall. I mean he was really a tiny little guy. He was dressed all in,
all in brown, you know, the kind of north woods lookbrown
shirt and brown pantsbrown everything. Uh, for the first time
in my life I could actually look down at somebody-I remember
looking down at the guy, and he looking up at me, and he said,
What do you want? And I said, A place to stay. He
introduced himself to me; his name was Elroy Berdahl. The man
is the hero of my life. If, uh, heroes comecome in small
packages, this guy did. He took one look at me and I know that
instantly he knew that heres a kid in deep trouble. Uh, he was no
dummy. He knew there was a war on, he knew this was the
Canadian border, he could see how old I was, he could see the
terror in my eyes, Im sure. He said, No problem. He gave me
a key, and walked me to one of his little cabins, and said to me,
I hope you like fish, and I said, Yeah.
Well, I spent the next six days with old Elroy Berdahl on the
Rainy River, trying to decide what to do with my, you know, my
life. On the one hand, I did oppose the war. It seemed to me that
certain blood was being shed for uncertain reasonsthat is to
say, the reasons for the war were all under dispute. It was a time
when Hawks were at the throats of Doves, when smart people in
pinstripes couldnt make their minds up about the rectitude of the
war. You know, smart people were saying the war was right;
smart people were saying its dead wrong, and where was the
truth in all this swirling ambiguity? Uh, I opposed it, but on the
other hand, I was a child of Worthington, Minnesota. I didnt
know everything. Uh, I didnt know much about the history of
Vietnam, the politics of it allmaybe I was mistaken. Beyond
that, I felt drawn by America itself, even by this little shitty town
that I told you about. I felt drawn to it because, as bad it was, it
was mine, and I didnt want to leave it, and I didnt want to leave
America. I felt like I was one of those pigs that had been pried
open, pulled two different wayspart of me being pulled toward
the war; part of me being pulled toward Canada. And I was, hell,
I was your age! And thats a tough thing to do when youre that
old, to decide to walk away from your whole history.
Well, during those six days at the Tip-Top Lodge, what do I tell
you? They were as important as anything that later happened in
Vietnam. They were much more traumatic than anything that
happened in VietnamI was wounded, and I saw death all
around me. But those six days at the Tip-Top lodge were a lot
worse. It was a poignant decision that I cant, uh, even begin
here to describe for you, except as a storyteller. I remember old
Ellroy watching me all the time during these six dayshe was a
very quiet guy. As I said, he knew something was wrong, but he
was the sort of person who would never talk about it or ask about
it. I mean, he was the kind of guy who, if you were to walk into a
bar with two heads, and old Ellroys sitting there, he would talk
about everything except that extra head. Hed talk about the
weather, and, you know, and Lutheranism, but not the extra head.
Thats the kind of Midwestern, even Minnesotan, way of dealing
with things like this. Uh, but he saw some strange behavior on
my part. I remember one afternoon we were out behind thehis
lodge. He was showing me how to split wood. And I began
sweating-I just couldnt shut the sweat off; I just was like a
spigot had been turned on inside me, just full of it. One night I

vomited at his table. Not out ofit wasnt the fish; it was a
spiritual sickness inside of me. I remember lying awake at night,
full of very peculiar hallucinationsI mean , it wasnt, it wasnt
hallucination, really, but the kind of thoughts you have when
youre suffering from the flu, or youre really sick. Id imagine
being chased through the Canadian woods by the Royal
Canadian Mounted Police, and dogs barking, and spotlights on
mepeople even in my hometown yelling deserter, sissy,
cowardthings like this.
Well, near the end of my stay on the sixth and last day there,
Ellroy did a thing that, in a way, made me into a writer, as much
as, you know, Larry of the Little League. He said to me, uh,
Lets get in the boat. Well go fishing. So we got into this, you
know, little twelve foot boat of his, and we went across to the
Canadian side, and he stopped the boat, maybe, I dont know,
fifteen yards or so, from the Canadian, you know, where the
wilderness was, and he tossed his line in and started fishing. I
was in the front of the boat, in the bow, and he was in the back,
where the engine was, and I can now, again like that library, I can
feel myself there, bobbing in that slate-gray water, fifteen yards
from Canada. It was as close to me as the third row here, fourth
row, I could see the berries on the bushes and the blackbirds and
stones, my coming future. I could have done it, I could have
jumped out of that boat, started swimming for my life. So time
went by; again, old Ellroy just said nothing, just let me bob there.
I think he knew what he was doing. He was bringing me face to
face with it all, and wanted to kind of be there for me the way
God is there for us, you knownot really present, but sort of
over our shoulder somewhere, whatever the stand-in for God
might be for you, like a conscience bearing witness, and just
here. Afternot long, a couple of minutesI started crying. It
wasnt loud, just kind of like the chest-chokes, when youre
crying, but youre trying not to, and even then, he said nothing,
not a word. After, what, twenty minutes or so, he reeled his line
in, said Aint bitin. Turned on the engine, and took me back.
Well, after we got back to the Minnesota shore, I went back to
my cabin, and I knew it was all over.
What I was crying about, you see, waswas not self-pity. I was
crying with the knowledge that Id be going to Vietnam, that I
was essentially a coward, that I couldnt do the right thing, I
couldnt go to Canada. Given what I believed, anyway, the right
thing would have been to follow your conscience, and I couldnt
do it. Why, to this day, Im not sure, I can speculate it. Some of it
had to do with raw embarrassment, a fear of blushing, a fear of
some old farmer in my town saying to another farmer, Did you
hear what the OBrien kid did? The sissy went to Canada. And
imagining my mom and dad sitting in the next booth over,
overhearing this, you know, and imagining their eyes colliding
and bouncing away, and-uh, I was afraid of embarrassment. Men
died in Vietnam, by the way, out of the same fear-you know, not
out of nobility or patriotism; they were just af-they charged
bunkers and machine gun nests, just because they would be
embarrassed not to, later on, in front of their buddies. Not a
noble motive for human behavior, but I tell you one thing, one
youd better think about in your lives, that sometimes doing the
hard thing is also doing the embarrassing thing, and when that
moment strikes, it hits you hard. I didnt see Ellroy again. I got
up the next morning, and I went to, you know, his little lodge
thing, and I knocked on the door, and he wasnt there. I could see
right way he was gone, his pickup was gone. I left a little note for
him, saying thank you. Uh, I got in my-the car, and I drove
north-or drove south, rather, out of the pine forest, down to the
prairies of Southern Minnesota. Within two weeks I was in the
Army, and about four months after that in Vietnam.

Now, what I have told you is, is a war story. War stories arent
always about war, per se. They arent about bombs and bullets
and military maneuvers. They arent about tactics, they arent
about foxholes and canteens. War stories, like any good story, is
finally about the human heart. About the choices we make, or fail
to make. The forfeitures in our lives. Stories are to console and to
inspire and to help us heal. Stories are for those late hours in the
night when you cant remember how you got from where you
were to where you are. And a good war story, in my opinion, is a
story that strikes you as important, not for war content, but for its
heart content. The second reason I told you this story is that none
of its true. Or very little of it. Itsinvented. No Ellroy, no TipTop Lodge, no pig factory, Im trying to think of what else. Ive
never been to the Rainy River in my life. Uh, not even close to it.
I havent been within two hundred miles of the place. No boats.
But, although the story I invented, its still true, which is what
fiction is all about. Uh, if I were to tell you the literal truth of
what happened to me in the summer of nineteen sixty-eight, all I
could tell you was that I played golf, and I worried about getting
drafted. But thats a crappy story. Isnt it? It doesntit doesnt
open any door to what I was feeling in the summer of nineteen
sixty-eight. Thats what fiction is for. Its for getting at the truth
when the truth isnt sufficient for the truth. The pig factory is
there for those dreams of slaughterthey were quite real inside
of me. And in my own heart, I was certainly on that rainy river,
trying to decide what to do, whether to go to the war or not go to
it, say no or say yes. The story is still true, even though on one
level its not; its made up.
The point was not to pull a fast one, any more than, you know,
Mark Twain is trying to pull a fast one in Huckleberry Finn.
Stories make you believe, thats what dialogue is for, thats what
plot is for, and character. Its there to make you believe it as
youre reading it. You dont read Huckleberry Finn saying This
never happened, this never happened, this never happened, this
never happened- I mean, you dont do that, or go to The
Godfather and say, you know, no horse head. I mean, you dont
think that way; you believe. A verisimilitude and truth in that
literal sense, to me, is ultimately irrelevant. What is relevant is
the human heart.
All right, I want to finish up here with just a little-a short little
snatch from something that is a little more based on-Im not
going to say based on-a little more out of the real world I lived
in, and then Ill take whatever questions you might have, just for,
you know, a brief time. This little thing, itll only take, like, two
minutes to read this, or five or something. When she was nine,
my daughter Kathleen asked me if Id ever killed anyone. She
knew about the war, she knew Id been a soldier. You keep
writing war stories, she said, so I guess you mustve killed
somebody. It was a difficult moment but I did what I thought
was right, which was to say, Of course not, and then to take her
onto my lap and hold her for a while. Someday, I hope, shell ask
again But here, now I want to pretend shes a grown-up. I want
to tell her exactly what happened, or what I remember
happening, and then I want to say to he that as a little girl she
was absolutely right. This is why I keep telling war stories:
He was a short slender young man of about twenty. I was afraid
of him-afraid of something-and as he passed me on the trail I
threw a grenade that exploded at his feet and killed him.
Or to go back:
Shortly after midnight we moved into the ambush site outside
My Khe. The whole platoon was there, spread out in the dense
brush along the trail, and for five hours nothing at all happened.

We were working in two-man teams-one man on guard while the

other slept, switching off every two hours-and I remember it was
still dark when Kiowa shook me awake for the final watch. The
night was foggy and hot. For the first few moments I felt lost, not
sure about directions, groping for my helmet and weapon. I
reached out and found three grenades and lined them up in front
of me; the pins had already been straightened for quick throwing.
And then for maybe half an hour I kneeled there and waited.
Very gradually, in tiny slivers, dawn began to break through the
fog, and from my position in the brush I could see ten or fifteen
meters up the trail. The mosquitoes were fierce. I remember
slapping at them, wondering if I should wake up Kiowa and go
get some repellent, then thinking it was a bad idea, then looking
up and seeing the young man come out of the morning fog. He
wore black clothing and rubber sandals and a gray ammunition
belt. His shoulders were slightly stooped, his head cocked to the
side as if listening for something. He seemed at ease. He carried
his weapon in one hand, muzzle down, moving without any
hurry up the center of the trail. There was no sound at allnone
that I can remember. In a way, it seemed, he was part of the
morning fog, or my own imagination, but there was also the
reality of what was happening in my stomach. I had already
pulled the pin on a grenade. I had come up to a crouch. It was
entirely automatic. I did not hate the young man; I did not see
him as the enemy; I did not ponder issues of morality or politics
or justice. I crouched and kept my head low. I tried to swallow
whatever was rising from my stomach, which tasted like
lemonade, something fruity and sour. I was terrified. There were
no thoughts about killing. The grenade was to make him go
away-just evaporate-and leaned back and felt my head go empty
and then felt it fill up again. I had already thrown the grenade
before telling myself to throw it. It was gone. The brush was
thick and I had to lob it high, not aiming, and I remember the
grenade seeming to freeze above me for an instant, as if a camera
had clicked, and I remember ducking down and holding my
breath and seeing little wisps of fog rise from the earth. The
grenade bounced once and rolled across the trail. I did not hear it,
but there mustve been a sound, because the young man dropped
his weapon and began to run, just two or three quick steps. Then
he looked down at the grenade, turned to his right, and tried to
cover his head but never did. It occurred to me then that he was
about to die. I wanted to warn him. The grenade made a popping
noisenot loud, not what youd expect. Just a pop, and there
was a puff of dust and smoke and the young man seemed to jerk
upward as if pulled by invisible wires. He fell on his back. His
rubber sandals had been blown off. He lay at the center of the
trail, his right leg bent beneath him, his one eye shut, his other
eye a huge star-shaped hole.
For me, it was not a matter of live or die. There was no real peril.
Almost certainly the young man would have passed me by. And
it will always be that way.
Later, I remember, Kiowa tried to tell me that the man wouldve
died anyway. He told me that it was a good kill, that I was a
soldier and this was a war, that I should shape up and stop
staring, that I should ask myself what the dead man wouldve
done if things were reversed.
But you see, none of it mattered. The words, or language, far too
complicated. All I could do was gape at the fact of the young
mans body.
Even now, three decades later, I havent finished sorting it out.
Sometimes I forgive myself, other times I dont. In the ordinary
hours of life I try not to think about it, but now and then, when
Im reading a newspaper or just sitting alone in a room, Ill look

up and see the young man coming out of the morning fog. Ill
watch him walk toward me, his shoulders slightly stooped, his
head cocked to the side, and hell pass within a few yards of me
and suddenly smile at some secret thought and then continue up
the trail to where it bends back into the fog.
Thanks.

[...]

About Tim OBrien: A Profile

by Don Lee
The good news is that Tim OBrien is writing fiction again.
In 1994, after his sixth book, In the Lake of the Woods, was
released, he distressed his many fans by vowing to stop writing
fiction for the foreseeable future. Then, a few months later, he
published a now famous essay in The New York Times Magazine
thatdescribed his return to Vietnam. With his girlfriend at the
time, he visited My Lai, where on March 16, 1968, a company of
American soldiers massacred an entire village in a matter of four
hourswomen, children, old men, chickens, dogs. The body
count ranged from two to five hundred.
From 196970, OBrien had been an infantryman in the Quang
Ngai province, and his platoon had been stationed in My Lai a
year after the massacre. Then and now, he could feel the evil in
the place, the wickedness that soaks into your blood and heats
up and starts to sizzle. In the Times cover story, OBrien
elaborated on the complex associations of love and insanity that
can boil over during a war, almost inevitably exploding into
atrocity. But he went a step further, drawing parallels between
the guilt, depression, terror, shame that infected both his
Vietnam experience and his present life, especially now that his
girlfriend had left him. Chillingly, he admitted, Last night
suicide was on my mind. Not whether, but how. This time, his
fans were not the only ones concerned. Friends and strangers
alike called him: shrinks to sign him up, clergymen to save his
soul, people who thought he had disclosed way too much, others
who thought he had disclosed too little.
Today, OBrien has no regrets about publishing the article. He
considers it one of the best things he has ever written. I reread it
maybe once every two months, he says, just to remind myself
what writings for. I dont mean catharsis. I mean
communication. It was a hard thing to do. It saved my life, but it
was a fuck of a thing to print. After taking nine months off and
pulling his life back together, OBrien started another novel,
intrigued enough by the first page to write a second, propelled, as
always, by his fundamental faith in the power of storytelling.
Born in 1946, OBrien was raised in small-town Minnesota, his
father an insurance salesman, his mother an elementary school
teacher. As a child, OBrien was lonely, overweight, and a
professed dreamer, and he occupied himself by practicing
magic tricks. For a brief time, he contemplated being a writer,
inspired by some old clippings hed found of his fathers
personal accounts about fighting in Iwo Jima and Okinawa that
had been published in The New York Times during World War II.
When OBrien entered college, however, his aspirations turned
political. He was a political science major at Macalester, attended
peace vigils and war protests, and planned to join the State
Department to reform its policies. I thought we needed people

who were progressive and had the patience to try diplomacy

instead of dropping bombs on people.
He never imagined he would be drafted upon graduation and
actually sent to Vietnam. I was walking around in a dream and
repressing it all, he says, thinking something would save my
ass. Even getting on the plane for boot camp, I couldnt believe
any of it was happening to me, someone who hated Boy Scouts
and bugs and rifles. When he received his classificationnot as
a clerk, or a driver, or a cook, but as an infantrymanhe
seriously considered deserting to Canada. He now thinks it was
an act of cowardice not to, particularly since he was against the
war, but in 1969, as a twenty-two-year-old, he had feared the
disapproval of his family and friends, his townspeople and
country. He went to Vietnam and hated every minute of it, from
beginning to end.
When he came back to the States, he had a Purple Heart (he was
wounded by shrapnel from a hand grenade) and several
publishing credits. Much like his father, he had written personal
reports about the war that had made their way into Minnesota
newspapers, and while pursuing a doctorate at the Harvard
School of Government, OBrien expanded on the vignettes to
form a book, If I Die in Combat, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home.
He sent it first to Knopf, whose editors had high praise for the
book. Yet they were already publishing a book about Vietnam,
Dispatches by Michael Herr, and suggested that OBrien try the
editor Seymour Lawrence, who was in Boston. He called me at
my dormitory at Harvard, OBrien recalls. He said, Well,
were taking your book. Why dont you come over, Ill take you
to lunch. It was a big, drunken lunch at Trader Vics in the old
Statler Hilton, during the course of which we decided to fire my
agent. Sam said, Look, youre not going to get much money,
theres no way, might as well fire the guy. Why give him ten
percent?
If I Die in Combat was published in 1973, just as OBrien was
being hired as a national affairs reporter for The Washington
Post, where hed been an intern for two summers. I didnt know
the first thing about writing for a newspaper, but I learned fast,
says OBrien, who never took a writing workshop. The job
helped tremendously in terms of discipline, which, OBrien
confesses, was a problem for him until then. I learned the virtue
of tenacity.
After his one-year stint at the Post, OBrien simply wrote books.
In 1975, he published Northern Lights, about two brothersone
a war hero, the other a farm agent who stayed home in
Minnesotawho struggle to survive during a cross-country ski
trip. Going After Cacciato came out in 1978. In the novel, an
infantryman named Cacciato deserts, deciding to walk from
Southeast Asia to Paris for the peace talks. Paul Berlin is ordered
to capture Cacciato, and narrates an extended meditation on what
might have happened if Cacciato had made it all the way to
Paris. The novel won the National Book Award over John
Irvings The World According to Garp and John Cheevers
Stories.
The Nuclear Age, about a draft dodger turned uranium speculator
who is obsessed with the threat of nuclear holocaust, was
released in 1985, and then, in 1990, came The Things They
Carried, which was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the
National Book Critics Circle Award. The collection of
interrelated stories revolves around the men of Alpha Company,
an infantry platoon in Vietnam. The title story is a recitation of
the soldiers weapons and gear, the metaphorical mixing with the
mundane: they carried M-60s and C rations and Claymores, and
the common scent of cowardice barely restrained, the instinct to

run or freeze or hide, and in many respects this was the heaviest
burden of all, for it could never be put down, it required perfect
balance and perfect posture. A central motif in the book is the
process of storytelling itself, the way imagination and language
and memory can blur fact, and why story-truth is truer
sometimes than happening-truth.
In his latest novel, In the Lake of the Woods, which is now in
paperback, OBrien takes this question of how much we can
know about an event or a person one step further. John and
Kathy Wade are staying at a secluded lakeside cottage in
northern Minnesota. He has just lost a senatorial election by a
landslide, after the revelation that he was among the soldiers at
My Lai, a fact he has tried to conceal from everyoneincluding
his wife; even, pathologically, himselffor twenty years. A
week after their arrival at the lake, Wades wife disappears.
Perhaps she drowned, perhaps she ran away, perhaps Wade
murdered her. The mystery is never solved, and the lack of a
traditional ending has produced surprisingly vocal reactions from
readers.
I get calls from people, OBrien says. They ask questions, they
offer their own opinions about what happened, they want to
know, missing the point of the novel, that life often does not offer
solutions or resolutions, that it is impossible to know completely
what secrets lurk within people. As the anonymous narrator, who
has conducted a four-year investigation into the case, comments
in a footnote: Its human nature. We are fascinated, all of us, by
the implacable otherness of others. And we wish to penetrate by
hypothesis, by daydream, by scientific investigation those leaden
walls that encase the human spirit, that define it and guard it and
hold it forever inaccessible. (I love you, someone says, and
instantly we begin to wonderWell, how much?and when
the answer comesWith my whole heartwe then wonder
about the wholeness of a fickle heart.) Our lovers, our husbands,
our wives, our fathers, our godsthey are all beyond us.
OBrien feels strongly that In the Lake of the Woods is his best
book to date, but it took its toll on him. He is a meticulous, some
would say fanatical, craftsman. In general, he writes every day,
all day. He does practically nothing else. He lifts weights,
watches baseball, occasionally plays golf, and reads at night, but
rarely ventures from his two-bedroom apartment near Harvard
Square. Hell eke out the words, then discard them. It took him
an entire year to finish nine pages of The Nuclear Age, although
he tossed out thousands.
Always, it will begin with an image, a picture of a human being
doing something. With Going After Cacciato, it was the image
of a guy walking to Paris: I could see his back. With The
Things They Carried, it was remembering all this crap I had on
me and inside me, the physical and spiritual burdens. With In
the Lake of the Woods, it was a man and a woman lying on a
porch in the fog along a lake: I didnt know where the lake was
at the time. I knew they were unhappy. I could feel the
unhappiness in the fog. I didnt know what the unhappiness was
about. It required me to write the next page. A lost election. Why
was the election lost? My Lai. All of this was discovered after
two years of writing.
But when OBrien finished In the Lake of the Woods, he stopped
writing for the first time in over twenty years. I was burned
out, he says. The novel went to the bottom of the well for me. I
felt emotionally drained. I didnt see the point of writing
anymore. In retrospect, the respite was good for him. He likens
the hiatus to Michael Jordans brief leave from basketball: He
may not be a better basketball player when he comes back, but
hes going to be a better person.

Of course, the road back has not been easy, particularly with the
loss of his editor and good friend, Sam Lawrence, who died in
1993. Through the ups and downs of any writers career, he was
always there, with a new contract, and optimism. Another of his
virtues was that he didnt push. Sam didnt give a shit if you
missed a deadline. He wanted a good book, no matter how long it
took. For the moment, OBrien has yet to sign up with another
publisher for his novel in progress, which opens with two boys
building an airplane in their backyard. He prefers to avoid the
pressure. Maybe its Midwestern, he says. When I sign a
contract, I think I owe them X dollars of literature.
And in defiance of some editors and critics, who suggest he
should move on from Vietnam, he will in all likelihood continue
to write about the war. All writers revisit terrain. Shakespeare
did it with kings, and Conrad did it with the ocean, and Faulkner
did it with the South. Its an emotional and geographical terrain
thats given to us by life. Vietnam is there the way childhood is
for me. Theres a line from Michael Herr: Vietnams what we
had instead of happy childhoods. A funny, weird line, but theres
some truth in it.
Yet to categorize OBrien as merely a Vietnam War writer would
be ludicrously unfair and simplistic. Any close examination of
his books reveals there is something much more universal about
them. As much as they are war stories, they are also love stories.
That is why his readers are as apt to be female as male. I think
in every book Ive written, OBrien says, Ive had the twins of
love and evil. They intertwine and intermix. Theyll separate,
sometimes, yet theyre hooked the way valances are hooked
together. The emotions in war and in our ordinary lives are, if not
identical, damn similar.

Too Embarrassed Not to Kill

by Robert R. Harris
Only a handful of novels and short stories have managed to
clarify, in any lasting way, the meaning of the war in Vietnam for
America and for the soldiers who served there. With The
Things They Carried, Tim OBrien adds his second title to the
short list of essential fiction about Vietnam. As he did in his
novel Going After Cacciato (1978), which won a National
Book Award, he captures the wars pulsating rhythms and nerveracking dangers. But he goes much further. By moving beyond
the horror of the fighting to examine with sensitivity and insight
the nature of courage and fear, by questioning the role that
imagination plays in helping to form our memories and our own
versions of truth, he places The Things They Carried high up
on the list of best fiction about any war.
The Things They Carried is a collection of interrelated stories.
A few are unremittingly brutal; a couple are flawed two-page
sketches. The publisher calls the book a work of fiction, but in
no real sense can it be considered a novel. No matter. The stories
cohere. All deal with a single platoon, one of whose members is
a character named Tim OBrien. Some stories are about the
wartime experiences of this small group of grunts. Others are
about a 43-year-old writeragain, the fictional character Tim
OBrienremembering his platoons experiences and writing
war stories (and remembering writing stories) about them. This is
the kind of writing about writing that makes Tom Wolfe grumble.

It should not stop you from savoring a stunning performance.

The overall effect of these original tales is devastating.
As might be expected, there is a lot of gore in The Things They
Carriedlike the account of the soldier who ties a friends
puppy to a Claymore antipersonnel mine and squeezes the firing
device. And much of the powerful language cannot be quoted in
a family newspaper. But let Mr. OBrien explain why he could
not spare squeamish sensibilities: If you dont care for
obscenity, you dont care for the truth; if you dont care for the
truth, watch how you vote. Send guys to war, they come home
talking dirty.
In the title story, Mr. OBrien juxtaposes the mundane and the
deadly items that soldiers carry into battle. Can openers,
pocketknives, wristwatches, mosquito repellent, chewing gum,
candy, cigarettes, salt tablets, packets of Kool-Aid, matches,
sewing kits, C rations are humped by the G.I.s along with M16 assault rifles, M-60 machine guns, M-79 grenade launchers.
But the story is really about the other things the soldiers carry:
grief, terror, love, longing . . . shameful memories and, what
unifies all the stories, the common secret of cowardice. These
young men, Mr. OBrien tells us, carried the soldiers greatest
fear, which was the fear of blushing. Men killed, and died,
because they were embarrassed not to.
Embarrassment, the author reveals in On the Rainy River, is
why he, or rather the fictional version of himself, went to
Vietnam. He almost went to Canada instead. What stopped him,
ironically, was fear. All those eyes on me, he writes, and I
couldnt risk the embarrassment. . . . I couldnt endure the
mockery, or the disgrace, or the patriotic ridicule. . . . I was a
coward. I went to the war.
So just what is courage? What is cowardice? Mr. OBrien spends
much of the book carefully dissecting every nuance of the two
qualities. In several stories, he writes movingly of the death of
Kiowa, the best-loved member of the platoon. In Speaking of
Courage, Mr. OBrien tells us about Norman Bowker, the
platoon member who blames his own failure of nerve for
Kiowas death. Bowker had been braver than he ever thought
possible, but . . . he had not been so brave as he wanted to be. In
the following story, Notes (literally notes on the writing of
Speaking of Courage), Mr. OBriens fictional alter ego
informs the reader that Bowker committed suicide after coming
home from the war. This author also admits that he made up the
part about the failure of nerve that haunted Bowker. But its all
made up, of course. And in The Man I Killed, Mr. OBrien
imagines the life of an enemy soldier at whom the character Tim
OBrien tossed a grenade, only to confess later that it wasnt
Tim OBrien who killed the Vietnamese.
Are these simply tricks in the service of making good stories?
Hardly. Mr. OBrien strives to get beyond literal descriptions of
what these men went through and what they felt. He makes sense
of the unreality of the warmakes sense of why he has distorted
that unreality even further in his fictionby turning back to
explore the workings of the imagination, by probing his memory
of the terror and fearlessly confronting the way he has dealt with
it as both soldier and fiction writer. In doing all this, he not only
crystallizes the Vietnam experience for us, he exposes the nature
of all war stories.
The character Tim OBriens daughter asks him why he
continues to be obsessed by the Vietnam War and with writing
about it. By telling stories, he says, you objectify your own
experience. You separate it from yourself. You pin down certain
truths. In Good Form, he writes: I can look at things I never
looked at. I can attach faces to grief and love and pity and God. I
can be brave. I can make myself feel again. You come away
from this book understanding why there have been so many
novels about the Vietnam War, why so many of Mr. OBriens

fellow soldiers have turned to narrativereal and imaginedto

purge their memories, to appease the ghosts.
Is it fair to readers for Mr. OBrien to have blurred his own
identity as storyteller-soldier in these stories? A true war story
is never moral, he writes in How to Tell a True War Story. It
does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of
proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things
men have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it.
If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that
some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger
waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and
terrible lie. There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue.
As a first rule of thumb, therefore, you can tell a true war story
by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and
evil. Mr. OBrien cuts to the heart of writing about war. And by
subjecting his memory and imagination to such harsh scrutiny, he
seems to have reached a reconciliation, to have made his peace
or to have made up his peace.
Robert R. Harris is an editor of The Book Review.

The Vietnam in Me
by Tim OBrien

LZ [landing zone, R.A.] GATOR, VIETNAM,

FEBRUARY 1994Im home, but the house is gone. Not a
sandbag, not a nail or a scrap of wire.
On Gator, we used to say, the wind doesnt blow, it sucks.
Maybe thats what happenedthe wind sucked it all away. My
life, my virtue.
In February 1969, 25 years ago, I arrived as a young,
terrified pfc. on this lonely little hill in Quang Ngai Province.
Back then, the place seemed huge and imposing and permanent.
A forward firebase for the Fifth Battalion of the 46th Infantry,
198th Infantry Brigade, LZ Gator was home to 700 or 800
American soldiers, mostly grunts. I remember a tar helipad, a
mess hall, a medical station, mortar and artillery emplacements,
two volleyball courts, numerous barracks and offices and supply
depots and machine shops and entertainment clubs. Gator was
our castle. Not safe, exactly, but far preferable to the bush. No
land mines here. No paddies bubbling with machine-gun fire.
Maybe once a month, for three or four days at a time,
Alpha Company would return to Gator for stand-down, where
we took our comforts behind a perimeter of bunkers and
concertina wire. There were hot showers and hot meals, ice
chests packed with beer, glossy pinup girls, big, black Sony tape
decks booming We gotta get out of this place at decibels for
the deaf. Thirty or 40 acres of almost-America. With a little weed
and a lot of beer, we would spend the days of stand-down in flatout celebration, purely alive, taking pleasure in our own biology,
kidneys and livers and lungs and legs, all in their proper
alignments. We could breathe here. We could feel our fists
uncurl, the pressures approaching normal. The real war, it
seemed, was in another solar system. By day, wed fill sandbags
or pull bunker guard. In the evenings, there were outdoor movies
and sometimes live floor showspretty Korean girls breaking
our hearts in their spangled miniskirts and high leather boots
then afterward wed troop back to the Alpha barracks for some
letter writing or boozing or just a good nights sleep.

So much to remember. The time we filled a nasty

lieutenants canteen with mosquito repellent; the sounds of
choppers and artillery fire; the slow dread that began building as
word spread that in a day or two wed be heading back to the
bush. Pinkville, maybe. The Batangan Peninsula. Spooky, evil
places where the land itself could kill you.
Now I stand in this patch of weeds, looking down on what
used to be the old Alpha barracks. Amazing, really, what time
can do. Youd think there would be something left, some faint
imprint, but LZ (Landing Zone) Gator has been utterly and
forever erased from the earth. Nothing here but ghosts and wind.
At the foot of Gator, along Highway 1, the little hamlet of
Nuoc Man is going bonkers over our arrival here. As we turn and
walk down the hill, maybe 200 people trail along, gawking and
chattering, the children reaching out to touch our skin. Through
our interpreter, Mrs. Le Hoai Phuong, Im told that I am the first
American soldier to return to this place in the 24 years since
Gator was evacuated in 1970. In a strange way, the occasion has
the feel of a reunionhappy faces, much bowing. Me Wendy,
says a middle-aged woman. Another says, Flower. Wendy and
Flower: G.I. nicknames retrieved from a quarter-century ago.
An elderly woman, perhaps in her late 70s, tugs at my shirt
and says, My name Mama-san.
Dear God. We shouldve bombed these people with love.
CAMBRIDGE, MASS., JUNE 1994Last night suicide
was on my mind. Not whether, but how. Tonight it will be on my
mind again. Now its 4 A.M., June the 5th. The sleeping pills
have not worked. I sit in my underwear at this unblinking fool of
a computer and try to wrap words around a few horrid truths.
I returned to Vietnam with a woman whose name is Kate,
whom I adored and have since lost. Shes with another man,
seven blocks away. This I learned yesterday afternoon. My own
fault, Kate would say, and she would be mostly right. Not
entirely. In any case, these thoughts are probably too intimate,
too awkward and embarrassing for public discussion. But who
knows? Maybe a little blunt human truth will send you off to
church, or to confession, or inside yourself.
Not that it matters. For me, with one eye on these smooth
yellow pills, the world must be written about as it is or not
written about at all.
Z GATOR, FEBRUARY 1994By chance, Kate and I
have arrived in Nuoc Man on a day of annual commemoration, a
day when the graves of the local war dead are blessed and
repaired and decorated and wept over.
The village elders invite us to a feast, a picnic of sorts,
where we take seats before a low lacquered table at an outdoor
shrine. Children press up close, all around. The elders shoo them
away, but the shooing doesnt do much. Im getting nervous. The
food on display seems a bit exotic. Not to my taste. I look at
Kate, Kate looks at me. Number one chop-chop, an old woman
says, a wrinkled, gorgeous, protective, scarred, welcoming old
woman. Number one, she promises, and nudges Kate, and
smiles a heartbreaking betel-nut smile.
I choose something white. Fish, Im guessing. I have eaten
herring; I have enjoyed herring. This is not herring.
There are decisions to be made.
The elders bow and execute chewing motions. Do not
forget: our hosts are among the maimed and widowed and
orphaned, the bombed and rebombed, the recipients of white
phosphorus, the tenders of graves. Chew, they say, and by God I
chew.
Kate has the good fortune to find a Kleenex. Shes a pro.
She executes a polite wiping motion and its over for her. Eddie
Keating, the Times photographer whose pictures accompany this
text, tucks his portion between cheek and gum, where it remains
until the feast concludes. MeI imagine herring. I remember
Sunday afternoons as a boy, the Vikings on TV, my dad opening
up the crackers and creamed herring, passing it out at halftime.

Other flashes too. LZ Gators mortar rounds pounding this

innocent, impoverished, raped little village. Eight or nine corpses
piled not 50 yards from where we now sit in friendly union. I
prepare myself. Foul, for sure, but things come around. Nuoc
Man swallowed plenty.
THE SONG TRA HOTEL, QUANG NGAI CITY,
FEBRUARY 1994Its late in the evening. The air-conditioner
is at full Cuban power. Kates eyes sparkle, shes laughing.
Swallowed! she keeps saying.
In 1969, when I went to war, Kate was 3 years old.
Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, McNamara, Bunker, Rogers, Bundy,
Rusk, Abrams, Rostowfor her, these names are like the listings
on a foreign menu. Some she recognizes not at all, some she
recalls from books or old television clips. But she never tasted
the dishes. She does not know ice cream from Brussels sprouts.
Three years oldhow could she? No more than I could know the
Southern California of her own youth.
Still, it was Kate who insisted we come here. I was more
than reluctantI was petrified, I looked for excuses. Bad dreams
and so on. But Kates enthusiasm won me over; she wanted to
share in my past, the shapes of things, the smells and sunlight.
As it turns out, the sharing has gone both ways. In any
other circumstances, I would have returned to this country almost
purely as a veteran, caught up in memory, but Kates presence
has made me pay attention to the details of here and now, a
Vietnam that exists outside the old perimeter of war. She takes
delight in things alive: a chicken wired to someones bicycle, an
old womans enormous fingernails, an infant slung casually on
the hip of a tiny 7-year-old girl. Kate has the eyes and spirit of an
adventurer, wide open to the variety of the world, and these
qualities have pushed me toward some modest adventurism of
my own.
Now I watch her fiddle with the air-conditioner.
Swallowed! she keeps saying.
Later in the night, as on many other nights, we talk about
the war. I try to explainineptly, no doubtthat Vietnam was
more than terror. For me, at least, Vietnam was partly love. With
each step, each light-year of a second, a foot soldier is always
almost dead, or so it feels, and in such circumstances you cant
help but love. You love your mom and dad, the Vikings,
hamburgers on the grill, your pulse, your futureeverything that
might be lost or never come to be. Intimacy with death carries
with it a corresponding new intimacy with life. Jokes are funnier,
green is greener. You love the musty morning air. You love the
miracle of your own enduring capacity for love. You love your
friends in Alpha Companya kid named Chip, my buddy. He
wrote letters to my sister, I wrote letters to his sister. In the rear,
back at Gator, Chip and I would go our separate ways, by color,
both of us ashamed but knowing it had to be that way. In the
bush, though, nothing kept us apart. Black and White, we were
called. In May of 1969, Chip was blown high into a hedge of
bamboo. Many pieces. I loved the guy, he loved me. Im alive.
Hes dead. An old story, I guess.
CAMBRIDGE, JUNE 1994Its 5:25 in the morning,
June 7. I have just taken my first drug of the day, a prescription
drug, Oxazepam, which files the edge off anxiety. Thing is, Im
not anxious. Im slop. This is despair. This is a valance of horror
that Vietnam never approximated. If war is hell, what do we call
hopelessness?
I have not killed myself. That day, this day, maybe
tomorrow. Like Nam, it goes.
For some time, years in fact, I have been treated for
depression, $8,000 or $9,000 worth. Some of it has worked. Or
was working. I had called back to memorynot to memory,
exactly, but to significancesome pretty painful feelings of
rejection as a child. Chubby and friendless and lonely. I had
come to acknowledge, more or less, the dominant principle of
love in my life, how far I would go to get it, how terrified I was

of losing it. I have done bad things for love, bad things to stay
loved. Kate is one case. Vietnam is another. More than anything,
it was this desperate love craving that propelled me into a war I
considered mistaken, probably evil. In college, I stood in peace
vigils. I rang doorbells for Gene McCarthy, composed earnest
editorials for the school newspaper. But when the draft notice
arrived after graduation, the old demons went to work almost
instantly. I thought about Canada. I thought about jail. But in the
end I could not bear the prospect of rejection: by my family, my
country, my friends, my hometown. I would risk conscience and
rectitude before risking the loss of love.
I have written some of this before, but I must write it again.
I was a coward. I went to Vietnam.
MY LAI, QUANG NGAI PROVINCE, FEBRUARY 1994
Weird, but I know this place. Ive been here before. Literally,
but also in my nightmares.
One year after the massacre, Alpha Companys area of
operations included the village of My Lai 4, or so it was called
on American military maps. The Vietnamese call it Thuan Yen,
which belongs to a larger hamlet called Tu Cung, which in turn
belongs to an even larger parent village called Son My. But
names are finally irrelevant. I am just here.
Twenty-five years ago, knowing nothing of the homicides
committed by American troops on the morning of March 16,
1968, Alpha Company walked through and around this hamlet on
numerous occasions. Now, standing here with Kate, I cant
recognize much. The place blends in with all the other poor,
scary, beleaguered villes in this area we called Pinkville. Even
so, the feel of the place is as familiar as the old stucco house of
my childhood. The clay trails, the cow dung, the blank faces, the
unknowns and unknowables. There is the smell of sin here.
Smells of terror, too, and enduring sorrow.
What happened, briefly, was this. At approximately 7:30 on
the morning of March 16, 1968, a company of roughly 115
American soldiers were inserted by helicopter just outside the
village of My Lai. They met no resistance. No enemy. No
incoming fire. Still, for the next four hours, Charlie Company
killed whatever could be killed. They killed chickens. They
killed dogs and cattle. They killed people, too. Lots of people.
Women, infants, teen-agers, old men. The United States Armys
Criminal Investigation Division compiled a list of 343 fatalities
and an independent Army inquiry led by Lieut. Gen. William R.
Peers estimated that the death count may have exceeded 400. At
the Son My Memorial, a large tablet lists 504 names. According
to Col. William Wilson, one of the original Army investigators,
The crimes visited on the inhabitants of Son My Village
included individual and group acts of murder, rape, sodomy,
maiming, assault on noncombatants and the mistreatment and
killing of detainees.
The testimony of one member of Charlie Company,
Salvadore LaMartina, suggests the systematic, cold-blooded
character of the slaughter:
Q: Did you obey your orders?
A: Yes, sir.
Q: What were your orders?
A: Kill anything that breathed.
Whether or not such instructions were ever directly issued
is a matter of dispute. Either way, a good many participants
would later offer the explanation that they were obeying orders, a
defense explicitly prohibited by the Nuremberg Principles and
the United States Armys own rules of war. Other participants
would argue that the civilians at My Lai were themselves
Vietcong. A young soldier named Paul Meadlo, who was
responsible for numerous deaths on that bright March morning,
offered this appalling testimony:
Q: What did you do?
A: I held my M-16 on them.
Q: Why?

A: Because they might attack.

Q: They were children and babies?
A: Yes.
Q: And they might attack? Children and babies?
A: They mightve had a fully loaded grenade on them. The
mothers might have throwed them at us.
Q: Babies?
A: Yes. . . .
Q: Were the babies in their mothers arms?
A: I guess so.
Q: And the babies moved to attack?
A: I expected at any moment they were about to make a
counterbalance.
Eventually, after a cover-up that lasted more than a year
and after the massacre made nationwide headlines, the Armys
Criminal Investigation Division produced sufficient evidence to
charge 30 men with war crimes. Of these, only a single soldier,
First Lieut. William Laws Calley Jr., was ever convicted or spent
time in prison. Found guilty of the premeditated murder of not
less than 22 civilians, Calley was sentenced to life at hard labor,
but after legal appeals and sentence reductions, his ultimate jail
time amounted to three days in a stockade and four and a half
months in prison.
In some cases, judicial action was never initiated; in other
cases, charges were quietly dropped. Calley aside, only a handful
of men faced formal court-martial proceedings, either for war
crimes or for subsequent cover-up activities, with the end result
of five acquittals and four judicially ordered dismissals. Among
those acquitted was Capt. Ernest Medina, who commanded
Charlie Company on the morning of March 16, 1968.
All this is history. Dead as those dead women and kids.
Even at the time, most Americans seemed to shrug it off as a
cruel, nasty, inevitable consequence of war. There were
numerous excuses, numerous rationalizations. Upright citizens
decried even the small bit of justice secured by the conviction of
Lieutenant Calley. Now, more than 25 years later, the villainy of
that Saturday morning in 1968 has been pushed off to the
margins of memory. In the colleges and high schools I sometimes
visit, the mention of My Lai brings on null stares, a sort of
puzzlement, disbelief mixed with utter ignorance.
Evil has no place, it seems, in our national mythology. We
erase it. We use ellipses. We salute ourselves and take pride in
America the White Knight, America the Lone Ranger, Americas
sleek laser-guided weaponry beating up on Saddam and his
legion of devils.
Its beginning to rain when Kate and I sit down to talk with
two survivors of the slaughter here. Mrs. Ha Thi Quy is a woman
of 69 years. Her face is part stone, part anguish as she describes
through an interpreter the events of that day. Its hard stuff to
hear. Americans came here twice before, Mrs. Quy says.
Nothing bad happened, they were friendly to us. But on that day
the soldiers jumped out of their helicopters and immediately
began to shoot. I prayed, I pleaded. As I take notes, Im
recalling other prayers, other pleadings. A woman saying No
VC, no VC, while a young lieutenant pistol-whipped her
without the least expression on his face, without the least sign of
distress or moral uncertainty. Mad Mark, we called him. But he
wasnt mad. He was numb. Hed lost himself. His gyroscope was
gone. He didnt know up from down, good from bad.
Mrs. Quy is crying now. I can feel Kate crying off to my
side, though I dont dare look.
The Americans took us to a ditch. I saw two soldiers with
red facessunburnedand they pushed a lot of people into the
ditch. I was in the ditch. I fell down and many fell on top of me.
Soldiers were shooting. I was shot in the hip. The firing went on
and on. It would stop and then start again and then stop. Now I
hear Kate crying, not loud, just a certain breathiness Ive come to
recognize. This will be with us forever. This well have.

My notes take a turn for the worse. I lay under the dead in
the ditch. Around noon, when I heard no more gunfire, I came
out of the ditch and saw many more. Brains, pieces of body. My
house was burned. Cattle were shot. I went back to the ditch.
Three of my four children were killed.
Im exhausted when Mrs. Quy finishes. Partly its the sheer
magnitude of horror, partly some hateful memories of my own.
I can barely wire myself together as Mrs. Truong Thi Le,
another survivor, recounts those four hours of murder. Out of her
family of 10, 9 died that day. I fell down, Mrs. Le tells us. But
I was not shot. I lay with three other bodies on me, all blood. Did
not move at all. Pretended dead. Saw newborn baby near a
woman. Woman died. Infant still alive. Soldiers came up. Shot
baby.
Outside, the rain has let up. Kate, Eddie and I take a walk
through the hamlet. We stare at foundations where houses used to
stand. We admire a harsh, angular, defiant, beautiful piece of
sculpture, a monument to the murdered.
Mrs. Quy accompanies us for a while. Shes smiling,
accommodating. Impossible, but she seems to like us.
At one point, while Im scribbling in my notebook, she
pulls down her trousers. She shows Kate the scarred-over bullet
hole in her hip.
Kate nods and makes sounds of sympathy. What does one
say? Bad day. World of hurt.
ow the rain is back, much harder. Im drenched, cold and
something else. Eddie and I stand at the ditch where maybe 50,
maybe 80, maybe 100 innocent human beings perished. I watch
Eddie snap his pictures.
Heres the something else: Ive got the guilt chills.
Years ago, ignorant of the massacre, I hated this place, and
places much like it. Two miles away, in an almost identical
hamlet, Chip was blown into his hedge of bamboo. A mile or so
east, Roy Arnold was shot dead, I was slightly wounded. A little
farther east, a kid named McElhaney died. Just north of here, on
a rocky hillside, another kid, named Slocum, lost his foot to a
land mine. It goes on.
I despised everythingthe soil, the tunnels, the paddies,
the poverty and myself. Each step was an act of the purest selfhatred and self-betrayal, yet, in truth, because truth matters, my
sympathies were rarely with the Vietnamese. I was mostly
terrified. I was lamenting in advance my own pitiful demise.
After fire fights, after friends died, there was also a great deal of
angerblack, fierce, hurting angerthe kind you want to take
out on whatever presents itself. This is not to justify what
occurred here. Justifications are empty and outrageous. Rather,
its to say that I more or less understand what happened on that
day in March 1968, how it happened, the wickedness that soaks
into your blood and heats up and starts to sizzle. I know the boil
that precedes butchery. At the same time, however, the men in
Alpha Company did not commit murder. We did not turn our
machine guns on civilians; we did not cross that conspicuous line
between rage and homicide. I know what occurred here, yes, but
I also feel betrayed by a nation that so widely shrugs off
barbarity, by a military judicial system that treats murderers and
common soldiers as one and the same. Apparently were all
innocentthose who exercise moral restraint and those who do
not, officers who control their troops and officers who do not. In
a way, America has declared itself innocent.
I look away for a time, and then look back.
By most standards, this is not much of a ditch. A few feet
deep, a few feet wide. The rain makes the greenish brown water
bubble like a thousand tiny mouths.
The guilt has turned to a gray, heavy sadness. I have to take
my leave but dont know how.
After a time, Kate walks up, hooks my arm, doesnt say
anything, doesnt have to, leads me into a future that I know will
hold misery for both of us. Different hemispheres, different

scales of atrocity. I dont want it to happen. I want to tell her

things and be understood and live happily ever after. I want a
miracle. Thats the final emotion. The terror at this ditch, the
certain doom, the need for Gods intervention.
CAMBRIDGE, JUNE 1994Ive been trying to perform
good deeds. I bought a Fathers Day card three days early. I
made appointments for a physical exam, dental work, a smokeenders program. I go for walks every day. I work out, draw up
lists, call friends, visit lawyers, buy furniture, discharge
promises, keep my eyes off the sleeping pills. The days are all
right.
Now the clock shows 3:55 A.M. I call NERVOUS and
listen to an automated female voice confirm it. The nights are not
all right.
I write these few words, which seem useless, then get up
and pull out an album of photographs from the Vietnam trip. The
album was Kates parting gift. On the cover she inserted a
snapshot thats hard to look at but harder still to avoid. We stand
on China Beach near Danang. Side by side, happy as happy will
ever be, our fingers laced in a fitted, comfortable, half-conscious
way that makes me feel a gust of hope. Its a gust, though, here
and gone.
Numerous times over the past several days, at least a
dozen, this piece has come close to hyperspace. Twice it lay at
the bottom of a wastebasket. Ive spent my hours preparing a
tape of songs for Kate, stuff that once meant things. Corny songs,
some of them. Happy songs, love-me songs.
Today, scared stiff, I deposited the tape on her doorstep.
Another gust of hope, then a whole lot of stillness.
THE SONG TRA HOTEL, QUANG NGAI CITY,
FEBRUARY 1994Kates in the shower, Im in history. I sit
with a book propped up against the air-conditioner, underlining
sentences, sweating out my own ignorance. Twenty-five years
ago, like most other grunts in Alpha Company, I knew next to
nothing about this placeVietnam in general, Quang Ngai in
particular. Now Im learning. In the years preceding the murders
at My Lai, more than 70 percent of the villages in this province
had been destroyed by air strikes, artillery fire, Zippo lighters,
napalm, white phosphorus, bulldozers, gunships and other such
means. Roughly 40 percent of the population had lived in
refugee camps, while civilian casualties in the area were
approaching 50,000 a year. These numbers, reported by the
journalist Jonathan Schell in 1967, were later confirmed as
substantially correct by Government investigators. Not that I
need confirmation. Back in 1969, the wreckage was all around
us, so common it seemed part of the geography, as natural as any
mountain or river. Wreckage was the rule. Brutality was S.O.P.
Scalded children, pistol-whipped women, burning hootches, freefire zones, body counts, indiscriminate bombing and harassment
fire, villages in ash, M-60 machine guns hosing down dark green
tree lines and any human life behind them.
In a war without aim, you tend not to aim. You close your
eyes, close your heart. The consequences become hit or miss in
the most literal sense.
With so few military targets, with an enemy that was both
of and among the population, Alpha Company began to regard
Quang Ngai itself as the true enemythe physical place, the soil
and paddies. What had started for us as a weird, vicious little war
soon evolved into something far beyond vicious, a hopped-up
killer strain of nihilism, waste without want, aimlessness of deed
mixed with aimlessness of spirit. As Schell wrote after the events
at My Lai, There can be no doubt that such an atrocity was
possible only because a number of other methods of killing
civilians and destroying their villages had come to be the rule,
and not the exception, in our conduct of the war.
I look up from my book briefly, listen to Kate singing in
the shower. A doctoral candidate at Harvard University, smart
and sophisticated, but shes also fluent in joy, attuned to the

pleasures and beauty of the world. She knows the lyrics to

Hotel California, start to finish, while here at the airconditioner I can barely pick out the simplest melodies of
Vietnam, the most basic chords of history. Its as if I never heard
the song, as if Id gone to war in some mall or supermarket. I
discover that Quang Ngai Province was home to one of
Vietnams fiercest, most recalcitrant, most zealous revolutionary
movements. Independent by tradition, hardened by poverty and
rural isolation, the people of Quang Ngai were openly resistant to
French colonialism as far back as the 19th century and were
among the first to rebel against France in the 1930s. The
province remained wholly under Vietminh control throughout the
war against France; it remained under Vietcong control, at least
by night, throughout the years of war against America. Even
now, in the urbane circles of Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, the
people of Quang Ngai are regarded as a clan of stubborn country
bumpkins, coarse and insular, willfully independent, sometimes
defiant of the very Government they had struggled to install.
Like a different country, our interpreter told us after a
long, frustrating session with representatives of the Quang Ngai
Peoples Committee. These people I dont like much, very
crude, very difficult. I think you had horrible bad luck to fight
them.
At noon, by appointment, a Vietnamese journalist named
Pham Van Duong knocks on our door. Its a secret meeting of
sorts. Nothing illegala couple of writers, a couple of beers
but Ive still got the buzz of some low-level paranoia. Earlier in
the day, our joint request for this interview had been denied by a
stern, rather enigmatic functionary of the Peoples Committee.
Impossible, we were told. Not on the schedule. The official
offered little sympathy for our interpreters reminder that
schedules are man-made, that blocks of time appeared wide
open. Logic went nowhere. Bureaucratic scowls, stare-into-space
silence. A few minutes later, just outside the provincial offices,
we quietly huddled to make our own unsanctioned arrangements.
Now, as Mr. Duong sits down and accepts a beer, Im
feeling the vigilant, slightly illicit anxiety of a midday drug buy.
Kate locks the door; I close the drapes. Ridiculous, or almost
ridiculous, but for the first 10 minutes I sit picturing prison food,
listening for footsteps in the hallway. Our interpreter explains to
Mr. Duong that I will happily guard his identity in any written
account of this conversation.
Mr. Duong snorts at the suggestion. Only a problem in
Quang Ngai, he says. Officials in Hanoi would be glad for our
talking. They wish good relations with Americagood, new
things to happen. Maybe I get a medal. Sell the medal, buy
Marlboros.
We click beer bottles. For the next two hours we chat about
books, careers, memories of war. I ask about My Lai. Mr. Duong
looks at the wall. There is a short hesitationthe hesitation of
tact, I suppose. He was 8 years old when news of the massacre
reached his village nearby. He recalls great anger among his
relatives and friends, disgust and sadness, but no feelings of
shock or surprise. This kind of news came often, he says. We
did not then know the scale of the massacre, just that Americans
had been killing people. But killing was everywhere.
Two years later, Mr. Duongs brother joined the 48th
Vietcong Battalion. He was killed in 1972.
My mother fainted when she heard this. She was told that
his body had been buried in a mass grave with seven comrades
who died in the same attack. This made it much worse for my
motherno good burial. After liberation in 1975, she began to
look for my brothers remains. She found the mass grave 20
kilometers south of Quang Ngai City. She wished to dig, to
rebury my brother, but people told her no, dont dig, and in the
beginning she seemed to accept this. Then the Americans
returned to search for their own missing, and my mother became
very angry. Why them? Not me? So she insisted we dig. We

found bones, of course, many bones mixed together, but how

could we recognize my brother? How could anyone know? But
we took away some bones in a box. Reburied them near our
house. Every day now, my mother passes by this grave. She feels
better, I think. Better at least to tell herself maybe.
Kate looks up at me. Shes silent, but she knows what Im
thinking. At this instant, a few blocks away, an American M.I.A.
search team is headquartered at the Quang Ngai Government
guesthouse. With Vietnamese assistance, this team and others
like it are engaged in precisely the work of Mr. Duongs mother,
digging holes, picking through bones, seeking the couple
thousand Americans still listed as missing.
Which is splendid.
And which is also utterly one-sided. A perverse and
outrageous double standard.
What if things were reversed? What if the Vietnamese were
to ask us, or to require us, to locate and identify each of their
own M.I.A.s? Numbers alone make it impossible: 100,000 is a
conservative estimate. Maybe double that. Maybe triple. From
my own sliver of experienceone year at war, one set of eyes
I can testify to the lasting anonymity of a great many Vietnamese
dead. I watched napalm turn villages into ovens. I watched
burials by bulldozer. I watched bodies being flung into trucks,
dumped into wells, used for target practice, stacked up and
burned like cordwood.
Even in the abstract, I get angry at the stunning, almost
cartoonish narcissism of American policy on this issue. I get
angrier yet at the narcissism of an American public that embraces
and breathes life into the policyso arrogant, so ignorant, so
self-righteous, so wanting in the most fundamental qualities of
sympathy and fairness and mutuality. Some of this I express
aloud to Mr. Duong, who nods without comment. We finish off
our beers. Neither of us can find much to say. Maybe were both
back in history, snagged in brothers and bones. I feel hollow. So
little has changed, it seems, and so much will always be missing.
CAMBRIDGE, JUNE 1994June 11, I thinkIm too
tired to find a calendar. Almost 5 A.M. In another hour itll be
5:01. Im on war time, which is the time were all on at one point
or another: when fathers die, when husbands ask for divorce,
when women you love are fast asleep beside men you wish were
you.
The tape of songs did nothing. Everything will always do
nothing.
Kate hurts, too, Im sure, and did not want it this way. I
didnt want it either. Even so, both of us have to live in these
slow-motion droplets of now, doing what we do, choosing what
we choose, and in different ways both of us are now responsible
for the casualty rotting in the space between us.
If theres a lesson in this, which there is not, its very
simple. You dont have to be in Nam to be in Nam.
THE BATANGAN PENINSULA, QUANG NGAI
PROVINCE, FEBRUARY 1994The Graveyard, we called it.
Littered with land mines, almost completely defoliated, this spit
of land jutting eastward into the South China Sea was a place
Alpha Company feared the way others might fear snakes, or the
dark, or the bogyman. We lost at least three men here; I couldnt
begin to count the arms and legs.
Today our little caravan is accompanied by Mr. Ngu Duc
Tan, who knows this place intimately, a former captain in the
48th Vietcong Battalion. It was the 48th that Alpha Company
chased from village to village, paddy to paddy, during my entire
tour in Vietnam. Chased but never found. They found us:
ambushes, sniper fire, nighttime mortar attacks. Through our
interpreter, who passes along commodious paragraphs in crisp
little packets, Mr. Tan speaks genially of military tactics while
we make the bumpy ride out toward the Batangan. U.S. troops
not hard to see, not hard to fight, he says. Much noise, much
equipment. Big columns. Nice green uniforms. Sitting ducks, in

other words, though Mr. Tan is too polite to express it this way.
He explains that the United States Army was never a primary
target. We went after Saigon puppet troops, what you called
ARVN. If we beat them, everything collapse, the U.S. would
have nothing more to fight for. You brought many soldiers,
helicopters, bombs, but we chose not to fight you, except
sometimes. America was not the main objective.
God help us, Im thinking, if we had been. All those
casualties. All that blood and terror. Even at this moment, more
than half a lifetime later, I remember the feel of a bulls-eye
pinned to my shirt, a prickly, when-will-it-happen sensation, as if
I alone had been the main objective.
Meanwhile, Kate is taking her own notes, now and then
asking questions through the interpreter. Shes better than I am at
human dynamics, more fluid and spontaneous, and after a time
she gets Mr. Tan to display a few war scarsarms, legs, hands,
cheek, chest, skull. Sixteen wounds altogether. The American
war, he says, was just one phase in his career as a soldier, which
began in 1961 and encompassed combat against the South
Vietnamese, Khmer Rouge and Chinese.
Talk about bad dreams. One year gave me more than
enough to fill up the nights.
My goal on the Batangan peninsula is to show Kate one of
the prettiest spots on earth. Im looking for a lagoon, a little
fishing village, an impossibly white beach along the South China
Sea.
First, though, Mr. Tan attends to his own agenda. We park
the van in one of the inland hamlets, walk without invitation into
a small house, sit down for lunch with a man named Vo Van Ba.
Instantly, Im thinking herring. Kate and Eddie have the sense to
decline, to tap their stomachs and say things like Full, full,
thanks, thanks. Cans are opened. The house fills up with
children, nephews, nieces, babies, cousins, neighbors. There are
flies, too. Many, many flies. Many thousand.
Mr. Tan and Mr. Ba eat lunch with their fingers, fast and
hungry, chatting amiably while our interpreter does her best to
put the gist of it into English. Im listening hard, chewing hard. I
gather that these two men had been comrades of a sort during the
war. Mr. Ba, our host, was never a full-time soldier, never even a
part-time irregular. As I understand it, he belonged to what we
used to call the VC infrastructure, offering support and
intelligence to Mr. Tan and his fighting troops.
I lean forward, nod my head. The focus, however, is on the
substance Im swallowing, its remarkable texture, the flies trying
to get at it. For five years, Mr. Ba explains, he lived entirely
underground with a family of eight. Five years, he repeats.
Cooking, bathing, working, sleeping. He waits for the
translation, waits a bit longer, then looks at me with a pair of
silvery, burned-out, cauterized, half-blind, underground eyes.
You had the daylight, but I had the earth. Mr. Ba turns to Mr.
Tan. After a second he chuckles. Many times I might reach up
and take this mans leg. Many times. Very easy. I might just pull
him down to where the war was.
Were on foot now. Even at 59, Mr. Tan moves swiftly,
with the grace and authority of a man who once led soldiers in
combat. He does not say much. He leads us toward the ocean,
toward the quaint fishing village Im hoping to show Kate, but
along the way there is one last item Mr. Tan wishes to show me.
We move down a trail through two or three adjacent hamlets,
seem to circle back for a time, end up in front of another tiny
house.
Mr. Tans voice goes into command tonetwo or three
sharp, snapping words. A pair of boys dart into the house. No
wasted time, they come out fast, carrying whats left of a man
named Nguyen Van Ngu. They balance this wreckage on a low
chair. Both legs are gone at the upper-upper thigh. We shake
hands. Neither of us knows what to saythere is nothing worth
sayingso for a few minutes we exchange stupidities in our

different languages, no translator available to wash away the

helplessness. We pose for photographs. We try for smiles.
Mr. Tan does not smile. He nods to himselfmaybe to me.
But I get the point anyway. Here is your paradise. Here is your
pretty little fishing village by the sea.
Two minutes later, were on the beach. It is beautiful, even
stunning. Kate wades out into the water. Shes surrounded by
kids. They giggle and splash her, she splashes back, and I stand
there like an idiot, grinning, admiring the view, while Mr. Tan
waits patiently in the shade.
CAMBRIDGE, JULY 1994Outside, its the Fourth of
July. Lovely day, empty streets. Kate is where Kate is, which is
elsewhere, and I am where I am, which is also elsewhere.
Someday, no doubt, Ill wish happiness for myself, but for now
its still war time, minute to minute. Not quite 11 A.M. Already
Ive been out for two walks, done the laundry, written a few
words, bought groceries, lifted weights, watched the Fourth of
July sunlight slide across my street-side balcony.
And Kate?
The beach, maybe? A backyard cookout?
The hardest part, by far, is to make the bad pictures go
away. On war time, the world is one long horror movie, image
after image, and if its anything like Vietnam, Im in for a
lifetime of wee-hour creeps.
Meanwhile, I try to plug up the leaks and carry through on
some personal resolutions. For too many years Ive lived in
paralysisguilt, depression, terror, shameand now its either
move or die. Over the past weeks, at profound cost, Ive taken
actions with my life that are far too painful for any public record.
But at least the limbo has ended. Starting can start.
Theres a point here: Vietnam, Cambridge, Paris, Neptune
these are states of mind. Minds change.
MY KHE, QUANG NGAI PROVINCE, FEBRUARY
1994There is one piece of ground I wish to revisit above all
others in this country. Ive come prepared with a compass, a
military map, grid coordinates, a stack of after-action reports
recovered from a dusty box in the National Archives.
Were back near Pinkville, a mile or so east of My Lai. We
are utterly lost: the interpreter, the van driver, the Peoples
Committee representative, Eddie, Kate, me. I unfold the map and
place a finger on the spot Im hoping to find. A group of villagers
puzzle over it. They chatter among themselvesarguing, it
seemsthen one of them points west, another north, most at the
heavens.
Lost, that was the Vietnam of 25 years ago. The war came
at us as a blur, raw confusion, and my fear now is that I would
not recognize the right spot even while standing on it.
For well over an hour we drive from place to place. We end
up precisely where we started. Once more, everyone spills out of
the van. The thought occurs to me that this opportunity may
never come again. I find my compass, place it on the map and
look up for a geographical landmark. A low green hill rises to the
westnot much, just a hump on the horizon.
Im no trailblazer, but this works. One eye on the compass,
one eye on some inner rosary, I lead our exhausted column 200
yards eastward, past a graveyard and out along a narrow paddy
dike, where suddenly the world shapes itself exactly as it was
shaped a quarter-century agothe curvatures, the tree lines, the
precise angles and proportions. I stop there and wait for Kate.
This I dreamed of giving her. This I dreamed of sharing.
Our fingers lock, which happens without volition, and we
stand looking out on a wide and very lovely field of rice. The
sunlight gives it some gold and yellow. There is no wind at all.
Before us is how peace would be defined in a dictionary for the
speechless. I dont cry. I dont know what to do. At one point I
hear myself talking about what happened here so long ago,
motioning out at the rice, describing chaos and horror beyond
anything I would experience until a few months later. I tell her

how Paige lost his lower leg, how we had to probe for
McElhaney in the flooded paddy, how the gunfire went on and
on, how in the course of two hell-on-earth hours we took 13
casualties.
I doubt Kate remembers a word. Maybe she shouldnt. But
I do hope she remembers the sunlight striking that field of rice. I
hope she remembers the feel of our fingers. I hope she
remembers how I fell silent after a time, just looking out at the
golds and yellows, joining the peace, and how in those fine sunlit
moments, which were ours, Vietnam took a little Vietnam out of
me.
HO CHI MINH CITY, FEBRUARY 1994We hate this
place.
Even the namesSaigon, Ho Chi Minh City. A massive
identity crisis. Too loud, too quiet. Too alive, too dead.
For all the discomforts of Quang Ngai Province, which
were considerable, Kate and I had taken pleasure in those
qualities of beauty and equanimity that must have vanished from
Saigon when the first oil barge steamed into port.
But we give it our best. An hour in the Chinese market
district, which is like an hour in combat. Two hours at the old
presidential palaceas tawdry and corrupt as its former
inhabitants. We risk periodic excursions into streets where the
American dollar remains more valuable than oxygen, of which
there is precious little. Maybe weve hit some interior wall.
Maybe its the diesel-heat. We visit a war-crimes museum, the
old American Embassy and order lunch by way of room service.
Western pop music blares at full volume from Government
loudspeakers just outside our hotel. For hours, even with
earplugs, we listen to As Tears Go By and My Way. What
happened to Ho Chi Minh? What happened to revolution? All
weve heard comes from the Beatles.
In midafternoon, the music ceases. We go out for a short
walk, do some shopping, then retreat to the rooftop swimming
pool of the Rex Hotel. It could as well be Las Vegas. We dont
say so, not directly, but both Kate and I are ready to evacuate,
were humming We gotta get out of this place. Pretty soon
well be singing it over loudspeakers.
For now, Kate lounges at the pool. She writes postcards.
She catches me watching. She snaps pictures to show her
children someday. [October 2, 1994]

ALICE WALKER

NINETEEN FIFTY-FIVE
1955
The car is a brandnew red Thunderbird convertible, and it's
passed the house more than once. It slows down real slow now,
and stops at the curb. An older gentleman dressed like a Baptist
deacon gets out on the side near the house, and a young fellow
who looks about sixteen gets out on the driver's side. They are
white, and I wonder what in the world they doing in this
neighborhood.
Well, I say to J. T., put your shirt on, anyway, and let me
clean these glasses offa the table.
We had been watching the ballgame on TV. I wasn't actually
watching, I was sort of daydreaming, with my foots up in J. T.'s
lap.
I seen 'em coming on up the walk, brisk, like they coming to
sell something, and then they rung the bell, and J. T. declined to
put on a shirt but instead disappeared into the bedroom where the
other television is. I turned down the one in the living room; I
figured I'd be rid of these two double quick and J. T. could come
back out again.
Are you Gracie Mae Still? asked the old guy, when I opened
the door and put my hand on the lock inside the screen.
And I don't need to buy a thing, said I.
What makes you think we're sellin'? he asks, in that hearty
Southern way that makes my eyeballs ache.
Well, one way or another and they're inside the house and the
first thing the young fellow does is raise the TV a couple of
decibels. He's about five feet nine, sort of womanish looking,
with real dark white skin and a red pouting mouth. His hair is
black and curly and he looks like a Loosianna creole.
About one of your songs, says the deacon. He is maybe sixty,
with white hair and beard, white silk shirt, black linen suit, black
tie and black shoes. His cold gray eyes look like they're
sweating.
One of my songs?

Traynor here just loves your songs. Don't you, Traynor? He

nudges Traynor with his elbow. Traynor blinks, says something I
can't catch in a pitch I don't register.
The boy learned to sing and dance livin' round you people out
in the country. Practically cut his teeth on you.
Traynor looks up at me and bites his thumbnail.
I laugh.
Well, one way or another they leave with my agreement that
they can record one of my songs. The deacon writes me a check
for five hundred dollars, the boy grunts his awareness of the
transaction, and I am laughing all over myself by the time I
rejoin J. T.
Just as I am snuggling down beside him though I hear the
front door bell going off again.
Forgit his hat? asks J. T.
I hope not, I say.
The deacon stands there leaning on the door frame and once
again I'm thinking of those sweaty-looking eyeballs of his. I
wonder if sweat makes your eyeballs pink because his are sure
pink. Pink and gray and it strikes me that nobody I'd care to
know is behind them.
I forgot one little thing, he says pleasantly. I forgot to tell you
Traynor and I would like to buy up all of those records you made
of the song. I tell you we sure do love it.
Well, love it or not, I'm not so stupid as to let them do that
without making 'em pay. So I says, Well, that's gonna cost you.
Because, really, that song never did sell all that good, so I was
glad they was going to buy it up. But on the other hand, them
two listening to my song by themselves, and nobody else getting
to hear me sing it, give me a pause.
Well, one way or another the deacon showed me where I
would come out ahead on any deal he had proposed so far. Didn't
I give you five hundred dollars? he asked. What white
man&emdash;and don't even need to mention colored--would
give you more? We buy up all your records of that particular
song: first, you git royalties. Let me ask you, how much you sell
that song for in the first place? Fifty dollars? A hundred, I say.
And no royalties from it yet, right? Right. Well, when we buy up
all of them records you gonna git royalties. And that's gonna
make all them race record shops sit up and take notice of Gracie
Mae Still. And they gonna push all them other records of yourn
they got. And you no doubt will become one of the big name
colored recording artists. And then we can offer you another five
hundred dollars for letting us do all this for you. And by God
you'll be sittin' pretty! You can go out and buy you the kind of
outfit a star should have. Plenty sequins and yards of red satin.
I had done unlocked the screen when I saw I could get some
more money out of him. Now I held it wide open while he
squeezed through the opening between me and the door. He
whipped out another piece of paper and I signed it.
He sort of trotted out to the car and slid in beside Traynor,
whose head was back against the seat. They swung around in a
u-turn in front of the house and then they was gone.
J. T. was putting his shirt on when I got back to the bedroom.
Yankees beat the Orioles 10-6, he said. I believe I'll drive out to
Paschal's pond and go fishing. Wanta go?
While I was putting on my pants J. T. was holding the two
checks.
I'm real proud of a woman that can make cash money without
leavin' home, he said. And I said Umph. Because we met on the
road with me singing in first one little low-life jook after another,
making ten dollars a night for myself if I was lucky, and
sometimes bringin' home nothing but my life. And J. T. just
loved them times. The way I was fast and flashy and always on
the go from one town to another. He loved the way my singin'
made the dirt farmers cry like babies and the womens shout
Honey, hush! But that's mens. They loves any style to which you
can get 'em accustomed.

1956
My little grandbaby called me one night on the phone: Little
Mama, Little Mama, there's a white man on the television
singing one of your songs! Turn on channel 5.
Lord, if it wasn't Traynor. Still looking half asleep from the
neck up, but kind of awake in a nasty way from the waist down.
He wasn't doing too bad with my song either, but it wasn't just
the song the people in the audience was screeching and
screaming over, it was that nasty little jerk he was doing from the
waist down.
Well, Lord have mercy, I said, listening to him. If I'da closed
my eyes, it could have been me. He had followed every turning
of my voice, side streets, avenues, red lights, train crossings and
all. It give me a chill.
Everywhere I went I heard Traynor singing my song, and all
the little white girls just eating it up. I never had so many
ponytails switched across my line of vision in my life. They was
so proud. He was a genius.
Well, all that year I was trying to lose weight anyway and that
and high blood pressure and sugar kept me pretty well occupied.
Traynor had made a smash from a song of mine, I still had seven
hundred dollars of the original one thousand dollars in the bank,
and I felt if I could just bring my weight down, life would be
sweet.
1957
I lost ten pounds in 1956. That's what I give myself for
Christmas. And J. T. and me and the children and their friends
and grandkids of all description had just finished dinner--over
which I had put on nine and a half of my lost ten--when who
should appear at the front door but Traynor. Little Mama, Little
Mama! It's that white man who sings_______________. The
children didn't call it my song anymore. Nobody did. It was
funny how that happened. Traynor and the deacon had bought up
all my records, true, but on his record he had put "written by
Gracie Mae Still." But that was just another name on the label,
like "produced by Apex Records."
On the TV he was inclined to dress like the deacon told him.
But now he looked presentable.
Merry Christmas, said he.
And same to you, Son.
I don't know why I called him Son. Well, one way or another
they're all our sons. The only requirement is that they be younger
than us. But then again, Traynor seemed to be aging by the
minute.
You looks tired, I said. Come on in and have a glass of
Christmas cheer.
J. T. ain't never in his life been able to act decent to a white
man he wasn't working for, but he poured Traynor a glass of
bourbon and water, then he took all the children and grandkids
and friends and whatnot out to the den. After while I heard
Traynor's voice singing the song, coming from the stereo
console. It was just the kind of Christmas present my kids would
consider cute.
I looked at Traynor, complicit. But he looked like it was the
last thing in the world he wanted to hear. His head was pitched
forward over his lap, his hands holding his glass and his elbows
on his knees.
I done sung that song seem like a million times this year, he
said. I sung it on the Grand Ole Opry, I sung it on the Ed
Sullivan show. I sung it on Mike Douglas, I sung it at the Cotton
Bowl, the Orange Bowl. I sung it at Festivals. I sung it at Fairs. I
sung it overseas in Rome, Italy, and once in a submarine
underseas. I've sung it and sung it, and I'm making forty
thousand dollars a day offa it, and you know what, I don't have
the faintest notion what that song means.
Whatchumean, what do it mean? It mean what it says. All I
could think was: These suckers is making forty thousand a day

offa my song and now they gonna come back and try to swindle
me out of the original thousand.
It's just a song, I said. Cagey. When you fool around with a
lot of no count mens you sing a bunch of 'em. I shrugged.
Oh, he said. Well. He started brightening up. I just come by to
tell you I think you are a great singer.
He didn't blush, saying that. Just said it straight out.
And I brought you a little Christmas present too. Now you
take this little box and you hold it until I drive off. Then you take
it outside under that first streetlight back up the street aways in
front of that green house. Then you open the box and see . . .
Well, just see.
What had come over this boy, I wondered, holding the box. I
looked out the window in time to see another white man come up
and get in the car with him and then two more cars full of white
mens start out behind him. They was all in long black cars that
looked like a funeral procession.
Little Mama, Little Mama, what it is? One of my grandkids
come running up and started pulling at the box. It was wrapped
in gay Christmas paper&emdash;the thick, rich kind that it's hard
to picture folks making just to throw away.
J. T. and the rest of the crowd followed me out the house, up
the street to the streetlight and in front of the green house.
Nothing was there but somebody's goldgrilled white Cadillac.
Brandnew and most distracting. We got to looking at it so till I
almost forgot the little box in my hand. While the others were
busy making 'miration I carefully took off the paper and ribbon
and folded them up and put them in my pants pocket. What
should I see but a pair of genuine solid gold caddy keys.
Dangling the keys in front of everybody's nose, I unlocked
the caddy, motioned for J.T. to git in on the other side, and us
didn't come back home for two days.
1960
Well, the boy was sure nuff famous by now. He was still a
mite shy of twenty but already they was calling him the Emperor
of Rock and Roll.
Then what should happen but the draft.
Well, says J. T. There goes all this Emperor of Rock and Roll
business.
But even in the army the womens was on him like white on
rice. We watched it on the News.
Dear Gracie Mae [he wrote from Germany],
How you? Fine I hope as this leaues me doing real well.
Before I come in the army I was gaining a lot of weight and
gitting jittery from making all them dumb movies. But now l
exercise and eat right and get plenty of rest. I'm more awake
than I been in ten years. I wonder if you are writing any more
songs?
Sincerely, Traynor
I wrote him back:
Dear Son,
We is all fine in the Lord's good grace and hope this finds
you the same. J. T. and me be out all times of the day and night
in that car you give me--which you know you didn't have to do.
Oh, and I do appreciate the mink and the new self-cleaning oven.
But if you send anymore stuff to eat from Germany I'm going to
have to open up a store in the neighborhood just to get rid of it.
Really, we have more than enough of everything. The Lord is
good to us and we don't know Want.
Glad to here you is well and gitting your right rest. There
ain't nothing like exercising to help that along. J. T. and me work
some part of every day that we don't go fishing in the garden.
Well, so long Soldier.
Sincerely,
Gracie Mae
He wrote:
Dear Gracie Mae,

I hope you and J. T. Iike that automatic power tiller I had one
of the stores back home send you. I went through a mountain of
catalogs looking for it&emdash;I wanted something that even a
woman could use.
I've been thinking about writing some songs of my own but
every time I finish one it don't seem to be about nothing I've
actually lived myself. My agent keeps sending me other people's
songs but they just sound mooney. I can hardly git through 'em
without gagging.
Everybody still loves that song of yours. They ask me all the
time what do I think it means, really. I mean, they want to know
just what I want to know. Where out of your life did it come
from?
Sincerely,
Traynor
1968
I didn't see the boy for seven years. No. Eight. Because just
about everybody was dead when I saw him again. Malcolm X,
King, the president and his brother, and even J. T. J. T. died of a
head cold. It just settled in his head like a block of ice, he said,
and nothing we did moved it until one day he just leaned out the
bed and died.
His good friend Horace helped me put him away, and then
about a year later Horace and me started going together. We was
sitting out on the front porch swing one summer night, duskdark, and I saw this great procession of lights winding to a stop.
Holy Toledo! said Horace. (He's got a real sexy voice like
Ray Charles.) Look at it. He meant the long line of flashy cars
and the white men in white summer suits jumping out on the
drivers' sides and standing at attention. With wings they could
pass for angels, with hoods they could be the Klan.
Traynor comes waddling up the walk.
And suddenly I know what it is he could pass for. An Arab
like the ones you see in storybooks. Plump and soft and with
never a care about weight. Because with so much money, who
cares? Traynor is almost dressed like someone from a storybook
too. He has on, I swear, about ten necklaces. Two sets of
bracelets on his arms, at least one ring on every finger, and some
kind of shining buckles on his shoes, so that when he walks you
get quite a few twinkling lights.
Gracie Mae, he says, coming up to give me a hug. J. T.
I explain that J. T. passed. That this is Horace.
Horace, he says, puzzled but polite, sort of rocking back on
his heels, Horace.
That's it for Horace. He goes in the house and don't come
back.
Looks like you and me is gained a few, I say.
He laughs. The first time I ever heard him laugh. It don't
sound much like a laugh and I can't swear that it's better than no
laugh a'tall.
He's gitting fat for sure, but he's still slim compared to me. I'll
never see three hundred pounds again and I've just about said
(excuse me) fuck it. I got to thinking about it one day an' I
thought: aside from the fact that they say it's unhealthy, my fat
ain't never been no trouble. Mens always have loved me. My
kids ain't never complained. Plus they's fat. And fat like I is I
looks distinguished. You see me coming and know somebody's
there.
Gracie Mae, he says, I've come with a personal invitation to
you to my house tomorrow for dinner. He laughed. What did it
sound like? I couldn't place it. See them men out there? he asked
me. I'm sick and tired of eating with them. They don't never have
nothing to talk about. That's why I eat so much. But if you come
to dinner tomorrow we can talk about the old days. You can tell
me about that farm I bought you.
I sold it, I said.
You did?

Yeah, I said, I did. Just cause I said I liked to exercise by

working in a garden didn't mean I wanted five hundred acres!
Anyhow, I'm a city girl now. Raised in the country it's true. Dirt
poor--the whole bit--but that's all behind me now.
Oh well, he said, I didn't mean to offend you.
We sat a few minutes listening to the crickets.
Then he said: You wrote that song while you was still on the
farm, didn't you, or was it right after you left?
You had somebody spying on me? I asked.
You and Bessie Smith got into a fight over it once, he said.
You is been spying on me!
But I don't know what the fight was about, he said. Just like I
don't know what happened to your second husband. Your first
one died in the Texas electric chair. Did you know that? Your
third one beat you up, stole your touring costumes and your car
and retired with a chorine to Tuskegee. He laughed. He's still
there.
I had been mad, but suddenly I calmed down. Traynor was
talking very dreamily. It was dark but seems like I could tell his
eyes weren't right. It was like something was sitting there talking
to me but not necessarily with a person behind it.
You gave up on marrying and seem happier for it. He laughed
again. I married but it never went like it was supposed to. I never
could squeeze any of my own life either into it or out of it. It was
like singing somebody else's record. I copied the way it was
sposed to be exactly but I never had a clue what marriage meant.
I bought her a diamond ring big as your fist. I bought her
clothes. I built her a mansion. But right away she didn't want the
boys to stay there. Said they smoked up the bottom floor. Hell,
there were poe floors.
No need to grieve, I said. No need to. Plenty more where she
come from.
He perked up. That's part of what that song means, ain't it?
No need to grieve. Whatever it is, there's plenty more down the
line.
I never really believed that way back when I wrote that song,
I said. It was all bluffing then. The trick is to live long enough to
put your young bluffs to use. Now if I was to sing that song
today I'd tear it up. 'Cause I done lived long enough to know it's
true. Them words could hold me up.
I ain't lived that long, he said.
Look like you on your way, I said. I don't know why, but the
boy seemed to need some encouraging. And I don't know, seem
like one way or another you talk to rich white folks and you end
up reassuring them. But what the hell, by now I feel something
for the boy. I wouldn't be in his bed all alone in the middle of the
night for nothing. Couldn't be nothing worse than being famous
the world over for something you don't even understand. That's
what I tried to tell Bessie. She wanted that same song. Overheard
me practicing it one day, said, with her hands on her hips: Gracie
Mae, I'ma sing your song tonight. I likes it.
Your lips be too swole to sing, I said. She was mean and she
was strong, but I trounced her.
Ain't you famous enough with your own stuff? I said. Leave
mine alone. Later on, she thanked me. By then she was Miss
Bessie Smith to the World, and I was still Miss Gracie Mae
Nobody from Notasulga.
The next day all these limousines arrived to pick me up. Five
cars and twelve bodyguards. Horace picked that morning to start
painting the kitchen.
Don't paint the kitchen, fool, I said. The only reason that
dumb boy of ours is going to show me his mansion is because he
intends to present us with a new house.
What you gonna do with it? he asked me, standing there in
his shirtsleeves stirring the paint.
Sell it. Give it to the children. Live in it on weekends. It don't
matter what I do. He sure don't care.

Horace just stood there shaking his head. Mama you sure
looks good, he says. Wake me up when you git back.
Fool, I say, and pat my wig in front of the mirror.
The boy's house is something else. First you come to this
mountain, and then you commence to drive and drive up this
road that's lined with magnolias. Do magnolias grow on
mountains? I was wondering. And you come to lakes and you
come to ponds and you come to deer and you come up on some
sheep. And I figure these two is sposed to represent England and
Wales. Or something out of Europe. And you just keep on
coming to stuff. And it's all pretty. Only the man driving my car
don't look at nothing but the road. Fool. And then finally, after all
this time, you begin to go up the driveway. And there's more
magnolias--only they're not in such good shape. It's sort of cool
up this high and I don't think they're gonna make it. And then I
see this building that looks like if it had a name it would be The
Tara Hotel. Columns and steps and outdoor chandeliers and
rocking chairs. Rocking chairs? Well, and there's the boy on the
steps dressed in a dark green satin jacket like you see folks
~vearing on TV late at night, and he looks sort of like a fat
dracula with all that house rising behind him, and standing
beside him there's this little white vision of loveliness that he
introduces as his wife.
He's nervous when he introduces us and he says to her: This
is Gracie Mae Still, I want you to know me. I mean . . . and she
gives him a look that would fry meat.
Won't you come in, Gracie Mae, she says, and that's the last I
see of her.
He fishes around for something to say or do and decides to
escort me to the kitchen. We go through the entry and the parlor
and the breakfast room and the dining room and the servants'
passage and finally get there. The first thing I notice is that,
altogether, there are five stoves. He looks about to introduce rne
to one.
Wait a minute, I say. Kitchens don't do nothing for me. Let's
go sit on the front porch.
Well, we hike back and we sit in the rocking chairs rocking
until dinner.
Gracie Mae, he says down the table, taking a piece of fried
chicken from the woman standing over him, I got a little surprise
for you.
It's a house, ain't it? I ask, spearing a chitlin.
You're getting spoiled, he says. And the way he says spoiled
sounds funny. He slurs it. It sounds like his tongue is too thick
for his mouth. Just that quick he's finished the chicken and is
now eating chitlins and a pork chop. Me spoiled, I'm thinking.
I already got a house. Horace is right this minute painting the
kitchen. I bought that house. My kids feel comfortable in that
house.
But this one I bought you is just like mine. Only a little
smaller.
I still don't need no house. And anyway who would clean it?
He looks surprised.
Really, I think, some peoples advance so slowly.
I hadn't thought of that. But what the hell, I'll get you
somebody to live in.
I don't want other folks living 'round me. Makes me nervous.
You don't? It do?
What I want to wake up and see folks I don't even know for?
He just sits there downtable staring at me. Some of that
feeling is in the song, ain't it? Not the words, the feeling. What I
want to wake up and see folks I don't even know for? But I see
twenty folks a day I don't even know, including my wife.
This food wouldn't be bad to wake up to though, I said. The
boy had found the genius of corn bread.
He looked at me real hard. He laughed. Short. They want
what you got but they don't want you. They want what I got only
it ain't mine. That's what makes 'em so hungry for me when I

sing. They getting the flavor of something but they ain't getting
the thing itself. They like a pack of hound dogs trying to gobble
up a scent.
You talking'bout your fans?
Right. Right. He says.
Don't worry 'bout your fans, I say. They don't know their
asses from a hole in the ground. I doubt there's a honest one in
the bunch.
That's the point. Dammit, that's the point! He hits the table
with his fist. It's so solid it don't even quiver. You need a honest
audience! You can't have folks that's just gonna lie right back to
you.
Yeah, I say, it was small compared to yours, but I had one. It
would have been worth my life to try to sing 'em somebody else's
stuflf that I didn't know nothing about.
He must have pressed a buzzer under the table. One of his
flunkies zombies up.
Git Johnny Carson, he says.
On the phone? asks the zombie.
On the phone, says Traynor, what you think I mean, git him
offa the front porch? Move your ass.
So two weeks later we's on the Johnny Carson show.
Traynor is all corseted down nice and looks a little bit fat but
mostly good. And all the women that grew up on him and my
song squeal and squeal. Traynor says: The lady who wrote my
first hit record is here with us tonight, and she's agreed to sing it
for all of us, just like she sung it forty-five years ago. Ladies and
Gentlemen, the great Gracie Mae Stilll
Well, I had tried to lose a couple of pounds my own self, but
failing that I had me a very big dress made. So I sort of rolls over
next to Traynor, who is dwarfted by me, so that when he puts his
arm around back of me to try to hug me it looks funny to the
audience and they laugh.
I can see this pisses him off. But I smile out there at 'em.
Imagine squealing for twenty years and not knowing why you're
squealing? No more sense of endings and beginnings than hogs.
It don't matter, Son, I say. Don't fret none over me.
I commence to sing. And I sound wonderful. Being able to
sing good ain't all about having a good singing voice a'tall. A
good singing voice helps. But when you come up in the Hard
Shell Baptist church like I did you understand early that the
fellow that sings is the singer. Them that waits for programs and
arrangements and letters from home is just good voices
occupying body space.
So there I am singing my own song, my own way. And I give
it all I got and enjoy every minute of it. When I finish Traynor is
standing up clapping and clapping and beaming at first me and
then the audience like I'm his mama for true. The audience claps
politely for about two seconds.
Traynor looks disgusted.
He comes over and tries to hug me again. The audience
laughs.
Johnny Carson looks at us like we both weird.
Traynor is mad as hell. He's supposed to sing something
called a love ballad. But instead he takes the mike, turns to me
and says: Now see if my imitation still holds up. He goes into the
same song, our song, I think, looking out at his flaky audience.
And he sings it just the way he always did. My voice, my tone,
my inflection, everything. But he forgets a couple of lines. Even
before he's finished the matronly squeals begin.
He sits down next to me looking whipped.
It don't matter, Son, I say, patting his hand. You don't even
know those people. Try to make the people you know happy.
Is that in the song? he asks.
Maybe. I say.
1977
For a few years I hear from him, then nothing. But trying to lose
weight takes all the attention I got to spare. I finally faced up to

the fact that my fat is the hurt I don't admit, not even to myself,
and that I been trying to bury it from the day I was born. But also
when you git real old, to tell the truth, it ain't as pleasant. It gits
lumpy and slack. Yuck. So one day I said to Horace, I'ma git this
shit offa me.
And he fell in with the program like he always try to do and
Lord such a procession of salads and cottage cheese and fruit
juice!
One night I dreamed Traynor had split up with his fifteenth
wife. He said: You meet 'em for no reason. You date 'em for no
reason. You marry 'em for no reason. I do it all but I swear it's
just like somebody else doing it. I feel like I can't rememberLife.
The boy's in trouble, I said to Horace.
You've always said that, he said.
I have?
Yeah. You always said he looked asleep. You can't sleep
through life if you wants to live it.
You not such a fool after all, I said, pushing myself up with
my cane and hobbling over to where he was. Let me sit down on
your lap, I said, while this salad I ate takes effect.
In the morning we heard Traynor was dead. Some said fat,
some said heart, some said alcohol, some said drugs. One of the
children called from Detroit. Them dumb fans of his is on a
crying rampage, she said. You just ought to turn on the TV.
But I didn't want to see 'em. They was crying and crying and
didn't even know what they was crying for. One day this is going
to be a pitiful country, I thought.

Alice Walker's "Nineteen Fifty-Five": fiction and fact. "Nineteen

Fifty-five" is the opening story in Alice Walker's 1981 collection
You Can't Keep a Good Woman Down. Early reviewers
identified its two principal characters, Traynor and Gracie Mae
"Little Mama" Still, with Elvis Presley and Willie Mae "Big
Mama" Thornton.(1) Elvis is an important figure in popular
music and culture; Willie Mae Thornton represents personal,
artistic, and ethical values admired by Walker. The author bases
her characters on these real people but abandons biographical
accuracy to amplify the symbolic meaning of each character. In
this process, Ebas becomes an interloper destroyed by stealing
what he does not understand. The Thornton character is poor but
authentic, and she succeeds as a person even though her career
flops. Thus each character stands for an idea that helps develop
the theme of being true to one's self. Examining how Walker
turns Elvis and Thornton into fictional characters provides
insight into her creative method. The most casual reader will
note similarities between Traynor and Elvis. Like Elvis, Traynor
gives away Cadillacs and houses. The character serves in the
army in Germany. He is a singer who performs to screaming
teenagers and punctuates his songs with a "nasty little jerk ...
from the waist down."(2) "His hair is black and curly and he
looks like a Loosianna creole."(3) Traynor even has a manager
who resembles Elvis's Colonel Parker, and the character lives in
a grand mansion like Graceland. Walker's Gracie Mae Still is
based on the blues and rock singer, Willie Mae Thornton. In the
story, Gracie sells Traynor a song for $500; his version of it,
closely patterned on hers, becomes a hit and triggers his rise to
fame. In 1956, Elvis recorded "Hound Dog" on the RCA Victor
label.

He wasn't my king

For black people, Elvis, more than any other

performer, epitomises the theft of their music and
dance
Helen Kolawole
Thursday August 15, 2002
The Guardian
As another celebration of a dead white hero winds up, in this
hallowed Week of Elvis, shouldn't the entertainment industry
hold its own truth and reconciliation commission?
It needn't be a vehicle for retribution, just somewhere where tales
of white appropriation of black culture, not to mention outright
theft, can finally be laid to rest. Following Michael Jackson's
recent outburst accusing Sony chief, Tony Mottola, of racism,
perhaps he could officiate and champion all black musicians who
have been ripped off by nasty white music business CEOs.
This won't happen of course. Media arrogance and dishonesty
means we are eternally bound to live in a skewed world where
Elvis is king of rock'n'roll, Clapton is the guitar god, Sinatra is
the voice and Astaire is the greatest dancer. Accustomed as we
are to this parade of white heroes, the case of Elvis is particularly
infuriating because for many black people he represents the most
successful white appropriation of a black genre to date.
Elvis also signifies the foul way so many black writers and
performers, such as Little Richard, were treated by the music
industry. The enduring image of Elvis is a constant reflection of
society's then refusal to accept anything other than the nonthreatening and subservient negro: Sammy Davies Jnr and Nat
King Cole. The Elvis myth to this day clouds the true picture of
rock'n'roll and leaves its many originators without due
recognition. So what is left for black people to celebrate? How
he admirably borrowed our songs, attitude and dance moves?
Public Enemy's prolific commentator, Chuck D, was clear on
why he felt compelled to attack the pretender's iconic status. In
their 1989 song Fight the Power, he rapped: "Elvis was a hero to
most/ But he never meant shit to me you see/ Straight up racist
that sucker was simple and plain/ Motherfuck him and John
Wayne."
To contend that Elvis was a racist is hardly shocking. ("The only
thing black people can do for me is shine my shoes and buy my
music", he once opined.) And, as a dirt poor Southerner raised in
close but separate proximity to black people, his racism would
hardly have distinguished him from millions of others. Chuck
D's attack was not aimed at Elvis the person, but Elvis the
institution.
But in the face of much black criticism of Elvis, some writers
have offered their own theories as to why the singer should be
awarded more, not less accolades. Michael T Bertrand's Race,
Rock and Elvis contends that the arrival of Elvis and rock'n'roll
helped white Southerners to rethink their attitude to race and
gave as yet unacknowledged impetus to the burgeoning civil
rights movement. And this week the Daily Mirror's Tony Parsons
imagined a world without Elvis as a cultural armageddon. "Elvis
changed the soul of modern music," he argues. "Without him,
Madonna would be a teacher in Detroit." He also quotes John
Lennon's remark that "before Elvis there was nothing". An Elvisfree world would have seen black music remaining
"underground" and "segregated", Parsons suggests.

But the reality is, black music never stays underground. White
people always seek it out, dilute it and eventually claim it as their
own. From Pat Boone's Tutti Frutti to current boyband sensations
N Sync and Blue. This is fine, but be honest about it.
Putting Parsons's vision into practice, let's imagine that instead of
Elvis mania, Big Momma Thornton - author of Hound Dog reigns supreme with her ode to no-good men. Big Momma's
cultural conquest gives birth to a radical white teen culture and a
complete and lasting overhaul of America's putrid racial politics.
White teens frighten their parents silly with their extreme bids
not to become Elvis's pale imitation of the black performers he
witnessed, but the very image of Big Momma. Sounds
outlandish? Any more audacious than stubbornly maintaining
that this talented - but more importantly white - man deserves to
be king of a genre created by black people?
Whether we remember him as an obese, drug-addled misogynist
or a hip-swinging rebel, let's call him what he is - the allconquering great white hope - and demand the entertainment
industry never again makes such a deceitful claim.
A short story from Alice Walker's You Can't Keep A Good
Woman Down holds particular poignancy. "Nineteen Fifty-Five"
begins when an emerging rock'n'roll star, Traynor, accompanied
by his musical svengali, visits the home of black songstress
Gracie May Still. The svengali tells Gracie: "The boy learned to
sing and dance livin' round you people out in the country.
Practically cut his teeth on you." The pair buy up all of Gracie's
songs and Traynor quickly triumphs as the "emperor of rock and
roll". Walker tells how little white girls ate him up. "They was so
proud. He was a genius," she writes.
But many years later, spoilt by wealth, sycophants and too many
chitlins, Traynor revisits Gracie May. The deflated emperor
admits that he hasn't understood the meaning behind his greatest
hit. It is recommended reading this Elvis week.
Helen Kolawole is a former music editor of Pride magazine

You Just Cant Keep a Good Woman Down:

Alice Walker sings the blues
African American Review, Summer, 1996, by Maria V. Johnson
Oh - Just cant keep a real good woman down
Oh - Just cant keep a real good woman down
If you throw me down here Papa, I rise up in some other town
(Miller)
Alice Walker has been profoundly influenced and inspired both
by African American music and musicians and by writers whose
work is grounded in music and in the expressive folk traditions
of African Americans. Zora Neale Hurstons Their Eyes Were
Watching God and the blues music of blues women like Bessie
Smith rank among Walkers most significant musical/literary
influences.(1) In her words,
Music is the art I most envy... musicians [are] at one with their
cultures and their historical subconscious. I am trying to arrive at
that place where Black music already is; to arrive at that unselfconscious sense of collective oneness; that naturalness, that
(even when anguished) grace. (In Search 259, 264)
Zora Neale Hurston, Billie Holiday, and Bessie Smith form a sort
of unholy trinity. Zora belongs in the tradition of black women
singers, rather than among the literati .... Like Billie and Bessie

she followed her own road, believed in her own gods, pursued
her own dreams, and refused to separate herself from the
common people. (In Search 91)
These influences are most clearly seen in works like the short
story Nineteen Fifty-five, from her 1981 collection You Cant
Keep A Good Woman Down, and in her novel The Color Purple.
In Nineteen Fifty-five and The Color Purple, Walker talks
back to blues musicians and writers, signifying extensively on
Zora Neale Hurstons Their Eyes Were Watching God as well as
on specific musical pieces of several singer/composers. In
signifying, following Henry Louis Gatess usage, Walker
repeats with a difference (xxii-xxiii, xxvii) traditional material,
revising and personalizing it, giving, in the words of Sherley
Anne Williams, a traditional statement about a traditional
situation a new response (37). In Nineteen Fifty-five Walker
begins to explore the significance of the female blues singer and
the blues she sings - for creative artists like herself, for others in
the community, and for the society as a whole. This exploration
is continued in The Color Purple, where Walker probes in more
detail the role of the blues woman as a model and catalyst for
change in her community.
In Nineteen Fifty-five and The Color Purple, Walker employs
the character, language, structure, and perspective of the blues to
celebrate the lives and works of blues women, to articulate the
complexity of their struggles, and to expose and confront the
oppressive forces facing Black women in America. In her
portraits of blues women, Walker shows us the vitality,
resiliency, creativity, and spirituality of African American
women, illuminating the core aesthetic concepts which have
been crucial to their survival in a society that has largely used
and abused them for its own purposes. Indeed, in Walkers
works, African American women performers and their
performances symbolize vitality and aliveness, and the will and
spirit not only to endure but potentially to flourish. The blues
woman, whose song is true to her own experience and rooted in
the values and beliefs of the community, empowers those who
love her and effects change in those around her. Her outer
struggles and inner conflicts reflect issues of oppression in
society as they have been internalized within the community.
In addition to blues characters, Walker employs blues forms,
themes, images, and linguistic techniques. Her forms - letters and
diary entries - are like blues stanzas in their rich compactness
and self-containedness; like blues pieces, her works take shape
from the repetition and variation of these core units. Walkers
focus on the complexities and many-sidedness of love and
relationship repeats the subject of many blues. As in Their Eyes
and the blues, paradox and contradiction are explored in the
context of relationships, projected via responses to the
traditional situations of these relationships and articulated
using contrast and oppositional structures. The blues womens
motto You cant keep a good woman down, which is at the
heart of Nineteen Fifty-five, also resonates the struggles and
triumphs of many women in The Color Purple. In both Nineteen
Fifty-five and The Color Purple, Walker repeats and varies
many of the core oppositions, blues images, and linguistic
techniques Hurston employs in Their Eyes. Finally, Walker uses
singing and laughter as metaphors for voice, and uses core songs
both to encapsulate primary themes and to mark significant
points in the structure and thematic development of these pieces.
In this essay, I explore Alice Walkers use of the blues in the
short story Nineteen Fifty-five, leaving a detailed examination
of the blues in The Color Purple for a forthcoming article.
In her title, dedication, and epigraph to You Cant Keep A Good
Woman Down (1981), Walker both encapsulates the essence of
the theme which unites the stories in the volume and alludes to
the signifyin(g) relationship of her work, particularly the story
Nineteen Fifty-five, to the lives and work of several others
from the past. Walkers reference to Mamie Smith and Perry

(You Cant Keep A Good Man Down) Bradford in her

dedication is particularly important for several reasons. First, it
alludes to an historical event that was especially significant in
both African American and American music history. Mamie
Smiths recording of You Cant Keep A Good Man Down,
coupled with This Thing Called Love, made on February 14,
1920, is the first documented recording of a Black woman singer
(Southern 365). Perry Bradford was the composer and Smiths
manager as well. The immediate and overwhelming commercial
success of this recording led directly to more recordings by
Mamie Smith, along with the recording of numerous other
African American women singers, thereby ushering in the era of
the so-called classic blues. Second, Walkers allusion evokes
the ironic story behind this recording, celebrating the remarkable
feat of Bradford himself. It was due to the determination and
unflagging persistence of African American song writer and
entrepreneur Perry Bradford (whose nickname was Mule) that
this historic recording happened. The white managers at Okeh
Records, after finally agreeing to record his songs, opposed
Bradfords choice of a Black singer; they urged him to have the
popular white singer and imitator of African American styles,
Sophie Tucker, sing his songs. Fortunately, at the last minute
Sophie Tucker could not be there; Mamie Smith was called in
and history was made (Lieb 20, Albertson 34; see also Bradford).
On one level, then, the title of Walkers short story collection
You Cant Keep A Good Woman Down signifies on the title of
Bradfords historic composition You Cant Keep A Good Man
Down. In signifying, Walker changes the focus to women.
Whereas You Cant Keep A Good Man Down acknowledges
the power and determination of good men, Walkers collection
celebrates the strength and resilience of good women who
resist and persist in the face of abuse. On another level, Walkers
stories of women persisting in You Cant Keep A Good Woman
Down also signify on Bradfords story of persistence, a story
which he himself tells in Born With the Blues: His Own Story.
On a third level, Gracie Mae and Traynors unnamed song and
their story told in Nineteen Fifty-five signify on Bradfords
song and story. His/story is behind and a part of Walkers story;
both concern the racist and exploitative phenomenon of white
singers imitating or covering the songs of African Americans.
In this regard, Walkers story Nineteen Fifty-five and unnamed
song signify even more clearly on the story of Willie Mae Big
Mama Thornton and Elvis Presley and their song, Hound
Dog - perhaps the most famous cover story. (I shall return to
this later.) Through multiple levels of signifying, then, Walker
links prominent instances of this cover phenomenon, exposing
the fact of its repetition throughout American history and
reminding us that it is, indeed, a tradition by now (I Love 1).
Walkers title also makes close reference to another song, You
Just Cant Keep A Good Woman Down (1928), a 12-bar blues
sung and composed by blues woman Lillian Miller, which also
signifies on Bradfords You Cant Keep A Good Man Down
(Miller, Smith). The title, theme, and content of Millers song
reflect the essence of the empowering assertion and affirmation
found in many womens blues, and the theme is a common blues
theme found in several songs by Bessie Smith and others.
Millers song testifies to the blues roots of Walkers title, theme,
and use of signifyin(g)(2):
If you catch me stealin, Papa please dont tell on me [2x]
My new man has quit me and Im stealin back to my used to be
You may see me smilin, and you may think Im glad (ah, but
you dont know)
You may see me smilin, you may think Im glad
But you can never tell, the trouble sweet Mama have had
I dont want no man thats gonna play me and stall (dont mean
maybe)
I dont want no man thats gonna play me and stall
I just want a Daddy, really let me have it all

All of you men are, [ever] so hard to please [2x]

You got old and young women, wearin dresses up above their
Oh - Just cant keep a real good woman down [2x]
If you throw me down here Papa, I rise up in some other town
Sweet sixteen and Ive never been refused
Im sweet sixteen, never been refused
Ive got a brand new car Daddy, and its never been used (Miller)
Like Walkers title, dedication, and epigraph, the lyrics of Lillian
Millers song reflect the essence of the theme which unites the
stories in Walkers volume. The collection shows African
American women whose spirits will not be crushed, good
women who will not be kept down and who when thrown down
rise up again in some other town. They are women who struggle
and suffer a great deal, who are oppressed but not defeated;
women who command respect and reject the mistreatment of
men. Like the blues people alluded to in Walkers dedication,
they insist on the value and beauty of the authentic; they insist
on the value and beauty of themselves; they insist on being
themselves, and they demand that their needs be accommodated.
In Nineteen Fifty-five, Walker, too, insists on the value and
beauty of blues women and authentic(3) blues music,
celebrating the vitality of African American expressive culture
and the resilient creative spirit of the Black woman blues artist.
Told from the blues womans perspective in first-person
narration, Nineteen Fifty-five grounds the stories in the
volume, encapsulating and projecting the essence of the theme
which unites them in the colorful and eloquent language and
voice of the blues woman narrator. As in Hurstons Their Eyes,
Walker, in Nineteen Fifty-five, sings the blues and tells the
story of the blues through a blues woman who sings and tells her
own story. In signifying on the songs and stories of Bradford,
Miller, Hurston, and Thornton, Walker celebrates and gives voice
to the tradition both by recording it and passing it on, and by
creating her own personal expression within it.
The story Nineteen Fifty-five documents the relationship
between Gracie Mae Still, a veteran blues composer and singer,
and Traynor, a young, white, soon-to-be-rich rock n roll star.
Traynors fame and fortune rest on the success of his cover
recording in 1955-56 of a Gracie Mae Still composition dating
back to 1923. Gracie Maes narrative follows their relationship,
through visits, correspondence, and television performances,
from the day Traynor comes to ask for Gracie Maes permission
to record the song in 1955 to the day of Traynors death in 1977.
Traynor, blessed with fame and fortune but plagued by an
emptiness and confusion in both his professional and personal
lives, is drawn to the Black female creator of his first hit record,
as he is to her song, in his search for authenticity and meaning.
The relationship between Gracie Mae and Traynor develops as
Traynor struggles to understand the song which has made him
famous. The song and the composer become the vehicles through
which he seeks meaning in his life. Although he is a tragic figure,
unable ever to find himself or to find meaning in his life, Traynor
comes to understand a great deal about his own unhappiness
from his association with Gracie Mae. Walkers story
demonstrates the truth of Herman Hesses statement, given in her
epigraph, that it is harder to kill something that is spiritually
alive (Gracie Mae) than it is to bring the dead back to life
(Traynor).
Walker uses blues techniques of contrast and ironic juxtaposition
to articulate discrepancies between appearances and reality,
between what appears to be and what is, exposing the
contradictions and hypocrisy of the white material world, while
demonstrating the vital and authentic character, value, and
beauty of Gracie Mae and her music. Using oppositional
language and ironic juxtaposition, Walker contrasts: (1)
Traynors appearance of material well-being with his reality of
spiritual bankruptcy, (2) Traynors appearance of extreme and
lasting world-wide fame, success, and popularity (The Emperor

of Rock and Roll) with Gracie Maes appearance of moderate

local fame, short-lived and long forgotten (Gracie Mae Nobody
from Notasulga), and (3) Traynors spiritual reality, which is
empty, confused, and devoid of meaning, with Gracie Maes
spiritual reality, which is very much alive, filled with creativity,
and blossoming with the wisdom of age. Walker repeats this
core opposition between appearances and reality with variations,
articulating it in many guises as the story develops. Black/white,
rich/poor,
famous/unknown,
young/old,
alive/dead,
asleep/awake,
meaningful/empty,
somebody/nobody,
something/nothing are some of the manifestations this core
opposition takes. Variations of this opposition are embodied in
Walkers descriptions of Gracie Mae and Traynor: in their
appearances and the images they project, in their songs and
musical performances, and in their social interactions.
As in the blues, Walkers use of opposition and contrast occurs
within a framework of core materials which are repeated and
varied. A standard blues piece consists of a series of stanzas each
of which follows a basic harmonic structure (I IV I V I) and text
form (AAB) which is repeated and varied as a piece progresses
to give it a large-scale shape. Within this structure there are core
elements - pitches, contours, images, phrases, lines of text,
chords - which are varied using core means - embellishment,
vibrato, syncopation, timbrai nuance - to create unlimited
possibilities for rendering the same stanza, song, or structure.
Similarly, Walkers Nineteen Fifty-five is a series of
interactions; as the interaction unit is repeated, the form of the
interaction varies (visits, television performances, letters). The
story is also a sequence of diary entries distinguished by date.
Diary entries provide structural frames in which the various
forms of interaction are set (see figure on p. 226). Moreover,
behind the interaction unit there is a core relationship - that
between Gracie Mae and Traynor - as well as a core song - which
connects the two even before they have met. In subsequent visits,
correspondence, and performances, this core tune is repeated
and embellished as Traynor discovers pieces of the songs
meaning, as core images (projected by Traynor and Gracie Mae)
are elaborated, and as new takes on the core oppositions are
made.
As in the blues, it is by exposing core materials - themes,
characters, relationships, oppositions - again and again in varied
forms, in interaction after interaction, that Walker brings her
readers to a deeper understanding of their significance. As in the
blues, Walkers story takes shape in a way which both indulges
in and transcends the repetitions at the core of its formal
structure.
The story culminates with Gracie Mae and Traynors joint
appearance on The Johnny Carson Show. Structurally ingenious,
this final performance provides a forum for elements of music,
image, and social dynamics to come together. This social/musical
interaction provides an ideal stage for Alice Walker to dramatize
the core oppositions of the story and the contrasting aesthetic
values, perspectives, and personalities of two vastly different
individuals and cultures. It is important to the structural
development of Walkers story that both Gracie Mae and Traynor
sing their song on the same stage, and especially significant
that they do not sing it together, but rather each in turn. This
juxtaposition of performances is both essential to Walkers
dramatic illumination of contrast, and also symbolic of the walls
that separate and divide the two individuals and cultures.
As in the blues, Walker uses personification as a structural
vehicle to explore a wide range of issues and experiences of
struggle and conflict. As I would argue that the blues personifies
struggle by projecting issues of struggle vis-a-vis relationship
dynamics and articulating responses to relationships, Walker uses
the relationship between two characters - their interactions and
responses - as a vehicle to [TABULAR DATA OMITTED]
explore the differences and conflicts between two cultures.

Moreover, by juxtaposing the aesthetic approaches of Gracie

Mae and Traynor - the process of signifying or repetition with a
difference with that of imitation or direct repetition - Walker
examines implications of these cultural differences and the
barriers to developing relationships across differences in the
context of a racist and patriarchal society.
At the beginning of the story, Traynor and his music agent come
to Gracie Maes house to get permission to record her song and
to buy up all of the copies of her record of the song. In this first
interaction Walker performs several variations on the opposition
between appearances and reality, using contrast in her
descriptions of these two characters to evoke Gracie Maes
wariness of the duo, her difference from them, and the
boundaries she creates between herself and these white people
she does not know who want something of hers. Gracie Mae
calls Traynors music agent the deacon because he is dressed
like a Baptist deacon. In naming him the deacon, Walker
suggests the discrepancy between his outer affect - one who goes
about serving and saving souls - and his true motive - to make
money off of African American musicians. Her description also
contrasts the deacons looks (creepy) with his manner (pleasant).
Significantly, it is the deacons eyes which most expressively
embody this discrepancy between appearance and reality:
His cold gray eyes look like theyre sweating.... I wonder if
sweat makes your eyeballs pink because his are sure pink. Pink
and gray and it strikes me that nobody Id care to know is behind
them. (4-5)
The deacon appears to be a contradiction. His cold
gray/sweaty pink eyes make him appear untrustworthy. Through
her description of the deacons eyes, Gracie Mae conveys her
uneasiness with him and the hypocrisy he carries. Providing
access to the reality behind the appearance, his eyes warn her to
be on her guard.
On the other hand, Gracie Maes description of this first
encounter contrasts Traynor with the deacon. While the deacon is
an older gentleman with a smooth and talkative manner, Traynor
is young, awkward, and non-verbal. The older man does all of
the talking and negotiating; ... the boy [merely] grunts his
awareness of the transaction.... Traynors only attempt to speak
produces what Gracie Mae describes as something I cant catch
in a pitch I dont register (4). In juxtaposing Traynor with the
deacon, Walker sets into relief Traynors powerless dependency
and lack of voice, using the metaphor of voice to suggest his loss
of agency and lack of grounding. At the same time, Walkers
description
highlights
the
cultural
differences
and
communication gap between Gracie Mae and Traynor.
Traynors appearance also embodies contradiction. We glimpse
this when Gracie Mae first sees Traynor doing her song on
television. She describes him in terms of an opposition asleep/awake. He looks half asleep from the neck up, but kind
of awake in a nasty way from the waist down (6). Internally,
spiritually dead, Traynors sexuality appears to be split off,
externalized, something that he is wearing - apart from him,
not a part of him. Ironically, it is this aspect of his appearance his
objectification of sexuality - rather than the song itself to which
the audience responds: He wasnt doing too bad with my song
either, but it wasnt just the song the people in the audience was
screeching and screaming over, it was that nasty little jerk he was
doing from the waist down (6-7).
In Traynors second visit to Gracie Mae, Traynor and the Deacon
are opposed again, exposing another discrepancy in Traynors
appearance. Using ironic juxtaposition, Walker contrasts
Traynors other-defined deacon-imposed television image (his
on-camera appearance) with the more presentable self which
he brings to Gracie Maes (his off-camera appearance): On the
TV he was inclined to dress like the deacon told him. But now he
looked presentable (7).

In subsequent visits, as Traynors wealth and fame grow, Walker

intensifies her descriptions of the discrepancy between Traynors
appearance of material well-being and the reality of his spiritual
bankruptcy. In addition, she begins directly to contrast the
characters of Gracie Mae and Traynor, using their song as a
metaphor to probe questions of meaning and spiritual well-being.
As Traynor lacks voice, he also lacks his own song - a song
which resonates his own life experience. In 1960, in a letter to
Gracie Mae, Traynor articulates the connection between singing
and living: Ive been thinking about writing some songs of my
own but every time I finish one it dont seem to be about nothing
Ive actually lived myself (11). To write and sing his own song
is to give voice to himself and meaning to his life. Since he lacks
his own song, his life lacks meaning.
In contrast, the song that Gracie Mae sings is meaningful and
true, more so at the time of the story than when she wrote and
first sang the song, because it resonates her experience. She says,
... if I was to sing that song today Id tear it up.... Them words
could hold me up (14). Her language evokes the strength and
empowerment that come from telling it like it is, singing her
truth and giving voice to her experiences through song. Gracie
Mae teaches that, like the song itself, a songs meaning is not
inherent or fixed. It grows and changes with time, with shifting
contexts and new experiences. Meaning varies from one
performer and audience member to the next, and emerges anew
in each performance, deepening with the wisdom of lived
experience and age. As Bernice Johnson Reagon says of singing
in the African American tradition, The songs are free and they
have the meaning placed in them by the singers (2).
When Traynor comes to visit Gracie Mae in 1968, Walkers
exploration of the discrepancy between his appearance of
material wealth and spiritual vacuity takes on new dimensions. In
her language, Walker embodies several layers of opposition and
ironic inversion. First, the connections between wealth and
appearances and the appearance of wealth with deceit are
ironically embodied in Walkers description of the arrival of
Traynor and his entourage: With wings they could pass for
angels, with hoods they could be the Klan (11). Evoking the
same sense of wariness evidenced in Gracie Maes initial
description of the Deacon, the reality encapsulated in this
compact blues line is that Klan members do pass for angels in
this society, as racist religion passes for spirituality, and record
agents pass for deacons, greedy men for saviors. Walker suggests
the close connection between wealth and deceit in American
society, as exemplified in the music business.
Second, Walker contrasts Traynors lack of vital substance with
Gracie Maes strong personal presence, articulating an ironic
inversion. Traynor, the one who appears materially weighted
down and solid, is in reality lacking in substance, amorphous, a
body without soul; conversely, Gracie Mae, who does not depend
on material things, is solid, defined, boundaried, a body with a
soul. In contrast to Traynor, whose eyes werent right and who
Gracie Mae describes as something ... sitting there talking to me
but not necessarily with a person behind it (13), Gracie Mae
looks distinguished. You see me coming and know somebodys
there (12). By italicizing thing, Gracie Mae underscores
Traynors lack of vitality; by italicizing there, she highlights his
lack of presence. As with the Deacon, Traynors eyes provide an
entre into the spiritual reality behind the appearance. Like his
eyes, Traynors laugh also lacks life:
He laughs. The first time I ever heard him laugh. It dont sound
much like a laugh and I cant swear that its better than no laugh
atall.
Then he laughs again: What did it sound like? I couldnt place
it (12). Like his voice during the first visit, Traynors laugh does
not register. Like his eyes, his laugh is empty. Like Mr. Turners
laugh in Hurstons Their Eyes (214-15), Traynors laugh is
powerless and vanishing; it lacks soul. For both Hurston and

Walker, laughter symbolizes vitality. To laugh - really laugh - is

to be responsive, to be alive and really living. Loss of laughter
and an inability to laugh indicate a loss of life, a loss of self. A
solid, grounded, full-powered laugh, like the voice that sings its
own song, reflects the personality, the somebody, behind it.
Third, using Gracie Maes relationship with Bessie Smith as a
metaphor, Walker explores the question of fame in relation to
spiritual health, exposing a threefold opposition and a second
ironic inversion. Walker identifies Gracie Mae with obscure
African American creative artists like Lillian Miller. She does not
become famous in the way either Bessie Smith or Traynor did.
As Walker contrasts Traynor with Gracie Mae, she also contrasts
Bessie Smith with Gracie Mae. Gracie Mae and Bessie Smith
fight, because Bessie, like Traynor, wants to sing Gracie Maes
song, but Gracie Mae thinks that, like herself, Bessie should stick
with her own songs, her own experience, and become famous for
her own songs, her own self. Couldnt be nothing worse than
being famous the world over for something you dont even
understand (14).
By insisting on the value and beauty of the authentic, Walker
opposes any sacrifice of self to make money or acquire fame. In
Nineteen Fifty-five Walker probes the question What does it
mean to be someone? Her story suggests that a person living
for fame, fortune, and being known often sacrifices her or his
humanity for a thing, whereas to be yourself, sing your own
song, live your own life is to be somebody. The inversion Walker
dramatizes, also an important manifestation of the
appearance/reality opposition, is that a nobody (one who is not
famous) is often more somebody (her- or himself) than a
somebody (one who is famous), because that person is more
likely to be spiritually grounded rather than materially obsessed.
We hear Walker playing on this three-pronged opposition when
Gracie Mae says, By then she was Miss Bessie Smith to the
World, and I was still Gracie Mae Nobody from Notasulga (14).
Here Walker also puns on Gracie Maes last name - Still and
still. Both Bessie Smith and Traynor were famous, while
Gracie Mae was not. Both Bessie Smith and Traynor are dead
and died young; Traynor lost his somebodyness among things.
In contrast, Gracie Mae Nobody is Gracie Mae s/Still; she is
alive in spirit as well as in body - and somebody, as she has
always been and always will be.
Walkers exploration of materialism culminates in Gracie Maes
visit to Traynors house in 1968, where we see for the first time
his home environment. Walker captures the vastness of Traynors
material wealth in her humorous and exaggerated description of
Gracie Maes experience of the journey to visit him, which
makes use of personification as well as hyperbole: When they
finally get to the kitchen, the first thing Gracie Mae notices is
that, altogether, there are five stoves. He looks about to introduce
me to one (16). By projecting Gracie Maes response to
Traynors mountain castle, Walker intensifies her examination of
the contrasts between their lifestyles, as well as her probing of
the spiritual reality behind Traynors appearance of material
well-being. By exaggerating and personifying Traynors material
wealth, and juxtaposing these images with images in which
Traynor appears objectified, Walker caricatures an inversion
between person and object which dramatizes the contrast
between Traynors material wealth and spiritual destitution, and
the discrepancies between appearance and reality. We see how
too much and too big can be oppressive and alienating,
obstructing and obscuring ones relationship to oneself and to
others. Ironically, Traynors too much room (five floors, a whole
mountain) results in too little space for himself.
Walkers articulation of the opposition between appearances and
reality and dramatization of the contrasts between Gracie Mae
and Traynor reach a peak in the final interaction when the two
appear together on The Johnny Carson Show (1968). Contrasts
occur on several levels at once: (1) how Gracie Mae and Traynor

look and their attitudes toward how they look, (2) their
performances of their song and their approaches to singing,
and (3) the audiences responses to their performances and their
reactions to the audience response.
Traynor is all corseted down, trying to appear thin, while Gracie
Mae, having failed to lose weight, has had ... a very big dress
made (18). Traynors approach is to try to hide this aspect of his
physical reality, while Gracie Mae acknowledges it and works
with it, bringing style to it. It is as if Traynor is trying to appear
as he did in 1956. Second, in her juxtaposition of their
performances, Walker captures the vast differences between their
approaches to singing and attitudes toward it. Describing her
own performance, Gracie Mae says:
... I sound - wonderful. Being able to sing good aint all about
having a good singing voice atall. A good singing voice helps.
But when you come up in the Hard Shell Baptist church like I
did you understand early that the fellow that sings is the singer.
Them that waits for programs and arrangements and letters from
home is just good voices occupying body space.... I am singing
my own song, my own way. And I give it all Ive got and enjoy
every minute of it. (18)
Describing Traynors performance, she says:
... he sings it just the way he always did. My voice, my tone, my
inflection, everything. But he forgets a couple of lines. (18-19)
By juxtaposing the two contrasting performances, Walker sets
into relief important elements of Gracie Maes background and
the aesthetic principles and values which are reflected in her
singing. Walkers passage vividly illustrates ethnomusicologist
Mellonee Burnims contention (159) that performance
symbolizes and generates a sense of vitality in African American
culture. In detailing what makes for a wonderful sound in the
African American tradition, Gracie Mae suggests that it is not the
quality of the voice itself so much as the spirit of the person
behind it that makes for the good singer. She speaks of the
importance of the church and the integral role it plays in the
everyday life of the Black community. The name Hard Shell
Baptist church signifies the groundedness and durability of the
Black church as a stabilizing force in the African American
community. The name also alludes to the sanctuary which the
church has provided African Americans historically. On a third
level, Hard Shell suggests the role of the Black church in
providing lessons in survival and teaching music as a strategy of
struggle.
Gracie Mae also speaks of the importance of being present in the
moment and being moved by the spirit, and alludes to the
traditional process of learning [music] by doing. Again
illustrating core African American aesthetics identified by
Burnim (159, 162), she speaks of the importance of individuality
and personal expression - of making a song her own and creating
it anew in each performance - and of the necessity for total
personal involvement, for putting all of herself into each
performance and singing for her self and for her own enjoyment.
Gracie Mae contrasts her own spiritual approach with good
voices occupying body space, which, in its use of
objectification, alludes to Traynors somethingness and material
approach. As is clear from Gracie Maes description of his
performance, Traynor is still copying Gracie Mae, as he was in
1956: side streets, avenues, red lights, train crossings and all
(7). In 1968 he copies himself in 1956 copying Gracie Mae in
1923. He does nothing musically to make it his own song. He is
not enjoying himself, nor is he present with the music in the
moment. In his contempt for his audience and for himself and in
his disgust with the audiences response, he forgets a couple of
lines of the song.
By juxtaposing the two performances, Walker also illuminates
several levels of contrast in the audience/performer dynamics.
On the one hand, the audience responds to Traynor with the same
matronly squeals as in 1956, but shows little interest in Gracie

Mae. On the other hand, while the audience claps politely for
about two seconds for Gracie Mae, Traynor stands and claps and
claps and beams at Gracie Mae and at the audience like [she]
his mama for true (18). The reactions of Gracie Mae and
Traynor to their audiences responses are also vastly different.
When Traynor gives Gracie Mae a hug, the audience laughs,
responding to the contrast in appearance between the two. Gracie
Mae smiles, acknowledging the comical aspect of the moment,
while Traynor gets mad. Traynor again becomes angry and
disgusted at the audiences responses to the two performances
and feels defeated, whereas Gracie Mae, undaunted by the
audience, consoles Traynor as a mother would a child.
In sum, Traynor concerns himself with the responses of an
audience of people he feels contempt for but does not know; he
surrounds himself regularly with people he cares little for and
does not know. He eats and sleeps with people he does not know
- including his wife. In contrast, Gracie Mae surrounds herself
with the people she loves and knows, trying only to make the
people she knows and cares about happy. She concerns herself
with pleasing her audience insofar as they are people she
knows. Pleasing them means singing out of her own
experience, insisting on the value and beauty of her own
experience and her own voice, and pleasing herself first. Gracie
Maes audience was small, it was honest, it was intimate. Like
Ma Rainey, she really knew these people (Lieb 17). And they
responded to the truth she put out, which resonated their own
experience. Her singing made the dirt farmers cry like babies
and the womens shout Honey, hush! (6). In contrast, Traynors
audience is huge, dishonest, and undiscriminating, on him like
white on rice (9).
As I suggested at the beginning of this essay, Alice Walkers
fictional character Traynor bears a clear relationship to the reallife figure Elvis Presley. In her characterization of Traynor,
Walker repeats many aspects of Presleys appearance and
career, including the following.(4) Presley began recording in
1954, just out of high school. By 1956, his records were reaching
number one on the pop charts, and he was fast becoming a
wealthy man. While still a young man he was hailed as The
King of Rock n Roll.(5) He also made numerous movies and
television appearances. He was drafted into the army in March
1958, served much of his time in Germany, and was discharged
in March 1960. He was known to give generous gifts - cars,
televisions, diamond rings - to family members, friends, fans,
and acquaintances. He was also known to travel with his
entourage in a fleet of Cadillacs which were always on hand. It
was the wiggle movement Elvis the Pelvis made with his
hips in those first performances of fast R & B numbers that led
the young white women and girls to scream and shout for more.
He was married, divorced, and had numerous short-lived
relationships with women. He gained a great deal of weight in
his later years, tipping the scales at 250 pounds in August 1977
when he died of heart failure related to drug use at the age of 42.
Throughout Presleys career, his success was largely due to his
numerous covers of R & B records by African American
composers and performers. While Presley made an enormous
amount of money singing and recording the songs of African
Americans, the African American originators saw very little. This
longstanding tradition of racism and exploitation in the
American music industry, which appeared in a slightly different
guise in the classic blues era, dates back to minstrelsy, when
white men in blackface imitated African Americans (Toll). In the
case of rock n roll, as Walker suggests in her descriptions of
Traynors copying Gracie Maes song (7, 18), white performers
like Elvis often copied the records they covered down to the
details of the arrangements and the dance movements that went
with them. When Elvis sang Black music, white audiences ate it
up. Sam Phillips of Sun records, who had recorded Black R & B
performers for years, knew that if he could find a white man who

could sing Black music like an African American, he could make

a star and a killing. He did both with Elvis (Goldman 110).
Presley learned the blues from listening to Arthur Big Boy
Crudup, Roy Brown, and other African American musicians in
Tupelo, Mississippi, where he grew up. His first two records
made in 1954 were covers of Crudups blues piece Thats All
Right, originally recorded in 1946, and Roy Browns R & B hit
Good Rockin Tonight, originally recorded in 1947. But it was
Presleys cover of Hound Dog in 1956, a song originally
recorded in 1952 by R & B singer Willie Mae Big Mama
Thornton, which became a million-seller and sent him to the top
of the national charts (Cotten 91).(6)
While Walkers character Gracie Mae differs somewhat from the
real-life blues figure and originator of Elviss million-seller
record Hound Dog, some notable similarities exist between the
two. The late great Willie Mae Big Mama Thornton is a
contemporary R & B legend whose career reflects the
continuance of the blues tradition from the 1940s through the
1980s. Her exceptional voice and powerful presence, and the
image she projected, exerted considerable influence on many Elvis Presley and Janis Joplin among them. Big Mama
Thornton combined the qualities of several generations of the
best country and classic blues women. Chris Strachowitz, who
recorded and publicized her in the 1960s, called her the greatest
female blues singer of any decade. Strachowitzs description of
her aesthetic approach to singing matches the essential qualities
of Walkers character to a tee. He says:
At all times Big Mama is herself - she doesnt try to be anybody
else.... Big Mama sings music she feels - songs which have
meaning for her - blues which deals with everyday life as she
experienced it.... Big Mama makes [a song] into her own
personal expression. (Liner notes)
Thulani Daviss description of Big Mamas performance in the
1980 concert Blues Is A Woman, which occurred alongside
classic blues legend Sippie Wallace and others, also captures
something of the individual quality of her voice, presence, and
image:
The concerts finest moment was Big Mama Thornton, who
sported a mans 3-piece suit (completely offsetting all the
sequins and chiffon) topped with a straw hat and showing a
mans gold watch. She sat at stage center and talked and played a
few pieces she wanted to play (not on the program).... she wore
out the harmonica & wailed & rocked the house. She set the
standard for what its all about. She was the woman who left
home, left home early, and she reminded me of a song they say
was sung way back before 1910 that women blues singers took
over as their own: Aint nobodys bizness if I do. (Davis 56;
emphasis added)
Like Gracie Mae, Willie Mae Big Mama Thornton was a big
woman for most of her life, weighing some 300 pounds in 1965
(Strachowitz).(7) Moreover, the name Gracie Mae itself suggests
some connection to Willie Mae Thornton.
One difference between character and real-life singer is that Big
Mama Thornton did not compose Hound Dog; the popular
songwriting team Lieber and Stoller did that. Nevertheless, as
Strachowitzs comments suggest, she made the song her own in
performance, embellishing the text and adding a humorous ad lib
monologue. A second difference is that Walkers character,
Gracie Mae Still, made her original recording of the unnamed
song in 1923, while Thornton recorded Hound Dog in 1952.
Walkers character is a classic blues singer and composer, a
contemporary friend and rival of Bessie Smith, whereas
Thornton was an R & B performer and composer. Yet, like Big
Mama Thornton, Gracie Mae Still embodies several generations
of blues women. In the character of Gracie Mae, Walker
celebrates the long herstorical tradition of the blues and the
lives and work of its Black female creators, from Bessie Smith to
Willie Mae Big Mama Thornton, Aretha Franklin, and beyond.

As Gracie Mae embodies many singers, her song embodies many

songs. Although Walker uses three blanks (----- ----- -----),
loosely suggesting a three-word title, she chooses not to specify
the songs title because it could be many songs, and its meaning
extends beyond the particulars of any one song. (8) At the same
time, Walkers story would appear to signify on the song Hound
Dog, and, in any case, an examination of the song provides an
interesting reading of aspects of the storys meaning.
You aint nothin but a hound dog, been snoopin round my door
[2x]
You can wag your tail, but I aint gonna feed you no more.
You told me you was high class, but I could see through that
Yes, you told me you was high class, but I could see through that
And Daddy I know, you aint no real cool cat.
You made me feel so blue, you made me weep and moan
You made me feel so blue, yeah you made me weep and moan
Cause you aint lookin for a woman, all youre lookin is for a
home. (Thornton)
The songs image of the hound dog wagging and snooping
suggests the deceitful, low-down ways of a no-good man,
whose outward appearance and initial words and gestures are
contradicted by the reality of his intentions and his ultimate
behavior. He acts friendly (wags his tail) as though he cares for
the singer personally, but thats only because he wants something
(food, sex, a home). While he tells her he is respectable,
committed, and able and willing to pull his weight (high class),
experience tells her that she should be wary.
The blues image of the hound dog from Big Mama Thorntons
song becomes a core image in Walkers story. At a moment of
clarity and despair, inspired by his exchanges with Gracie Mae,
Traynor says to her:
They want what you got but they dont want you. They want
what I got only it aint mine. Thats what makes em so hungry
for me when I sing. They getting the flavor of something but
they aint getting the thing itself. They like a pack of hound dogs
trying to gobble up a scent. (17)
At this moment Traynor comes closest to singing his own blues
song. His words contain the contrast, the paradox, the ironic
juxtaposition and inversion, and even the sensual imagery and
feeling of the blues. The language is reminiscent of Hurstons
description of Daisy Blunt in Their Eyes, in which she contrasts
the white and black in Daisys clothes, eyes, and hair, using
sensual and sexually suggestive blues imagery to celebrate
Daisys Black femaleness and to articulate an African American
image of beauty (105-06).
In the same way in which Hurston discusses Daisys black hair
having a white flavor, Walker describes white music having a
Black flavor. Traynors white audience gobbles up the Black
flavor that the white singer (Traynor) copying the Black singer
(Gracie Mae) is putting out. While Traynor refers in the hound
dog passage to his young white audience, he also speaks of his
own position and relation to Gracie Maes song. Traynor, too, has
got the flavor of the song and has gobbled up [its] scent. Hes
onto some part of the songs meaning, and beginning to
comprehend his own life - but the full meaning of the song, the
life, and the experience behind the song still eludes him. The
image of the hound dog describes Traynors pursuit of Gracie
Mae, his pursuit of the songs meaning, and his pursuit of self; it
also describes his pursuit of fame and fortune and his attempts at
relationships and marriage:
It was like singing somebody elses record. I copied the way it
was supposed to be exactly but I never had a clue what marriage
meant.... I never could squeeze any of my own life either into it
or out of it. (13)
In both Big Mama Thorntons song and Alice Walkers story, the
hound dogs (Traynor, white people, men) want what the Black
womans got, but they dont want her. They aint lookin for a
woman, [they] lookin for a home. Theyre hungry for food;

theyre gobbling up a scent. Theyre pursuing something, not

someone; the flavor of something, not the thing itself; the
appearance of things, not the people behind them; material
comfort rather than spiritual well-being.
Traynor in all his wealth and fame (in the words of Thorntons
song) appears to be high class, and he attempts to share this
status with Gracie Mae, buying her cars and houses and
appliances and more, but as the song says, she see[s] through
that and know[s he] aint no real cool cat. She says no thank
you to his lifestyle. She appreciates a brand new Cadillac and
wouldnt mind waking up to homemade cornbread every
morning, but as for a house with a kitchen with five stoves and a
long hike to the porch and people she doesnt even know all
around her, she says thanks but no thanks (16-17).
In signifying on the song and story of Big Mama Thornton, Elvis
Presley, and Hound Dog, Walkers crucial difference comes
in the fact that Traynor seeks to understand the meaning of the
song he sings by pursuing his relationship with its creator. A clue
to Walkers interest in Elvis and to the significance of her
fictional development of the relationship between Traynor and
Gracie Mae in Nineteen Fifty-five appears in her fourth novel,
The Temple of My Familiar (1989). Here Ola (an Olinkan man)
and Fanny Nzingha (his African American daughter) discuss
Olas ideas for a play about Elvis Presley. Ola clearly perceives
Elvis to be Native American in aspects of his dress (buckskin,
fringe, silver) and in aspects of his appearance (thick black hair,
full lips), and culturally just as black as the other white people
in Mississippi. Ola and Fannie imagine Elviss little bump and
grind as originally a movement of the circle dance, and his
hiccupy singing style as once a war whoop or an Indian love call.
Ola listens to Elvis to hear where commercial and mainstream
cultural success takes people, a part of whose lineage is hidden
even from themselves, in a country that insists on racial, cultural
and historical amnesia, if you wake up one century and find
yourself white. Ola says: in [Elvis] white Americans found a
reason to express their longing and appreciation for the repressed
Native American and Black parts of themselves (188). Ola
suggests that the weeping of white maidens over Elviss death is
white Americas weeping over the loss of the other both within
themselves and without (189).
Indeed, in the character of Traynor, Walker herself explores
questions of success and identity, using the image and story of
Elvis Presley as a vehicle. Olas comments in Temple suggest
that part of Traynors attraction to Gracie Mae and his search for
the meaning of her song is his longing for the lost African
American parts of himself which are embodied in his Loosianna
creole features (4), while part of his audiences hungry
adulation is white Americas longing for the cut-off and
repressed African American part of themselves.
In Nineteen Fifty-five, as in Temple, Walker explores the idea
that human beings want, above all else, to love each other freely
regardless of tribe (189) and recognizes musicians efforts to
bridge the gap. In Temple, for example, through the character of
Miss Lissie, Walker acknowledges the efforts of Janis Joplin,
whose immediate musical momma was also Big Mama
Thornton. (Their song was Ball n Chain.) Miss Lissie says:
She knew Bessie Smith was her momma, and she sang her guts
out trying to tear open that closed door between them (369). In
Nineteen Fifty-five, Walker similarly uses this mother/child
image to describe the relationship which develops between
Gracie Mae and Traynor (7-8, 18). In pursuing the meaning of
Gracie Maes song through developing a relationship with its
creator, Traynor begins to know himself as he begins to know
Gracie Mae.
It seems to me that Walker, In Nineteen Fifty-five, uses a blues
mode to sow the seeds for her explicit critique of essentialist
notions of identity in The Temple of My Familiar. After several
centuries of cohabitation in the Southern U.S. (not to mention the

centuries of contact in Europe, Africa, Asia, and elsewhere

before that), Walker argues, white and Black (and Native)
cultures can no longer be realistically considered independent or
pure; and, in this context, the maintenance of strict definitions
of individuals as Black or white becomes absurd. Walker teaches
that these prescriptive definitions not only keep people from one
another but, as exemplified in the case of Traynor, often
tragically keep people from themselves.
Notes
1. This article is a revision of a chapter from my dissertation, Voices of Struggle:
An Exploration of the Relationship Between African American Womens Music
and Literature, U of California-Berkeley, 1992.
2. I am not suggesting that Walker knew of the existence of Millers song or had
actually heard the recording, nor am I suggesting that Walker was consciously
signifying on Millers song/title. It is highly likely, however, that Miller,
recording in 1928 (like Walker writing today), was aware of Bradfords song, if
not from Mamie Smiths recording in 1920 then from the circulation of the song
which that popular recording would have generated, and that she wes in some
sense consciously signifyin(g) on it. The theme itself is a common blues theme
reflected in many songs by Bessie Smith and others, and Walker undoubtedly
knew that. Millers recording testifies to the cultural groundedness of Walkers
blues, as well as to the fact that the signifyin(g) process itself operates within the
blues tradition.
3. It seems to me that Walkers use of the term authentic here is not so much
indicative of an essentialist view of African American culture as it is about
individuals being true to themselves and the primary agents of their own lives.
For Walker, it is not so much the presence or absence of Blackness and Black
style that makes for authentic blues music as it is the presence or absence of
vitality, of purpose, of oneself in ones life/performance. The Black sound in
and of itself can signify neither Blackness nor meaning.
4. The details of Elvis Presleys life and career that follow are compiled from
Cotten and Goldman.
5. The name Traynor suggests an apprentice - one who is in training - which in
Walkers story is Traynors relationship to Gracie Mae. As Elvis was known by
many by his first name only, Traynor is not given a last name in Walkers story.
His lack of a last name is perhaps also indicative of his lack of cultural and
personal grounding and identity.
6. A more detailed look at Elvis Presleys life would reveal many more
similarities as well as many differences between Elvis and Walkers character,
and suggest additional interpretations of the details of Walkers story. However,
this is beyond the scope of this article.
7. While Thornton was a big woman during her prime, she lost a great deal of
weight in the last years of her life when she was hospitalized for sickness related
to alcohol abuse; her early deterioration and untimely death in 1984 at the age of
58 were largely due to alcohol abuse. This paints a reality grimmer than Walkers
story. In The Color Purple, Walker begins to explore the physical and
psychological toll which involvement in the music business, racism, sexism, life
on the road, and lack of familial support could and did take on African American
female performers.
8. Similarly, in The Color Purple, Walker does not specify Mr. -----s last name
because he could be many men; there are many like him.

8
David Wong Louie was born and
raised in New York. He received a
Bachelors Degree in English from
Vassar College and an MFA from
the University of Iowa. His first
book, the story collection Pangs
of Love, won The Los Angeles
Times Book Review First Fiction
Award, the Ploughshares First
Fiction Book Award, was a New
York Times Book Review Notable
of 1991 and a Voice Literary
Supplement Favorite of 1991.
Louie is currently an Associate
Professor at the Department of
English and the Asian-American Studies Center at UCLA. He
lives in Venice, California with his wife and son.
Studies: M.F.A. Creative Writing, The University of Iowa, 1981;
B.A. Vassar College, 1977
Interests: Asian American Studies, Creative Writing
Selected Publications: The Barbarians Are Coming, 2000;
Pangs of Love, 1991.

The Barbarians Are Coming

by David Wong Louie
Feast or famine. My plate is suddenly full. One day my Bliss is
in Iowa, studying dentistry, gazing at the gums and decay of hog
farmers and their kin. She claims she can eyeball a patients teeth
and see through to whats rotten. And now shes coming home
for a quick visit, a thousand miles, without even the excuse of a
national holiday or school calendar break. Dont you have teeth
to clean? I asked hopefully when she called with the news. At
my insistence we use long-distance sparingly, only when
something truly important comes up. Since Im still up in the air
about our future as a couple, why throw away good money until
Im sure about what Im doing: its the difference between
carnations for her birthday and a cashmere sweater. I have us
writing postcards back and forth. Short and sweet, public enough
so things can never get too involved or serious. A pictures worth
a thousand words.
Heres the rest of the picture: I am twenty-six years old, and
was recently anointed the new resident chef at the Richfield
Ladies Club in Richfield, Connecticut. I make lunch and tea,
and in the evenings Im on my own. A few weeks back, an old
classmate at the CIA (thats the Culinary Institute of America),
Jim King, now pastry chef for one of the Kennedy widows, and
hating it, told an acquaintance of his who had just started her
course work at the Yale Graduate School of Design to call me if
she ever wanted a great home-cooked meal. Her name is Lisa
Lee, and as she put it when she phoned and invited herself to
dinner, Sterling Lung, King says youre fabulous. He said Id
like you even if you couldnt cook. I was flattered, of course,
but as soon as we hung up, I felt crowded by her presumptions,
as I do whenever some know-it-all enters my kitchen and
counsels me on ways to improve whatever I have on the stove:
more salt, more pepper, or once even more cardamom.
To my credit, I did try to discourage her with the warning that
New Haven is clear across the state, a solid two-and-a-half-hour
drive away. How can that be? she said. Were in the same
area code. I couldnt imagine what Jim King might have told
her; Lisa Lee was undaunted. Im sure youll make the drive
worthwhile.

In bed that night I puzzled over the phone call. Why had Lisa
Lee been put up to this? I tried to contact Jim King, but was
unsuccessful; the alumni office at the CIA wouldnt divulge his
exact whereabouts, a condition of his employment. I mulled over
the facts, scarce as they were. Finally I decided: Jim King must
have a stake in this, he must be in pursuit of this Lisa Lee and is
simply using me as bait. My role is that of a culinary Cupid. Fair
enough. One day Ill call in the favor, have King set me up with
a Kennedy.
I was so pleased with my revelation that I bounced out of bed
and wrote to Bliss. On the back of a John and Yoko postcard (its
their wedding day), I shouldve known better, but I spilled the
beans. I put it all down, except the bit about King and the debt
hell repay with a Kennedy.
Im innocent; totally up-front, right? But honesty isnt enough
for Bliss. Shell never admit it, but some corn-yellow tooth is
going to go unpulled because shes jealous, in love, and coming
east to protect what she believes is hers.
So it goes, the laden table, the overflowing cup.
Im talking to Fuchs, the butcher I buy from. How about a nice
capon? Fuchs says. He has muttonchop sideburns and a nose
with hairs like alfalfa sprouts. I grimace; with his talk of capons,
Fuchs suddenly assumes a sinister, perverted cast.
Ive never cooked capon before. Serving castrated rooster isnt
my bag. All I want is a four-, four-and-a-half-pounder, a biggish
bird so Lisa Lee wont think Im going cheap on her.
Fuchs tears off a square of orange butcher paper, which he lays
on the scale, then plops the bird on top. Fresh, he says. Be my
guest, take a whiff. Fuchs wont steer you wrong. Pound for
pound, you cant buy better than this.
Cool refrigerated air rises off the dank yellow skin. Im
surprised at you, Fuchs. I would think youd be more
sympathetic to his plight, I say, fingering the ex-rooster.
Why? Because Im a member of the tribe? Because I was
circumcised?
No. Because you have one to circumcise. I poke the bird.
Us guys have got to stick together, Fuchs. Think about it: Snip!
And as if thats not bad enough, they throw him back in with the
others to plump, big and fat, and he struts around like cocks do,
big man in barnyard, only the hens are snickering behind his
back. Think how he mustve felt.
Sterling, what gives? Since when did you become
psychologist to the poultry world? He wraps the capon, ties the
bundle with brown twine. Hey, speaking of snip, how about
whats-her-name, the one they let play against the ladies at the
U.S. Open last year. Whatever happened to heror should I say
him? Renee Richards, tennis pro, who in a recent former life
was Richard Raskind, medical doctor. I remember the first time I
saw her in the newspaper, she was in her tennis whites, in one of
those ridiculously skimpy skirts female players wear in order to
show off their panties. I was immediately drawn to her looks,
found her rather sexy even, that is, until I read the accompanying
article detailing her surgical transformation. Cant tell a she
from a he? I scolded myself. What kind of man are you?
A woman enters the store. A young housewife dressed in an
outfit; her shoes, belt, and lipstick match. Fuchs snaps back to his
business mode: So how many of these capons would you like,
sir? I guarantee you, the ladies at the club will adore this flesh.
The new customer is browsing the beef-pork-lamb end of the
refrigerated case. I look at her, then at Fuchs, who rolls his eyes
and whispers, That one was never a doctor.
I nod; hes got that right! Thats it for today, I say.
Hey, these birds are meaty, Fuchs says, but just one wont
feed that crowd at the club.
Its not for the ladies. I laugh nervously. I have this art
student from Yale, a total stranger, coming for dinner. A friend of
a friend, that sort of thing.

Why so glum? Yale, you say. At least shes smart.

How do you know shes a she?
Because a guy gets hamburger. She, he indicates the
housewife, with a tip of his head, gets the bird.
Youre right, shes a she. Lisa Lee.
Chinese too, Sterling! Better than good.
I stare at Fuchs as though he were a freak, natural or
manmade, himself a capon.
Whyre you looking at me like Madame Chiang Kai-shek just
burst from my forehead?
I shake the shock from my eyes. I never imagined she might
be Chinese.
Madame Chiang?
No, Lisa Lee.
The other customer sets her purse on top of the meat case.
To her Fuchs says, Im almost through here, miss. To me he
says, Lees a Chinese name. Am I right?
Sure, but Ive been thinking Robert E. Lee. Vivien Leigh.
Sara Lee.
And dont forget Richard Day-lee and F. Lee Bay-lee.
Be serious.
And theres that jujitsu guyBruce Lee. Fuchs scratches his
bald spot. Geez, when you think of it, hardly anyones
Chinese.
I hand over some money. Fuchs offers to charge the purchase
to the Ladies Club account.
Personal use.
Boy, you Chinese are honest, Fuchs says. Well, I wish I
was in your shoes, having a blind date like that. He winks, and
at that moment, as half his face collapses, I see him as a man
from an earlier time in human history, someone who could
effortlessly tilt back the chin of a lamb and slash its throat.
Leaving the store, I hear Fuchs say to his customer, So, I see
you like looking at meat
I walk to the Ladies Club with the capon bundle under my arm. I
know Fuchs must be right. Hanging around death as he does all
day, he sees things. Lisa Lee is Chinese, which explains why Jim
King has put her up to our meeting; he thinks well make a cute
couple together, a pair of matching bookends.
I try to imagine Lisa Lee and immediately conjure up my
sisters. I see them, one after the other, their faces like post office
mug shots, and under their chins, instead of a serial number, is a
plaque that reads Lisa Lee. I know its wrongheaded, even a bit
spooky, and entirely indicative of bad wiring inside me, but in
my heart every Chinese woman registers as an aunt, my mother,
my sisters, or the Hong Kong girl whose picture my mother
keeps taped to the kitchen mirror. They hold no romantic interest
for me.
I pass Kim the greengrocer. People in town think he is
Chinese. I backtrack, enter the store. Lisa Lee: bean sprouts,
snow peas. I rarely do business with Kim, who charges four
times wholesale and wont cut me a break, ripping me off, his
Asian brother, along with everyone else. Six bucks a pound for
snow peas! Kims making a mint and getting fat, even his wirerims look fat. And he speaks only enough English to kiss up to
the housewives with his America is good place, You look
nice, Cheap, cheap stuff. With me, he doesnt botherwhat is
another Oriental going to get him?
I pay, and feel pickpocketed. My own money, and whats it
going to get me? Not so cheap, I say to Kim, with a smile,
angling for a discount. But he just eyes me, a stray thats
wandered in off the street.
You not have to buy, he says, and shrugs.
Normally I have no use for bean sprouts and snow peas, even
at half the price. They are not part of who I am as a chef. But just
as tennis requires a can of balls, a milkshake a drinking straw, a
dinner guest named Lisa Lee requires the appropriate vegetable

matter. Blind date, I say, holding my purchases up by my ear. I

can see from Kims blank expression that he has failed to grasp
my meaning: he cant see that my hands are tied, that I must go
against the grain, that under routine circumstances I wouldnt
tolerate this economic exploitation.
Kim says, America is land of plenty. Why you want a blind
girl for?
When I get homethat is, the small apartment that comes with
the job, four hundred square feet, the top floor of the carriage
house in the rear of the Ladies Club propertyI find a postcard
from Bliss in the mail. A giant ear of corn that takes up the entire
length of a flatbed truck. She alternates between sending the
mutant-corn postcard and sending the one of the colossal hog
with antelope horns. She writes: A guy comes in complaining
about a toothache but he doesnt know which tooth aches. The X
rays dont know any better, and neither do my professors. But
then I had a hunch, this feeling; I borrowed a light and checked
his eyes and his ears. And bingo! There was a moth in there and
a foot of yarn! When it was all over, Moth Ears asked me out for
a beer. He said, Are you spoken for? I had never heard it put
that way. Sterling, have you spoken for me? I love you. See you
Friday, the 16th.
I check the calendar. Today is Friday, the fifteenth. Is she
coming today, or tomorrow, the sixteenth? Friday, as she says, or
Saturday? Somethings wrong. As much as I hate having to do
so, I have to phone her, paying premium daytime rates, no less.
When she doesnt answer, Im relieved, spared the toll charges
though I know thats an inappropriate response. Shes probably
already in the air. I need to straighten the matter out. I try Lisa
Lees number; she isnt at home either. Perhaps both are
speeding, in opposite directionsLisa Lee from the east, Bliss
from the westto the same trembling destination.
I rinse the bird, salt its body cavity, and curse Fuchs. Before
Fuchs, Lisa Lee was just a hungry student coming for a homecooked meal; a stranger shows up uninvited at your door, you
feed him. Or her. Theres a right and a wrong, and I was prepared
to do the right thing. In the end even Bliss wouldnt have
objected to that. But talking to Fuchs has put me in a fix. Now
my innocent little dinner, my mission of mercy, has transformed
into a date. With a Chinese girl, of all things!
Bliss and I had been seeing each other on a regular basis for
only a few months when she asked me to move with her to Iowa
and set up house. I told her no, I had my job with the ladies. She
then offered to defer the start of her second year of dental school
and stay with me. Fearing the escalation in the level of our
commitment to each other such a sacrifice would signify, I had to
tell her no again. I was flattered, but was even more bewildered
by her eagerness to alter her plans. In my eyes we were, at best, a
fringe couple. Yes, we were going out. Sleeping together. I was
happy to have her in my life. I was new in town, knocking
myself out trying to impress my employers, and if Id been living
close to friends, in familiar surroundings, I might not have
indulged the relationship as I did. We were pals, we hung out, we
ate lots of food, we drank good wine, we had sex occasionally.
But moving in together, in the Midwest? Was she kidding? That
was far beyond where I was. The trouble then, as now, was that I
never meant for things to get too serious. At the risk of sounding
like a junior high schooler: I liked her but I didnt love her.
I towel off the capon, massage mustard onto its skin. It feels
no different from any of the hundreds of chickens Ive cooked,
but I cant get used to touching this thing. Bliss would have no
qualms; after all, she wants to drill teeth for a living. Nothing
seems to bother her. When she wedged her way into my life,
arriving unannounced like an angel with a pot of soup, I was
sick, a vibrating mass of germs, but she laid on her hands and
helped me undress and made my bed and massaged my back and

sat nearby, singing French folk songs and Joni Mitchell. I

couldnt sleep because of the singing but was too polite, indeed,
too beholden, indeed, too afraid to ask her to cut short her
concertthat was what it was, for she seemed to pause between
songs for imaginary applause. The moment came when I
dislodged my arm, which was pillowing my head, and swung it
down to my hip, cutting wide arcs that I hoped would alert her to
the fact I was still awake and miserable, bored, and ready for
surrender.
On one of these sweeps she grabbed my handlater she
would argue I had offered it to herand when my arm
pendulumed up toward my head, she leapt out of her chair like a
fish from the sea. Without the slightest break in her song she was
lured into my bedso goes her version of how we ended up
making love that first time. As we lay naked between the sheets,
chills from the fever stiffening my body, she held me to her
enormous heat and asked if she might come again, another day,
with more soup, and unsteadily, I said, Yes.
I admit I was the one who had made first contact. Soon after I
arrived in Richfield, I saw her name in our college alumni
magazine and called her. We had been marginal friends at
Swarthmore, both art history majors, but she was a couple of
classes ahead of me, and we traveled in different social circles
(her group was acid and orgies; mine was wine and one-night
stands). After running hard with the in crowd her first four
semesters, she turned serious as a junior, finding peace in the
study of Gothic cathedrals. At the art history majors costume
party during her Senior Week, we spoke for the first time. She
went as Notre Dame, a dishwasher box, with splendidly painted
details of the original and posterboard flying buttresses hanging
off at her sides like spider legs; her face was that of a gargoyle.
Guys joked about coming to worship, going on a pilgrimage. I
went as Warhols Brillo box. Our costumes were huge hits but
left us on the sidelines, victims of our own geniuswhat a drag
trying to boogie with your body in a cardboard box.
When I tracked her down at her parents place in New Canaan,
she was completely surprised. We met for lunch on one of my
first off-days from the Ladies Club. She was no longer the
hippie shed been in school. While her long, frizzy brown hair
was still her most distinguishing attribute, in the four years since
I had last seen her she had lost the roundness in her face and had
traded in her T-shirts and Indian print skirts for tailored clothing.
Between graduation and dental school, she had worked for her
father, who owned and managed properties and acquired things.
Even though she slept under his roof and received a salary from
him, she seemed to harbor boundless hostility toward her father.
In her lingo, he was capitalist pig scum, who apparently felt
morally justified in his own brand of bigotry because his parents
were Holocaust survivors. After the initial weekend lunches at
local restaurants, I invited her to my apartment for dinner. Then
came the day she showed up at my door with the soup.
I rub the mustard onto the capons skin, with its largish pores
and nipple-like bumps; the mustards whole seeds, tiny orbs
rolling between my palm and the lubricated skin, produce a
highly erotic sensation.
The telephone rings and I jump, embarrassed by the pleasure
Im taking. My mind leaps from the capon to Lisa Lee. She must
be calling to cancel our date; perhaps she has a project due and
cant come to dinner.
But the instant I lift the receiver I realize I dont want to hear
that message at all.
Im here! Im here, Im here, Im here!
Its Bliss. Originally, she explains, she planned to fly in
tomorrow, but a classmate, Ray, has a wedding to attend in
Greenwich, and she caught a ride, saving money, his drivebuddy. At this moment they are outside Syracuse, still hours shy
of Connecticut.

Im skipping my parents, she says. She sounds all juiced up,

still speedy from the road. Its a hit-and-run visit. Im not even
stopping in, theyll want to feed me, take me shopping, you
know, monopolize my time. Im going to stay with you.
Love is a lot like cooking. When either is successful, theres a
delicate chemistry in operation, a fine balance between the
constituent parts. If you have the perfect recipe for vichyssoise,
you dont monkey with it. Weve had a workable arrangement.
The U.S. Postal Service has kept us connected; we have a
standing agreement to take holidays together. Thats plenty. Why
spoil a good thing?
Were going to stop by Randazzos, Bliss says. Come join
us. Im letting Ray buy me drinks. She informs me that Ray is a
third-year dental student; he has been a good help to her, and
twice has taken her hunting for ring-necked pheasant in the
harvested cornfields.
Im stuck here, I tell her. Im experimenting with a new
recipe. Which is the truth.
Always other women, she says.
I hear the sarcasm in her voice, understand she means the club
ladies I have to feed, but suspect she also means Lisa Lee. For a
moment I consider putting an end to the intrigue, inviting her and
that guy Ray to join us for dinner. A foursome around the table.
Me and Bliss. Ray and Lisa Lee. At the mere thought of such a
pairing I experience a biting pang of jealousy.
Silvy, whats the matter? she says, into the silent line. Its
me, Bliss. Are you upset with me? Come on, tell me. Do you feel
threatened by Ray?
I keep seeing the four of us around the table; Nay, some
generic Midwesterner in a hunting cap and ammo vest, and Lisa
Lee, who at that moment I imagine as my sister Lucy.
Its true we spent the night together in the car. But hes just a
friend.
I stay silent.
Im sorry. Nothing happened. Dont be that way. You know
me. Im already spoken for.
After we hang up I try to reach Lisa Lee again. No answer, of
course, shes also on her way. But I dont panic. Bliss has
hundreds of miles to go, a couple of hours drinking at
Randazzos. If Im really lucky shell catch dinner there.
She fills the doorway, her head and its swirl of dark hair
eclipse the early-evening sun. Her face is in shadow. She stabs
jugs of wine into the room: I got Inglenook red and white, she
says. I didnt know how you swing, so I blanketed the field.
I backpedal from the door, and as soon as I vacate a space,
Lisa Lee fills it.
She is six feet tall. My first thought is, Where is Lisa Lee, the
Chinese Lisa Lee that Fuchs had promised, where is she in this
high-rise protoplasm? Still, I cant help noticing her beauty, the
cool sort, good American bones and narrow green eyes. Ive seen
her before, especially the gangliness, the I-beam angularity in her
cheeks, through her shoulders.
Then it hits me, like the icicle that fell six stories and opened
my head when I was a boy: She can pass for Renee Richardss
double.
Are you all right? she asks. Didnt King tell you?
Tell me what, that she, Lisa Lee, was once a he?
Its okay. You can stare, she says. Im used to it, people are
always gawking at my size.
She eats and drinks lustily; she has so much space to fill. I think
of horses Ive seen, their magnificent dimensions, the
monumental daily task of keeping their bodies stoked. For all the
energy and attention she gives to her food, she maintains a
nonstop conversation, remarkable for its seamless splice of
words, breaths, bites, and swallows. What do you call these?
she says, helping herself to the snow peas.

Snow peas.
No, she says. I mean in Chinese.
I ask about her studies. I dont comprehend much of her
response. Its all very abstract, highly theoretical. But in the end
she confesses that what shes truly into is interior design. Every
designer with a name in Milan and New York, she begins, is a
man. She says this has to change. Women are cooped up in their
homes all day, surrounded by things designed by men. Knives
and forks, she says, is macho eating. Stab and cut, out on the
hunt. She critiques my flatware, my stemware, my dishes. Its
junk, cheap stuff, but shes a grad student and finds things to say,
just as Bliss is awed by exotic gum diseases.
She loads up on capon. Ive barely touched any of the bird, too
much excitement, and Im still too squeamish. Call it crossspecies male solidarity. But I love watching someone enjoy my
cooking, especially a woman, one who eats (theres no other way
of putting it) like a man, with pig-at-the-trough mindlessness, so
different from Bliss, with her on-again, off-again diets, her
sensitivity to ingredients, her likes and dislikes, allergies, calorie
counts, moral guidelines.
Lisa Lee takes on a leg, itself almost a pound of flesh. As she
sinks her teeth into the perfectly browned skin, my mind
explodes with the inevitable question: Why Bliss? How can she
say she loves me if she doesnt love all of me, including my
food? What am I but a cook? You love me, love what I cook!
How should I regard a so-called lover who would extract
essential ingredients from my dishes, capers, for instance, her
fingers pinching the offending orbs like fleas off a dog, then
flicking them onto the table, as if she had seen Warning:
Radioactive Materials printed on each itty-bitty bud. I imagine
Bliss encountering the roasted capon, which to a normal diner
like Lisa Lee is just a plump bird. But Bliss has an uncanny
knack for putting two and two together, even when there isnt a
two and two to put together. What are you trying to do to me?
she would say, her suspicions touching me like the worst
accusation, and I would hang my head in shame, accepting
responsibility for the roosters sad fate, feeling the tug of its
peppercorn-sized testicles that guilt has strung around my neck.
Souvenirs of war. Men! Disgusted with me and the bird, she
would go on diets: For days, no meat. For weeks, no sex.
Lisa Lee relinquishes her knife and fork. That was so good!
Youre everything King said youd be. She smiles, greasy lips, a
fleck of capon skin on her chin like a beauty mark. Her satisfied
look pleases me to no end. I start to clear the table. The jug of
white she brought is gone. Amazing we choked down so much
cheap wine. If youre a man, she says, youll uncap the other
bottle. In the kitchen I set down the dishes, and as I open the
red, the telephone rings.
Were on Eighty-four, near Poughkeepsie, Bliss reports.
Theyre at a rest area, making use of the facilities. Im going to
skip the drinks with Ray. Ive already worried you enough about
him. Im so, so sorry.
I watch as Lisa Lee stacks the dirty dishes. What remarkable
size! An infinite capacity to consume and thereby to love. Her
mastications were gestures of love. She catches me staring, holds
a finger perpendicular to her lips, admonishing herself to keep
quiet. She seems to know who it is Im talking to, seems familiar
and comfortable with situations of this sort. She steps free of her
noisy shoes, and as I watch her move toward me, I wish I could
just as easily step from my entanglement with Bliss. Pluck her
from my life as cold-bloodedly as she would a bay leaf from a
stew Ive made, a tooth from someones head.
Dont change your plans because of me, I say. You like
Randazzos. Have some drinks. Ill see you afterwards. Im not
going anywhere.
Lisa Lee takes the opened jug of red from my hands, fishes a
glass from the sink, pours, and drinks. I watch her swallow, the
little hitch in her throat; if only the hitch were the clasp of a

zipper that ran down to her navel, which unzipped revealed Lisa
Lees Chinese self. I want this to happen for Blisss sake: should
she arrive while Lisa Lee is still here, I could simply pass her off
as my cousin. Bliss would love her.
I check my watch. With or without drinks they cant possibly
get here before Ive served coffee and dessert and sent Lisa Lee
on her way.
I get off the phone with Bliss. We leave things hanging. Ill
take care of business on my end; I cant worry about what I cant
control.
Where does this go? Lisa Lee holds the platter containing
the remains of the capon.
Let me take that. Ill pack you some leftovers to take home.
What kind of man are you? she says, welding hands to hips.
Youre going to make me drive all that way, in my condition?
Do I have a choice? True, the picture of her backing down the
driveway is frightening enough, forget the two and a half hours
on the interstate. The decent thing to do would be to tuck her
safely into my bed for the night. But Bliss stands in the way of
such a right and moral act. What Lisa Lee needs is sleep, to pass
the hours of her overindulgence out of harms way. A nights
undisturbed digestion, then, upon waking, to eat and love again.
Bliss will deny her her well-deserved rest. So much more the
pity, sleep the simple thing it is. Its a staggering thought, yet I
know that before the night is through I will do Blisss bidding.
She will insist that Lisa Lee must go. And should Lisa Lee,
heaven forbid, doze while shes behind the wheel and jump the
center divider, a grand jury surely will charge Bliss, not me. Still,
what comfort is that?
I brew a pot of coffee. From the living room Lisa Lee
calls, What kind of wine smells like that?
Minutes later I carry in a tray with coffee and a rich chocolate
torte. She is seated on the pea-green couch. My rickshaw driver
lamp gives her skin a yellowish hue. Her eyes narrow in
concentration, as she fastidiously rolls a joint.
What are you doing?
First her expression is, Dont mess with me; then she says,
Youre not chicken, are you? A girl only lives once. She slips
the joint into her smiling mouth and slowly reams it through her
lips.
We drink the coffee, we eat the chocolate torte. Afterward she
seems more together, the alchemy of bread dough in a 375degree oven. Now I can send her homeBliss can send her
homewith regrets but diminished fear for her safety.
Then she lights up.
The marijuana will counteract the effects of the caffeine in the
coffee and the chocolate. When I run this past her she says,
Maybe pot stimulates me. You dont know my body.
But I do know. Her body, her outsized frame, its long rib cage
that imprisons the real Lisa Lee, my counterfeit cousin inside her.
Theres the reason for her vast appetite; she must eat for two, and
like her master, the one trapped inside also loves my food, also
loves all of me.
She offers me a hit. I scissor the joint, just to get it away from
her. She watches me, with a smile that she knows my secrets. I
like your hands, she coos in a hushed tone. I like what they do
to ordinary things. What a miracle that chicken was.
Should I tell her the truth? Straighten her out as to which fowl
is which? She doesnt need my help, her powers of perception
are unparalleled; after all, she saw the miracle in the dish, and
the transformation of the capon into something delicious,
respectable, beautiful is nothing short of miraculous.
Chicken! Im the chicken around here. Too chicken to insist
that Lisa Lee stay; too chicken to tell Bliss not to come, tell her
shes not spoken for. Im brave only with my parents; I stared
down their anger when (at their nosy insistence) I confessed I
was dating someone (Bliss), and they acted hurt and surprised

she wasnt Chinese, even though none of my previous girlfriends

was of the Asian persuasion either. What do these girls see in
you? Youre so stupid, you think they think youre pretty, dont
you? I defended myself with a raging silence. But what do they
see? Im a decent enough guy, but there are plenty of decent
guys; Im competent in bed, but competence is rampant. The
standard is Robert Redford, and on more than one occasion Ive
stood before the bathroom mirror with a picture of the actor held
up to my face and gauged the extent of my deficiencies. What
Bliss sees in me, I cant answer. The mechanics of her fierce
affection is a mystery. And its this mystery that freezes me,
makes love cruel. In all my relationships love has felt like
charity, needed and hungrily received; I am Pip from Great
Expectations, fat on anothers generosity but crippled by the
uncertainty over what motivates my benefactors heart. With
Lisa Lee at least I know she loves my food.
The telephone rings again. Lisa Lee smirks, arches her
eyebrows. Popular guy, arent you? she says. You dont have
to answer, you know.
A temptation, a perfect opportunity to bump Bliss from the
picture. But I dont have the nerve.
Bliss is at Randazzos, ahead of schedule. Theyre going to
have drinks and a bite to eat. For a split second I take offense, am
actually jealous: eating at a spaghetti joint, when she knows Im
concocting something new and fabulous in my kitchen. Im
shocked by the speed with which theyve made Connecticut, but
grateful for the regained hours her dining out provides. Thats
fine. Ill be here, waiting for you, I say. For reasons unknown, I
add, But tell me, what made you change your mind? You said
you were coming here directly.
She says, At first I thought I had upset you because I was
traveling in close quarters with a man. But then I realized I cant
upset you. You dont care what I do. So it must be that youd
rather I hadnt come. Ill just go to my parents house.
Thats silly. Its just that my hands are full. Then I say,
Youre spending an awful lot of time with that Ray. And why
shouldnt I say this? It costs me nothing, and its what she wants
to hear.
Theres a prolonged silence on the other end, after which, with
the usual cheerful lilt back in her voice, Bliss says, You really
mean that?
After I hang up I stay in the kitchen and pack a doggie bag for
Lisa Lee. Fuchs was right about the capons size. A lot of meat.
Big. And theres never been a blinder date. Wait till I tell him. I
can hear him now: Okay, so shes not Chinese, you cant have
everything. Already you got smart. Now you say shes beautiful
and handsome too! And big! You cant buy any better
When I return to the living room shes no longer there. At first
Im relieved, one problem solved. But immediately I realize her
absence depresses me.
I find her in my bed, apparently asleep, her jeans on, her
blouse off. The top sheet slashes diagonally across her, toga
style, leaving her shoulder exposed. When I check, shes taking
sleeps slow, steady breaths. Hey, hey, I say, tapping her on the
shoulder.
She opens and closes her eyes. Mmmmm ... she says, but
there is no telling why. Asleep again, she shifts her position and
does something with her hands, and the sheet flies off, magically,
and shes naked for the briefest instant, and Im not sure if its
happened by accident or design. The fleeting sight of her long,
lanky torso burns into my memory, her breasts as tidy as teacups
upended on a clear pine board.
I sit on the edge of the mattress. Lisa, I say softly, wake
up. Lisa Lee yawns, rolls onto her side, curls her body around
my spine. It must be the surprise of our bodies touching and the
thoroughness of the contact that make me feel enveloped by her.
I lean into the heat of her skin, as plants turn toward light, palm

her shoulder, and shake her. But my heart isnt behind the
business of rousing her, its something I do, a phantom order I
have no choice but to obey. How does this look to someone
outside, peeking in through the window? You see a woman in
bedasleep or restingat peace with her choices in life, safe
and secure, and a man on the edge of the mattress, which, to
judge from his posture, must seem like the very edge of the
world to him; he is alone on the brink, though the woman is
there; and you see how worries have fused his vertebrae into a
single length of bone, how rest wont come easily to this man,
who wants to leap but cant.
Lisa Lee stretches, tightening her muscles, pushing roughly
away from me. At once I miss her ardently, it is out of all
proportion, but true.
Then it comes to me in a rush. And I feel tricked and doublecrossed when I realize that the person Im missing most right
now is Bliss. I miss how she tells me what to think, what to do.
Once, back in the early days, when she ate and loved
unquestioningly, I prepared a simple dinner, from recipes I cant
even recall, and at its conclusion she exclaimed, That meal is
beyond seduction. That, darling, was a proposal of marriage.
Weeks later she started dropping hints about living together,
about one day marrying, and when I grew exasperated with such
talk, she fired back that I, with that meal, had planted the idea of
marriage in her head.
I want Bliss to come to my rescue, as she did with soup in the
beginning, my personal Red Cross. No one chooses the Red
Cross, but when disaster strikes, the Red Cross is there.
Lisa Lee sweetly, softly belches. Her loving appetite! I study
the fleck of roasted skin still on her chin, the dark brown of a
nipple. I remember some graffiti in the mens room at cooking
school:

There once was a girl named Red,

Whose passions were stirred when fed.
A little French wining,
Fine Epicurean dining,
And soon youll be eating in bed.
But Lisa Lee is not like that girl Red. Lisa Lee isnt about love
or pleasure. Whats made her so right, all night, is the fact she
isnt Bliss.
Its time to act. Time to put my life in order.
I swing my legs onto the bed and slowly slide down next to
her. She drapes a heavy arm across my waist and breathes
metabolized smoke and wine against my face. When she shifts
her weight, her knee scrapes the top of my knee, her pelvis
bumps my thigh. Shes making all the moves. My record with
Bliss is still clean, my hands as good as tied to my sides. But
why hold back? Bliss isnt the Red Cross, her soul isnt dressed
in nurses whites. Her habitual kindness, like American foreign
aid, comes with strings attached. Around the room I see her
touches: the curtains she sewed; the plants she bought and
reminds me to water; the Matisse goldfish poster that she framed;
the bookcase she knocked together, painted black, and stocked
with thin volumes of poetry. This is nothing but interior design.
This nights struggle is about my interior design, how I am
configured inside, how I want the four chambers of my heart
arranged, my likes and loves, my duty and desire, not how she
wants those parts to be.
If I accept Lisa Lees sleepy advances, I can do so with the
knowledge that no one is better equipped than Bliss to weather
the pain of this bums indiscretion. She has the recipe for the
healing soup, and strong hands to catch herself when she falls.
And a heart that all along has loved for two.
Lisa Lee pulls me closer, grinds her nose into my neck, rubs
her zipper against my hip, and I sense that it is time. But when I

turn to kiss her, her body suddenly goes limp, rubbery-limbed,

her joints in aspic, and she softly, undeniably, snores.
I slip out of bed. In the kitchen I stand staring at the nights ruins,
the capon carcass, the dishes. Lisa Lees scent lifts from my
clothing. Thats all Im doingstanding and staringmy mind
blank. Then I realize it isnt quite just standing and staring, Im
actually waiting. For the Red Cross, for 911, for sympathetic
Band-Aid-hearted Bliss to tell me what to do with the person in
my bed, before she arrives and discovers her herself.
I run a bath. Hide the evidence. Get rid of Lisa Lees scent, her
vague perfume. I can accomplish that much myself.
I look in on Lisa Lee. I call her. She doesnt stir. I shut the
bedroom door. Let her sleep. Sleep will protect her.
I undress and climb into the bath. The water is hot, my skin
reddens, darkening the way paper stains with oil. I am poached.
In a soup. As a boy I cultivated a reputation for my tolerance of
discomforts. On car trips I would stand so others could sit; I
would eat slightly moldy fruit; I would wait for hours while my
parents shopped in Chinatown, would wear my sisters hand-medowns and endure scalding bath water, and never complain. It
was a boys notion of heroic duty then, its a grasp at self-styled
absolution now.
Slowly I recline, until I have submerged my shoulders. Soon I
pop my legs outits too hotand prop my heels on the edge of
the tub, steam swirling off my skin, and I imagine it isnt just
steam but some essence of myself that Im better left without,
lifting. Bliss likes my legs, and she has told me so, and with their
hair weighted down by water, they are more apparent, better
defined. Once she said that I had the body of a Renaissance
Christ, his lean, tight torso, evident ribs, and well-muscled legs
that reflected a society on the go, exploring seas and deserts, in a
time enamored with substantiality, a heavenly earth; its a Christ
fed on game, jungle fowl from new worlds, spiced meats, sesame
seeds, saffron, silk, and gold. Theres more there than meets the
eye, she said. The muscularity of the Christs in the oils of the
Florentine Leonardo and the Venetian Titian and their disciples
isnt just an expression of piety, its also a reflection of their
patrons good fortunes. These paintings achieve paradoxical feats
of illusionsubstance and spirit; they want you to see what is
there, and believe it, and what is not there, and believe it.
When Bliss and I first got together, she told me she could read
a persons life simply by looking in his mouth. I loved this idea,
my imagination locked on palmists and the articulate lines in
hands, or psychics who can predict a life by the shape of a skull.
Tell me about myself, I said. At one time, she said, you
brushed with a hard toothbrush. The size of your cavities
suggests youve had good dental care. And so on. But not a
word about my luck, about my destiny, about whether Im a
trustworthy or a dangerous man, about what will happen next.
I close my eyes and sink deeper into the water.
Someone knocks at the apartment door. I sit up, splash water
on my face, then lean back, and wait.
The door opens and closes. I could have set the deadbolt, but
thought better of doing so. That would not be playing fair.
Its a long time before she comes to the bathroom, and by then,
as is her wont, and now her burden, she mustve put two and two
together: Lisa Lees car in the drive, the wineglasses, the empty
bottle, the dishes, the birds naked bones. Lisa Lee, of course, in
my bed. She has to have figured things out by the time she opens
the bathroom door and steps inside, preceded by a rush of the
outer rooms cooler air.
She stands just this side of the doorway, her brown hair swept
high on her head, wearing a long white skirt, a white tank top, a
mans unbuttoned workshirt. And a light lipstick because she
knows my weakness for girlie things. Now her sane medium
build and middling good looks are breathtaking. She hides from

me her clenched, polished teeth. Who is that monster in my bed?

You prefer that Amazon to me? How dare you? Get your ass out
of that tub and rid our home of that bitch!
But she says none of these things.
She says, I dont see why it is that you dont love me, and
steps forward, deeper into the bathroom, crossing the small
distance between door and tub in four steps, instead of the usual
two. With those extra steps she gives me a chance to formulate a
response, one that will save the moment, dispute her statement,
wash away her hurt. Say, What do you mean not love you, of
course I do, I do, I do. Or say, Someone in our bed? Your eyes
are playing tricks on you. Or say, What did you expect? I am
what I am, a twenty-six-year-old man who naturally dreads the
C word, commitment, as others do cancer.
But I do the worst thing, though I wont know it for years. I
close my eyes and allow her to approach.
I feel her steps, feel her kneel by the tub. I smell her citrusy
perfume, a fresh, recent application, barely diluted by her own
sweat and oils, the fragrance borne by the vapor rising from the
bath. She scoops water with her hand hooked like a flamingos
beak, and she might have shared the wildly strange coloring of
that fabulous bird just then, so incomprehensible is she. This is
the last, she says. Its done. Theres nothing in me that forgives
you. When she brings the water up to my head I cower, as if
what rains down were sharp pieces of glass. The water trickles
through her fingers and falls on my hair and into my eyes.
She washes my back, shampoos my hair. I lift my head,
defying the force of her hands, and look at her amazed through
the bubbles. She is two people: shes biting her bottom lip,
trembling, though fighting back tears, but on top her big brown
eyes have shrunken to tiny pellets of anger and hate. She pushes
my head forward, chin to chest, and digging her fingers once
again into my soapy hair works such a thick lather that when she
massages my scalp it feels as if the top of my head were falling
off. As if she has hold of my mind, pulling me this way then that.
She says, If I had my pliers here, you know what Id do? Id
yank every tooth from her fucking head. Strangely enough, her
voice is stripped of hurt or passion.
And that is what breaks my heart: I am her earthquake, her
hurricane, her personal flood. Doesnt she see that? I want to
save her. I should know the way, simply follow her example. Tell
her to stay angry, let it grow and abscess, until her only
alternative is to yank me from her life.
But the moment passes when she starts rinsing my hair, both
hands scooping water.
She helps me from the bath. My legs are wobbly, and I have to
touch her here and there for support. Everywhere I touch her blue
workshirt I leave a dark handprint that spreads.
She grabs a large purple towel. She holds it open, stretched
wide between her hands, and after the slightest hesitation I go to
her, let her wrap the towel over my head, across my shoulders,
let her pull my body against hers. Its over, she says, working
the towel roughly, its like youre dead now. I am dazed,
spinning wildly inside, losing myself in this dark, sheltering
place, under the wing of some strange bird.

* * *
An ambitious and appealing first novel, brilliant in
its scathing insights Louies coruscating novel is ull
of astonishing writing, but the real delight is his wit
and humor as he keeps plucking away the rickly
petals of his characters desires until he finds their
hearts.
Publishers Weekly

Louie is elegant, funny, a touch spooky, and he has

as fine a hair-trigger control of alienation and
absurdity as any of the best of his generation.
Richard Eder, New York Newsday
Louies work transcends the restrictions of ethnic
labels and markets: Hes not just a talented young
sian-American writer; hes a talented young write,
period.
Charles Solomon, Los Angeles Times Book Review

Chinese-American seeks identity in ironic tale

by Robin Vidimos
The chasm between generations is both deep and wide in
The Barbarians Are Coming.
In his first novel, David Wong Louie narrates the trials of a
first-generation Chinese-American struggling through cultural
divides to reconcile his roles as son, husband father and adult.
Its a darkly comic story filled with irony, but this entertaining
tale of one mans growth into his heritage, and into
understanding maturity, is ultimately quite moving.
Sterling Lung, a 26-year-old bachelor, is out on his own
and struggling mightily to settle into his skin. A recent graduate
of the prestigious Culinary Institute of America, hes taken his
first job as the resident chef for the Bridgefield Ladies Club. The
only clouds on his optimistic horizon are the pervasive
expectations of the Connecticut ladies at the club, of his parents,
even of his best friend the local butcher, that he act as Chinese as
he looks.
Sought distance
Its a familiar and long-running battle. Sterling, the
youngest of four children and his parents only son, has gone to
great lengths to distance himself from the pervasive culture of his
immigrant parents.
His parents long-standing plan involves an arranged
marriage to a Chinese girl of their choosing. Sterling responds by
defiantly avoiding any relationships with Oriental women,
saying he finds them as attractive as another sister.
He sidesteps his parents career plans for him, subversively
pursuing cooking over a medical career. Hes not even a good
Chinese chef, preferring to concentrate his efforts on mastering
French cuisine. His unspoken but well-demonstrated life goal is
to be as American as possible.
His ongoing battle with parents Genius and Zsa Zsa has
receded to background noise when he gets a call from his current
girlfriend. Bliss, a nice Jewish girl from Connecticut, takes a
weekend break from her dental school stint to tell Sterling hes
going to be a father.
Takes the plunge
Faced with the imminent reality of giving his parents a
much-wanted grandson, though not quite in the way theyd
hoped, Sterling agrees to marry Bliss. Its a step that plunges him
into a new culture, different from the one hes worked to escape,
but one whose rules and traditions are equally strong.
This plot lays good groundwork for a fine comedy of
manners. Louie, however, delves deep under this surface with
rich results. As Sterling, through his sons, is drawn into a Jewish
culture, hes also pulled into the Chinese one. Its a journey he
pursues under duress, but it is the only path open to him that will
lead to an understanding of who he is.
The Barbarians Are Coming is told largely as a first-person
narrative, from Sterlings point of view. It is an effective device

that draws the reader into the

mind and heart of this
solipsistic, often sarcastic,
young man.
His determination to
escape his parents controlling
grasp is understandable, but a
story told from only Sterlings
point of view would be
shallow and unbalanced. Full
understanding dawns when
Louie inserts flashbacks from Genius life as a struggling
immigrant. It then becomes clear that Genius love, an emotion
that Sterling thought nonexistent, was truly there, though it was
demonstrated through meeting responsibilities, not through
gestures of affection or even approval.
The picture that emerges is a culture of duty, certainly felt
by the son for the father, but just as clearly from the father to the
son. Its a revelation that doesnt make the picture warmer or
happier, but does make it understandable.
The heart of the book lies in Sterlings acceptance of
himself, and his father, in the context of both cultures, and
ultimately accepting that the Chinese and American pieces are
both essential parts of his being.
The Denver Post
Robin Vidimos is a freelance writer and book reviewer who
regularly contributes to Buzz in the Burbs.
Book Review, Fall 2000, Ploughshares

rev. of
The Barbarians Are Coming
by David Wong Louie
by Don Lee
Sterling Lung has problems. The narrator of David Wong Louies
first novel, The Barbarians Are Coming, is a recent graduate of
the CIAthe Culinary Institute of Americaand he has landed
what he regards as a plum job, cooking haute cuisine lunches at a
Wasp ladies club in Connecticut. But soon enough, Sterlings
parents conspire to import a picture bride, Yuk, from Hong Kong
for him to marry and carry on the Lung line; his sometime
girlfriend, Bliss, a Jewish dental student, announces that shes
pregnant; his father falls ill with renal cancer; and the snotty
ladies at the club, who talk without moving their lips, want
him to cook, of all things, Chinese dishes, that barefoot food,
eat-with-sticks food. Under harvest moons, rinse off the
maggots, slice, and steam . . . squatting-in-still-water food. Poleacross-your-shoulders,
hooves-in-the-house
food.
His entire life, he has been rebelling against his culture and his
parents, immigrants who have the droll nicknames of Genius and
Zsa Zsa. Sterling grew up in the back of their laundry in
Lynbrook, Long Island, and instead of becoming a doctor as
theyd wished, he went to Swarthmore and majored in art history,
then trained to become a French chef. In their eyes I was a
scoundrel, a dumb-as-dirt ingrate. This was the reward for their
sacrifice, leaving home for America, for lean lives among the
barbarians. He has proved to be a particular disappointment to
his father, with whom his relationship has always been remote
and cold. During one hilarious and poignant scene, Genius seems
to cherish a used refrigerator more than his son, lovingly wiping
it down after it has been installed: Cut off from the rest of the
family, my father basked in the refrigerators chilled air, its
silvery vapors, its measly lights glow. What I saw in my fathers

gentle cleaning of each egg holders deep dimple was kindness,

and the pang I felt, like fingers fanning in my throat, was envy.
As in his story collection, Pangs of Love, Louie draws great
humor from clashes of assimilation. Some of the best moments
in The Barbarians Are Coming involve Morton Sass, Blisss
father, a mendacious investor who convinces Sterling, after he
marries Bliss and bears two sons, to host a cooking show on
cable TV. Later, Sass sells the rights to the show, and its retooled
into a humiliating Chinese parody called The Peeking Duck,
with Sterling assuming the voice of Hop Sing, the houseboy on
Bonanza, as he gives viewers what they want: Today I make
velly famous dish . . . Shlimp and robster sauce! This one velly
good and velly chlicky dish. Aw time peoples say, Wah! Where
is
robster?

Yet the heart and power of Louies novel lies more in the tragedy,
not the comedy, of the Lung menthe father, doomed by a love
affair with a white woman when he first arrives in the U.S.; the
son, while begrudging his fathers aloofness, unable to see the
selfish distance he himself creates, failing his parents, wife, and
children, all in the desperate attempt to overcome the
unremarkableness of being a Lung.
Don Lee is the author of a new novel, Wrack and Ruin. He is
also the author of the novel Country of Origin, which won an
American Book Award, the Edgar Award for Best First Novel,
and a Mixed Media Watch Image Award for Outstanding Fiction,
and the story collection Yellow, which won the Sue Kaufman
Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and
Letters. He received the 2007 Fred R. Brown Literary Award
from the University of Pittsburgh. He has received an O. Henry
Award and a Pushcart Prize, and his stories have been published
The Kenyon Review, GQ, New England Review, The North
American Review, The Gettysburg Review, Bamboo Ridge,
Manoa, American Short Fiction, and Glimmer Train. From
1989 to 2007, he was the editor of the literary journal
Ploughshares. From 2007 to 2008, he taught creative writing at
Macalester College in St. Paul. He will begin teaching in the
graduate creative writing program at Western Michigan
University, in Kalamazoo, Michigan, in the fall of 2008.

The Management of Grief

by Mukherjee Bharati

A woman I dont know is boiling tea the Indian way in my

kitchen. There are a lot of women I dont know in my kitchen,
whispering, and moving tactfully. They open doors, rummage
through the pantry, and try not to ask me where things are kept.
They remind me of when my sons were small, on Mothers Day
or when Vikram and I were tired, and they would make big,
sloppy omelets. I would lie in bed pretending I didnt hear them.
Dr. Sharma, the treasurer of the Indo-Canada Society, pulls me
into the hallway. He wants to know if I am worried about money.
His wife, who has just come up from the basement with a tray of
empty cups anti glasses, scolds him. Dont bother Mrs. Bhave
with mundane details. She looks so monstrously pregnant her
baby must be days overdue. I tell her she shouldnt be carrying
heavy things. Shaila, she says, smiling, this is the fifth. Then
she grabs a teenager by his shirttails. He slips his Walkman off
his head. He has to be one of her four children, they have the
same domed and dented foreheads.
Whats the official word now? she demands. The boy slips the
headphones back on. Theyre acting evasive, Ma. Theyre
saying it could be an accident or a terrorist bomb.
All morning, the boys have been muttering, Sikh Bomb, Sikh
Bomb. The men, not using the word, bow their heads in
agreement. Mrs. Sharma touches her forehead at such a word. At
least theyve stopped talking about space debris and Russian
lasers.
Two radios are going in the dining room. They are tuned to
different stations. Someone must have brought the radios down
from my boys bedrooms. I havent gone into their rooms since
Kusum came running across the front lawn in her bathrobe. She
looked so funny, I was laughing when I opened the door.
The big TV in the den is being whizzed through American
networks and cable channels.
Damn! some man swears bitterly. How can these preachers
carry on like nothings happened? I want to tell him were not
that important. You look at the audience, and at the preacher in
his blue robe with his beautiful white hair, the potted palm trees
under a blue sky, and you know they care about nothing.

The phone rings and rings. Dr. Sharmas taken charge. Were
with her, he keeps saying. Yes, yes, the doctor has given
calming pills. Yes, yes, pills are having necessary effect. I
wonder if pills alone explain this calm. Not peace, just a
deadening quiet. I was always controlled, but never repressed.
Sound can reach me, but my body is tensed, ready to scream. I
hear their voices all around me. I hear my boys and Vikram cry,
Mommy, Shaila! and their screams insulate me, like
headphones.
The woman boiling water tells her story again and again. I got
the news first. My cousin called from Halifax before six A.M.,
can you imagine? Hed gotten up for prayers and his son was
studying for medical exams and he heard on a rock channel that
something had happened to a plane. They said first it had
disappeared from the radar, like a giant eraser just reached out.
His father called me, so I said to him, what do you mean,
`something bad`? You mean a hijacking? And he said, behn,
there is no confirmation of anything yet, but check with your
neighbors because a lot of them must be on that plane. So I
called poor Kusum straightaway. I knew Kusums husband and
daughter were booked to go yesterday.
Kusum lives across the street from me. She and Satish had
moved in less than a month ago. They said they needed a bigger
place. All these people, the Sharmas and friends from the IndoCanada Society had been there for the housewarming. Satish and
Kusum made homemade tandoori on their big gas grill and even
the white neighbors piled their plates high with that luridly red,
charred, juicy chicken. Their younger daughter had danced, and
even our boys had broken away from the Stanley Cup telecast to
put in a reluctant appearance. Everyone took pictures for their
albums and for the community newspapers another of our
families had made it big in Toronto and now I wonder how
many of those happy faces are gone, Why does God give us so
much if all along He intends to take it away? Kusum asks me.
I nod. We sit on carpeted stairs, holding hands like children. I
never once told him that I loved him, I say. I was too much the
well brought up woman. I was so well brought up I never felt
comfortable calling my husband by his first name.
Its all right, Kusum says. He knew. My husband knew. They
felt it. Modern young girls have to say it because what they feel
is fake.
Kusums daughter, Pam, runs in with an overnight case. Pams in
her McDonads uniform. Mummy! You have to get dressed!
Panic makes her cranky. `A reporters on his way here.
Why?
You want to talk to him in your bathrobe? She starts to brush
her mothers long hair. Shes the daughter whos always in
trouble. She dates Canadian boys and hangs out in the mall,
shopping for tight sweaters. The younger one, the goody-goody
one according to Pam, the one with a voice so sweet that when
she sang bhajans for Ethiopian relief even a frugal man like my
husband wrote out a hundred dollar check, she was on that plane.
She was going to spend July and August with grand- parents
because Pam wouldnt go. Pam said shed rather waitress at
McDonalds. If its a choice between Bombay and Wonderland,
Im picking Wonderland, shed said.
Leave me alone, Kusum yells. You know what I want to do?
If I didnt have to look after you now, Id hang myself. Pams
young face goes blotchy with pain. Thanks, she says, dont let
me stop you.
Hush, pregnant Mrs. Sharma scolds Pam. Leave your mother
alone. Mr. Sharma will tackle the reporters and fill out the forms.
Hell say what has to be said.
Pam stands her ground. You think I dont know what Mummys
thinking? Why her? thats what. Thats sick! Mummy wishes my
little sister were alive and I were dead.
Kusums hand in mine is trembly hot. We continue to sit on the
stairs.

She calls before she arrives, wondering if theres anything I need.

Her name is Judith Templeton and shes an appointee of the
provincial government. Multiculturalism? I ask, and she says,
partially, but that her mandate is bigger. Ive been told you
knew many of the people on the flight, she says. Perhaps if
youd agree to help us reach the others...?
She gives me time at least to put on tea water and pick up the
mess in the front room. I have a few samosas from Kusums
housewarming that I could fry up, but then I think, why prolong
this visit?
Judith Templeton is much younger than she sounded. She wears
a blue suit with a white blouse and a polka dot tie. Her blond hair
is cut short, her only jewelry is pearl drop earrings. Her briefcase
is new and expensive looking, :L gleaming cordovan leather. She
sits with it across her lap. When she looks out the front windows
onto the street, her contact lenses seem to float in front of her
light blue eyes.
What sort of help do you want from me? I ask. She has refused
the tea, out of politeness, but I insist, along with some slightly
stale biscuits. I have no experience, she admits. That is, I
have an MSW and Ive worked in liaison with accident victims,
but I mean I have no experience with a tragedy of this scale
Who could? I ask.
and with the complications of culture, language, and customs.
Someone mentioned that Mrs. Bhave is a pillar because youve
taken it more calmly.
At this, perhaps, I frown, for she reaches forward, almost to take
my hand. I hope you understand my meaning, Mrs. Bhave.
There are hundreds of people in Metro directly affected, like you,
and some of them speak no English. There are some widows
whove never handled money or gone on a bus, and there are old
parents who still havent eaten or gone outside their bedrooms.
Some houses and apartments have been looted. Some wives are
still hysterical. Some husbands are in shock and profound
depression. We want to help, but our hands are tied in so many
ways. We have to distribute money to some people, and there are
legal documents these things can be done. We have
interpreters, but we dont always have the human touch, or
maybe the right human touch. We dont want to make mistakes,
Mrs. Bhave, and thats why wed like to ask you to help us.
More mistakes, you mean, I say.
Police matters are not in my hands, she answers.
Nothing I can do will make any difference, I say. We must all
grieve in our own way.
But you are coping very well. All the people said, Mrs. Bhave is
the strongest person of all. Perhaps if the others could see you,
talk with you, it wou1d help them.
By the standards of the people you call hysterical, I am
behaving very oddly and very badly, Miss Templeton. I want to
say to her, I wish I could scream, starve, walk into Lake Ontario,
jump from a bridge. They would not see me as a model. I do
not see myself as a mode1.
I am a freak. No one who has ever known me would think of me
reacting this way. This terrible calm will not go away.
She asks me if she may call again, after I get back from a long
trip that we all must make. Of course, I say. Feel free to call,
anytime.
Four days later, I find Kusum squatting on a rock overlooking a
bay in Ireland. It isnt a big rock, but it juts sharply out over
water. This is as close as well ever get to them. June breezes
balloon out her sari and unpin her knee-length hair. She has the
bewildered look of a sea creature whom the tides have stranded.
Its been one hundred hours since Kusum came stumbling and
screaming across my lawn. Waiting around the hospital, weve
heard many stories. The police, the diplomats, they tell us things
thinking that were strong, that knowledge is helpful to the

grieving, and maybe it is. Some, I know, prefer ignorance, or

their own versions. The plane broke into two, they say.
Unconsciousness was instantaneous. No one suffered. My boys
must have just finished their breakfasts. They loved eating on
planes, they loved the smallness of plates, knives, and forks. Last
year they saved the airline salt and pepper shakers. Half an hour
more and they would have made it to Heathrow.
Kusum says that we cant escape our fate. She says that all those
people our husbands, my boys, her girl with the nightingale
voice, all those Hindus, Christians, Sikhs, Muslims, Parsis, and
atheists on that plane were fated to die together off this
beautiful bay. She learned this from a swami in Toronto.
I have my Valium.
Six of us relatives two widows and four widowers choose
to spend the day today by the waters instead of sitting in a
hospital room and scanning photographs of the dead. Thats what
they call us now: relatives. Ive looked through twenty- seven
photos in two days. Theyre very kind to us, the Irish are very
understanding. Sometimes understanding means freeing a tourist
bus for this trip to the bay, so we can pretend to spy our loved
ones through the glassiness of waves or in sun- speckled cloud
shapes.
I could die here, too, and be content.
What is that, out there? Shes standing and flapping her hands
and for a moment I see a head shape bobbing in the waves. Shes
standing in the water, I, on the boulder. The tide is low, and a
round, black, head-sized rock has just risen from the waves. She
returns, her sari end dripping and ruined and her face is a twisted
remnant of hope, the way mine was a hundred hours ago, still
laughing but inwardly knowing that nothing but the ultimate
tragedy could bring two women together at six oclock on a
Sunday morning. I watch her face sag into blankness.
That water felt warm, Shaila, she says at length.
You cant, I say. We have to wait for our turn to come.
I havent eaten in four days, havent brushed my teeth.
I know, she says. I tell myself I have no right to grieve. They
are in a better place than we are. My swami says I should be
thrilled for them. My swami says depression is a sign of our
selfishness.
Maybe Im selfish. Selfishly I break away from Kusum and run,
sandals slapping against stones, to the waters edge. What if my
boys arent lying pinned under the debris? What if they arent
stuck a mile below that innocent blue chop? What if, given the
strong currents....
Now Ive ruined my sari, one of my best. Kusum has joined me,
knee-deep in water that feels to me like a swimming pool. I
could settle in the water, and my husband would take my hand
and the boys would slap water in my face just to see me scream.
Do you remember what good swimmers my boys were,
Kusum?
I saw the medals, she says.
One of the widowers, Dr. Ranganathan from Montreal, walks out
to us, carrying his shoes in one hand. Hes an electrical engineer.
Someone at the hotel mentioned his work is famous around the
world, something about the place where physics and electricity
come together. He has lost a huge family, something
indescrif>alAe. With some luck, Dr. Ranganathan suggests to
me, a good swimmer could make it safely to some island. It is
quite possible that there may be many, many microscopic islets
scattered around.
Youre not just saying that? I tell Dr. Ranganathan about
Vinod, my elder son. Last year he took diving as well.
Its a parents duty to hope, he says. It is foolish to rule out
possibilities that have not been tested. I myself have not
surrendered hope.
Kusum is sobbing once again. Dear lady, he Says, laying his
free hand on her arm, and she calms down.

Vinod is how old ? he asks me. Hes very careful, as we all are.
Is, not was.
Fourteen. Yesterday he was fourteen. His father and uncle were
going to take him down to the Taj and give him a big birthday
party. I couldnt go with them lecause I couldnt get two weeks
off from my stupid job in June. I process bills for a travel agent.
June is a big travel month.
Dr. Ranganathan whips the pockets of his suit jacket inside out.
Squashed roses, in darkening shades of pink, float on the water.
He tore the roses off creepers in somebodys garden. He didnt
ask anyone if he could pluck the roses, but now theres been an
article abut it in the local papers. When you see an Indian person,
it says, please give him or her flowers.
A strong youth of fourteen, he says, can very likely pull to
safety a younger one. My sons, though four years apart, were
very close. Vinod wouldnt let Mithun drown. Electrical
engineering, I think, foolishly perhaps: this man knows
important secrets of the universe, things closed to me. Relief
spins me lightheaded. No wonder my boys photographs havent
turned up in the gallery of photos of the recovered dead. Such
pretty roses, I say.
My wife loved pink roses. Every Friday I had to bring a bunch
home. I used to say, why? After twenty odd years of marriage
youre still needing proof positive of my love? He has identified
his wife and three of his children. Then others from Montreal,
the lucky ones, intact families with no survivors. He chuckles as
he wades back to shore. Then he swings around to ask me a
question. Mrs. Bhave, you are wanting to throw in some roses
for your loved ones? I have two big ones left. But I have other
things to float: Vinods pocket calculator; a half-painted model
B-52 for my Mithun. Theyd want them on their island. And for
my husband? For him I let fall into the calm, glassy waters a
poem I wrote in the hospital yesterday. Finally hell know my
feelings for him.
Dont tumble, the rocks are slippery, Dr. Ranganathan tautions.
He holds out a hand for me to grab.
Then its time to get back on the bus, time to rush back to our
waiting posts on hospital benches.
Kusurn is one of the lucky ones. The lucky ones flew here,
identified in multiplicate their loved ones, then will fly to India
with the bodies for proper ceremonies. Satish is one of the few
males who surfaced. The photos of faces we saw on the walls in
an office at Heathrow and here in the hospital are mostly of
women. Women have more body fat, a nun said to me matter-offactly. They float better.
May I was stopped by a young sailor on the street. He had
loaded bodies, hed gone into the water when he checks my
face for signs of strength when the sharks were first spotted. I
dont blush, and he breaks down. Its all right, I say. Thank
you. I had heard about the sharks from Dr. Ranganathan. In his
orderly mind, science brings understanding, it holds no terror. It
is the sharks duty. For every deer there is a hunter, for every fish
a fisherman.
The Irish are not shy; they rush to me and give me hugs and
some are crying. I cannot imagine reactions like that on the
streets of Toronto. Just strangers, and I am touched. Some carry
flowers with them and give them to any Indian they see.
After lunch, a policeman I have gotten to know quite well
catches hold of me. He says he thinks he has a match for Vinod. I
explain what a good swimmer Vinod is.
You want me with you when you look at photos? Dr.
Ranganathan walks ahead of me into the picture gallery. In these
matters, he is a scientist, and I am grateful. It is a new
perspective. They have performed miracles, he says. We are
indebted to them.

The first day or two the policemen showed us relatives only one
picture at a time; now theyre in a hurry, theyre eager to lay out
the possibles, and even the probables.
The face on the photo is of a boy much like Vinod; the same
intelligent eyes, the same thick brows dipping into a V. But this
boys features, even his cheeks, are puffier, wider, mushier.
No. My gaze is pulled by other pictures. There are five other
boys who look like Vinod.
The nun assigned to console me rubs the first picture with a
fingertip. When theyve been in the water for a white, love, they
look a little heavier. The bones under the skin are broken, they
said on the first day try to adjust your memories. Its important.
Its not him. Im his mother. Id know.
I know this one! Dr. I~i~nga1lattla1l cries out suddenly from
the back of the gallery. And this one! I think he senses that I
dont want to find my boys. They are the Kutty brothers. They
were also from Montreal. I dont mean to be crying. On the
contrary, I am ecstatic. My suitcase in the hotel is packed heavy
with dry clothes for my boys.
The policeman starts to cry. I am so sorry, I am so sorry, maam.
1 really thought we had a match. With the nun ahead of us and
the policeman behind, we, the unlucky ones without our
childrens bodies, file out of the makeshift gallery.
From Ireland most of us go on to India. Kusum and I take the
same direct fIight to Bombay, so I can help her clear customs
quickly. But we have to argue with a man in uniform. He has
large boils on his face. The boils swell and glow with sweat as
we argue with him. He wants Kusum to wait in line and he
refuses to take authority because his boss is on a tea break. But
Kusum wont let her coffins out of sight, and I shant desert her
though I know that my parents, elderly and diabetic, must be
waiting in a stuffy car in a scorching lot.
You bastard! I scream at the man with the popping boils. Other
passengers press closer. You think were smuggling contraband
in those coffins!
Once upon time we were well brought up women; we were
dutiful wives who kept our heads veiled, our voices shy and
sweet.
In India, 1 become, once again, an only child of rich, ailing
parents. Old friends of the family come to pay their respects.
Some are Sikh, and inwardly, involuntarily, I cringe. My parents
are progressive people; they do not blame communities for a few
individuals.
In Canada it is a different story now.
Stay longer, my mother pleads. Canada is a cold place. Why
would you want to be all by yourself? I stay.
Three months pass. Then another.
Vikram wouldnt have wanted you to give up things! they
protest. They call my husband by the name he was born with. In
Toronto hed changed to Vik so the men he worked with at his
office would find his name as easy as Rod or Chris. You know;
the dead arent cut off from us!
My grandmother, the spoiled daughter of a rich zamindar, shaved
her head with rusty razor blades when she was widowed at
sixteen. My grandfather died of childhood diabetes when he was
nineteen, and she saw herself as the harbinger of bad luck. My
mother grew up without parents, raised indifferently by an uncle,
white her true mother slept in a hut behind the main estate house
and took her food with the servants. She grew up a rationalist.
My parents abhor mindless mortification. The zamindars
daughter kept stubborn faith in Vedic rituals; my parents
rebelled. I am trapped between two modes of knowledge. At
thirty-six, I am too old to start over and too young to give up.
Like my husbands spirit, I flutter between worlds.
Courting aphasia, we travel. We travel with our phalanx of
servants and poor relatives. To hill stations and to beach resorts.

We play contract bridge in dusty gymkhana clubs. We ride

stubby ponies up crumbly mountain trails. At tea dances, we let
ourselves be twirled twice round the ballroom. We hit the holy
spots we hadnt made time for before. In Varanasi, Kalighat,
Rishikesh, Hardwar, astrologers and palmists seek me out and for
a fee offer me cosmic consolations.
Already the widowers among us are being shown new bride
candidates. They cannot resist the call of custom, the authority of
their parents and older brothers. They must marry; it is the duty
of a man to look after a wife. The new wives will be young
widows with children, destitute but of good family. They will
make loving wives, but the men will shun them. Ive had calls
from the men over crackling Indian telephone lines. Save me,
they say, these substantial, educated, successful men of forty.
h4y parents are arranging a marriage for me. In a month they
will have buried one family and returned to Canada with a new
bride and partial family.
I am comparatively lucky. No one here thinks of arranging a
husband for an unlucky widow.
Then, on the third day of the sixth month into this odyssey, in an
abandoned temple in :1 tiny Himalayan village, as I make nip
offering of flowers and sweetmeats to the god of a tribe of
animists, my husband descends to me. He is squatting next to a
scrawny sadhu in moth-eaten robes. Vikram wears the vanilla
suit he wore the last time I hugged him. The sadhu tosses petals
on a butter-fed flame, reciting Sanskrit mantras and sweeps his
face of flies. My husband takes my hands in his.
Youre beautiful, he starts. Then, What are you doing here?
Shall I stay? I ask. He only smiles, but already the image is
fading. You must finish alone what we started together. No
seaweed wreathes his mouth. He speaks too fast just as he used
to when we were an envied family in our pink split-level. He is
gone.
In the windowless altar room, smoky with joss sticks and
clarified butter lamps, a sweaty hand gropes for my blouse. I do
not shriek. The sadhu arranges his robe. The lamps hiss and
sputter out.
When we come out of the temple, my mother says, Did you feel
something weird in there?
My mother has no patience with ghosts, prophetic dreams, holy
men, and cults.
No, I lie. Nothing.
But she knows that shes lost me. She knows that in days I shall
be leaving.
Kusums put her house up for de. She wants to live in an ashram
in Hardwar. Moving to Hardwar was her swamis idea. Her
swami runs two ashrams, the one in Hardwar and another here in
Toronto.
Dont run away, I tell her.
Im not running away,` she says. Im pursuing inner peace.
You think you or that Ranganathan fellow are better off? Pams
left for California. She wants to do some modeling, she says. She
says when she comes into her share of the insurance money
shell open a yoga-cum-aerobics studio in Hollywood. She
sends me postcards so naughty I darent leave them on the coffee
table. Her mother has withdrawn from her and the world.
The rest of us dont lose touch, thats the point. Talk is all we
have, says Dr. Ranganathan, who has also resisted his relatives
and returned to Montreal and to his job, alone. He says, whom
better to talk with than other relatives? Weve been melted down
and recast as a new tribe.
He calls me twice a week from Montreal. Every Wednesday
night and every Saturday afternoon. He is changing jobs, going
to Ottawa. But Ottawa is over a hundred miles away, and he is
forced to drive two hundred and twenty miles a day. He cant
bring himself to sell his house. The house is a temple, he says;

the king-sized bed in the master bedroom is a shrine. He sleeps

on a folding cot. A devotee.
***
There are still some hysterical relatives. Judith Templetons list
of those needing help and those whove accepted is in nearly
perfect balance. Acceptance means you speak of your family in
the past tense and you make active plans for moving ahead with
your life. There are courses at Seneca and Ryerson we could be
taking. Her gleaming leather briefcase is full of college
catalogues and lists of cultural societies that need our help. She
has done impressive work, I tell her.
In the textbooks on grief management, she replies I am her
confidante, I realize, one of the few whose grief has not sprung
bizarre obsessions there are stages to pass through: rejection,
depression, acceptance, reconstruction. She has compiled a
chart and finds that six months after the tragedy, none of us still
reject reality, but only a handful are reconstructing. Depressed
Acceptance is the plateau weve reached. Remarriage is a major
step in reconstruction (though shes a little surprised, even
shocked, over how quickly some of the men have taken on new
families). Selling ones house and changing jobs and cities is
healthy.
How do I tell Judith Templeton that my family surrounds me,
and that like creatures in epics, theyve changed shapes? She
sees me as calm and accepting but worries that I have no job, no
career. My closest friends are worse off than I. I cannot tell her
my days, even my nights, are thrilling.
She asks me to help with families she cant reach at all. An
elderly couple in Agincourt whose sons were killed just weeks
after they had brought their parents over from a village in
Punjab. From their names, I know they are Sikh. Judith
Templeton and a translator have visited them twice with offers of
money for air fare to Ireland, with bank forms, power-ofattorney forms, but they have refused to sign, or to leave their
tiny apartment. Their sons money is frozen in the bank. Their
sons investment apartments have been trashed by tenants, the
furnishings sold off. The parents fear that anything they sign or
any money they receive will end the companys or the countrys
obligations to them. They fear they are selling their sons for two
airline tickets to a place theyve never seen.
The high-rise apartment is a tower of Indians and West Indians,
with a sprinkling of Orientals. The nearest bus stop kiosk is lined
with women in saris. Boys practice cricket in the parking lot.
Inside the building, even I wince a bit from the ferocity of onion
fumes, the distinctive and immediate lndianness of frying ghee,
but Judith Templeton maintains a steady flow of information.
These poor old people are in imminent danger of losing their
place and all their services.
I say to her, They are Sikh. They will not open up to a Hindu
woman. And what I want to add is, as much as I try not to, I
stiffen now at the sight of beards and turbans. I remember a time
when we all trusted each other in this new country, it was only
the new country we worried about.
The two rooms are dark and stuffy. The lights are off, and an oil
lamp sputters on the coffee table. The bent old lady has let us in,
and her husband is wrapping a white turban over his oiled, hiplength hair. She immediately goes to the kitchen, and I hear the
most familiar sound of an Indian home, tap water hitting and
filling a teapot.
They have not paid their utility bills, out of fear and the inability
to write a check. The telephone is gone; electricity and gas and
water are soon to follow. They have told Judith their sons will
provide. They are good boys, and they have always earned and
looked after their parents.
We converse a bit in Hindi. They do not ask about the crash and I
wonder if I should bring it up. If they think I am here merely as a
translator, then they may feel insulted. There are thousands of

Punjabi-speakers, Sikhs, in Toronto to do a better job. And so I

say to the old lady, I too have lost my sons, and my husband, in
the crash.
Her eyes immediately fill with tears. The man mutters a few
words which sound like a blessing. God provides and God takes
away, he says.
I want to say, but only men destroy and give back nothing. My
boys and my husband are not coming back, I say. We have to
understand that.
Now the old woman responds. But who is to say? Man alone
does not decide these things. To this her husband adds his
agreement.
Judith asks about the bank papers, the release forms. With a
stroke of the pen, they will have a provincial trustee to pay their
bills, invest their money, send them a monthly pension.
Do you know this wotnan? I ask them.
The man raises his hand from the table, turns it over and seems
to regard each finger separately before he answers. This young
lady is always coming here, we make tea for her and she leaves
papers for us to sign. His eyes scan a pile of papers in the
corner of the room. Soon we will be out of tea, then will she go
away?
The old lady adds, I have asked my neighbors and no one else
gets angrezi visitors. What have we done?
Its her job, I try to explain. The government is worried. Soon
you will have no place to stay, no lights, no gas, no water.
Government will get its money. Tell her not to worry, we are
honorable people.
I try to explain the government wishes to give money, not take.
He raises his hand. Let them take, he says. We are
accustomed to that. That is no problem.
We are strong people, says the wife. Tell her that.
Who needs all this machinery? demands the husband. It is
unhealthy, the bright tights, the cold air on a hot day, the cold
food, the four gas rings. God will provide, not government.
When our boys return, the mother says. Her husband sucks his
teeth. Enough talk, he says.
Judith breaks in. Have you convinced them? The snaps on her
cordovan briefcase go off like firecrackers in that quiet
apartment. She lays the sheaf of legal papers on the coffee table.
If they cant write their names, an X will do Ive told them
that.
Now the old lady has shuffled to the kitchen and soon emerges
with a pot of tea and two cups. I think my Madder will go first
on a jot) like this, Judith says to me, smiling. If only there was
some way of reaching them. Please thank her for the tea. Tell her
shes very kind.
I nod in Judiths direction and tell them in Hindi, She thanks
you for the tea. She thinks you are being very hospitable but she
doesnt have the slightest idea what it meas.
I want to say, humor her. I want to say, my boys and my husband
are with me too, more than ever. I look in the old mans eyes and
I can read his stubborn, peasants message: I have protected this
woman as best I can. She is the only person I have left Give to
me or take from me what you will, but l will not sign for it. I will
not pretend that I accept.
In the car Judith says, You see what Im up against? Im sure
theyre lovely people, but their stubbornness and ignorance are
driving me crazy. They think signing a paper is signing their
sons death warrants, dont they?
I am looking out the window. I want to say, in our culture, it is a
parents duty to hope.
Now, Shaila, this next woman is a real mess. She cries day and
night, and she refuses all medical help. We may have to
Let me out at the subway, I say.
I beg your pardon? I can feet those t)luc eyes staring at me.

It would not be like her to disobey. She merely disapproves, and

stows at a corner to let me out. Her voice is plaintive. Is there
anything I said? Anything I did?
I could answer her suddenly in a dozen ways, but I choose not to.
Shaila? Lets talk about it, I hear, then slam the door.
A wife and mother begins her new life in a new country, and that
life is cut short. Yet her husband tells her: Complete what we
have started. We, who stayed out of politics and came halfway
around the world to avoid religious and political feuding have
been the first in the New World to die from it. I no longer know
what we started, nor how to complete it. I write letters to the
editors of local papers and to members of Parliament. Now at
least they admit it was a bomb. One MP answers back, with
sympathy, but with a challenge. You want to make a difference?
Work on a campaign. Work on mine. Politicize the Indian voter.
My husbands old lawyer helps me set up a trust. Vikram was a
saver and a careful investor. He had saved the boys boarding
school and college fees. I sell the pink house at four times what
we paid for it and take a small apartment downtown. I am
looking for a charity to support.
We are deep in the Toronto winter, gray skies, icy pavements. I
stay indoors, watching television. I have tried to assess my
situation, how best to live my life, to complete what we began so
many years ago. Kusum has written me from Hardwar that her
life is now serene. She has seen Satish and has heard her
daughter sing again. Kusum was on a pilgrimage, passing
through a village when she heard a young girls voice, singing
one of her daughters favorite bhajans. She followed the music
through the squalor of a Himalayan village, to a hut where a
young girl, an exact replica of her daughter, was fanning coals
under the kitchen fire. When she appeared, the girl cried out,
Ma! and ran away. What did I think of that?
I think I can only envy her.
Pam didnt make it to California, but writes me from Vancouver.
She works in a department store, giving make-up hints to Indian
and Oriental girls. Dr. Ranganathan has given up his commute,
given up his house and job, and accepted an academic position in
Texas where no one knows his story and he has vowed not to tell
it. He calls me now once a week.
I wait, I listen, and I pray, but Vikram has not returned to me.
The voices and the shapes and the nights filled with visions
ended abruptly several weeks ago.
I take it as a sign.
One rare, beautiful, sunny day last week, returning from
a small errand on Yonge Street, I was walking through
the park from the subway to my apartment. I live
equidistant from the Ontario Houses of Parliament and
the university of Toronto. The day was not cold, but
something in the bare trees caught my attention. I
looked up from the gravel, into the branches and the
clear blue sky beyond. I thought I heard the rustling of
larger forms, and I waited a moment for voices.
Nothing.
What? I asked.
Then as I stood in the path looking north to Queens Park and
west to the university, I heard the voices of my family one last
time. Your time has come, they said. Go, be brave.
I do not know where this voyage I have begun will end. I do not
know which direction I will take. I dropped the package on a
park bench and started walking.

Two ways to
belong
in America

IOWA CITY This is a

tale of two sisters from
Calcutta, Mira and
Bharati, who have
lived in the United States for some 35 years, but who find
themselves on different sides in the current debate over the status
of immigrants.
I am an American citizen and she is not. I am moved that
thousands of long-term residents are finally taking the oath of
citizenship. She is not.
Mira arrived in Detroit in 1960 to study child psychology and
pre-school education. I followed her a year later to study creative
writing at the University of Iowa. When we left India, we were
almost identical in appearance and attitude. We dressed alike, in
saris; we expressed identical views on politics, social issues, love
and marriage in the same Calcutta convent-school accent. We
would endure our two years in America, secure our degrees, then
return to India to marry the grooms of our fathers choosing.
Instead, Mira married an Indian student in 1962 who was getting
his business administration degree at Wayne State University.
They soon acquired the labor certifications necessary for the
green card of hassle-free residence and employment.
Mira still lives in Detroit, works in the Southfield, Mich., school
system, and has become nationally recognized for her
contributions in the fields of pre-school education and parentteacher relationships. After 36 years as a legal immigrant in this
country, she clings passionately to her Indian citizenship and
hopes to go home to India when she retires.
In Iowa City in 1963, I married a fellow student, an American of
Canadian parentage. Because of the accident of his North Dakota
birth, I bypassed labor-certification requirements and the racerelated quota system that favored the applicants country of
origin over his or her merit. I was prepared for (and even
welcomed) the emotional strain that came with marrying outside
my ethnic community. In 33 years of marriage, we have lived in
every part of North America. By choosing a husband who was
not my fathers selection, I was opting for fluidity, self-invention,
blue jeans and T-shirts, and renouncing 3,000 years (at least) of
caste-observant, pure culture marriage in the Mukherjee
family. My books have often been read as unapologetic (and in
some quarters overenthusiastic) texts for cultural and
psychological mongrelization. Its a word I celebrate.
Mira and I have stayed sisterly close by phone. In our regular
Sunday morning conversations, we are unguardedly affectionate.
I am her only blood relative on this continent. We expect to see
each other through the looming crises of aging and ill health
without being asked. Long before Vice President Gores
Citizenship U.S.A. drive, wed had our polite arguments over
the ethics of retaining an overseas citizenship while expecting
the permanent protection and economic benefits that come with
living and working in America.
Like well-raised sisters, we never said what was really on our
minds, but we probably pitied one another. She, for the lack of

structure in my life, the erasure of Indianness, the absence of an

unvarying daily core. I, for the narrowness of her perspective,
her uninvolvement with the mythic depths or the superficial pop
culture of this society. But, now, with the scapegoating of
aliens (documented or illegal) on the increase, and the
targeting of long-term legal immigrants like Mira for new
scrutiny and new self-consciousness, she and I find ourselves
unable to maintain the same polite discretion. We were always
unacknowledged adversaries, and we are now, more than ever,
sisters.
I feel used, Mira raged on the phone the other night. I feel
manipulated and discarded. This is such an unfair way to treat a
person who was invited to stay and work here because of her
talent. My employer went to the I.N.S. and petitioned for the
labor certification. For over 30 years, Ive invested my creativity
and professional skills into the improvement of this countrys
pre-school system. Ive obeyed all the rules, Ive paid my taxes, I
love my work, I love my students, I love the friends Ive made.
How dare America now change its rules in midstream? If
America wants to make new rules curtailing benefits of legal
immigrants, they should apply only to immigrants who arrive
after those rules are already in place. To my ears, it sounded like
the description of a long-enduring, comfortable yet loveless
marriage, without risk or recklessness. Have we the right to
demand, and to expect, that we be loved? (That, to me, is the
subtext of the arguments by immigration advocates.) My sister is
an expatriate, professionally generous and creative, socially
courteous and gracious, and thats as far as her Americanization
can go. She is here to maintain an identity, not to transform it.
I asked her if she would follow the example of others who have
decided to become citizens because of the anti-immigration bills
in Congress. And here, she surprised me. If America wants to
play the manipulative game, Ill play it too, she snapped. Ill
become a U.S. citizen for now, then change back to Indian when
Im ready to go home. I feel some kind of irrational attachment
to India that I dont to America. Until all this hysteria against
legal immigrants, I was totally happy. Having my green card
meant I could visit any place in the world I wanted to and then
come back to a job thats satisfying and that I do very well.
In one family, from two sisters alike as peas in a pod, there could
not be a wider divergence of immigrant experience. America
spoke to me I married it I embraced the demotion from
expatriate aristocrat to immigrant nobody, surrendering those
thousands of years of pure culture, the saris, the delightfully
accented English. She retained them all. Which of us is the
freak?
Miras voice, I realize, is the voice not just of the immigrant
South Asian community but of an immigrant community of the
millions who have stayed rooted in one job, one city, one house,
one ancestral culture, one cuisine, for the entirety of their
productive years. She speaks for greater numbers than I possibly
can. Only the fluency of her English and the anger, rather than
fear, born of confidence from her education, differentiate her
from the seamstresses, the domestics, the technicians, the shop
owners, the millions of hard-working but effectively silenced
documented immigrants as well as their less fortunate illegal
brothers and sisters.
Nearly 20 years ago, when I was living in my husbands
ancestral homeland of Canada, I was always well-employed but
never allowed to feel part of the local Quebec or larger Canadian
society. Then, through a Green Paper that invited a national
referendum on the unwanted side effects of nontraditional

immigration, the Government officially turned against its

immigrant communities, particularly those from South Asia.
I felt then the same sense of betrayal that Mira feels now.
I will never forget the pain of that sudden turning, and the casual
racist outbursts the Green Paper elicited. That sense of betrayal
had its desired effect and drove me, and thousands like me, from
the country.
Mira and I differ, however, in the ways in which we hope to
interact with the country that we have chosen to live in. She is
happier to live in America as expatriate Indian than as an
immigrant American. I need to feel like a part of the community
I have adopted (as I tried to feel in Canada as well). I need to put
roots down, to vote and make the difference that I can. The price
that the immigrant willingly pays, and that the exile avoids, is the
trauma of self-transformation.
(September 22, 1996: New York Times)

American Dreamer
C O M M E N T A R Y : I am an
American, not an Asian-American.
My rejection of hyphenation has been
called race treachery, but it is really a
demand that America deliver the
promises of its dream to all its

In traditional Hindu families like ours, men provided and women

were provided for. My father was a patriarch and I a pliant
daughter. The neighborhood Id grown up in was homogeneously
Hindu, Bengali-speaking, and middle-class. I didnt expect
myself to ever disobey or disappoint my father by setting my
own goals and taking charge of my future.
When I landed in Iowa 35 years ago, I found myself in a society
in which almost everyone was Christian, white, and moderately
well-off. In the womens dormitory I lived in my first year, apart
from six international graduate students (all of us were from Asia
and considered exotic), the only non-Christian was Jewish, and
the only nonwhite an African-American from Georgia. I didnt
anticipate then, that over the next 35 years, the Iowa population
would become so diverse that it would have 6,931 children from
non-English-speaking homes registered as students in its schools,
nor that Iowans would be in the grip of a cultural crisis in which
resentment against immigrants, particularly refugees from
Vietnam, Sudan, and Bosnia, as well as unskilled Spanishspeaking workers, would become politicized enough to cause the
Immigration and Naturalization Service to open an
enforcement office in Cedar Rapids in October for the tracking
and deporting of undocumented aliens.

In Calcutta in the 50s, I heard no talk of identity crisis

communal or individual. The concept itself of a person not
knowing who he or she is was unimaginable in our
hierarchical, classification-obsessed society. Ones identity was
fixed, derived from religion, caste, patrimony, and mother
tongue. A Hindu Indians last name announced his or her
forefathers caste and place of origin. A Mukherjee could only be
a Brahmin from Bengal. Hindu tradition forbade intercaste,
interlanguage, interethnic marriages. Bengali tradition even
discouraged emigration: To remove oneself from Bengal was to
dilute true culture.

citizens equally.
By Bharati Mukherjee
In Mother Jones magazine, Jan./Feb. 1997

The United States exists as a sovereign nation. America, in

contrast, exists as a myth of democracy and equal opportunity to
live by, or as an ideal goal to reach.
I am a naturalized U.S. citizen, which means that, unlike nativeborn citizens, I had to prove to the U.S. government that I
merited citizenship. What I didnt have to disclose was that I
desired America, which to me is the stage for the drama of
self-transformation.
I was born in Calcutta and first came to the United States to
Iowa City, to be precise on a summer evening in 1961. I flew
into a small airport surrounded by cornfields and pastures, ready
to carry out the two commands my father had written out for me
the night before I left Calcutta: Spend two years studying
creative writing at the Iowa Writers Workshop, then come back
home and marry the bridegroom he selected for me from our
caste and class.

Until the age of 8, I lived in a house crowded with 40 or 50

relatives. My identity was viscerally connected with ancestral
soil and genealogy. I was who I was because I was Dr. Sudhir
Lal Mukherjees daughter, because I was a Hindu Brahmin,
because I was Bengali-speaking, and because my desh the
Bengali word for homeland was an East Bengal village called
Faridpur.
The University of Iowa classroom was my first experience of
coeducation. And after not too long, I fell in love with a fellow
student named Clark Blaise, an American of Canadian origin,
and impulsively married him during a lunch break in a lawyers
office above a coffee shop.
That act cut me off forever from the rules and ways of uppermiddle-class life in Bengal, and hurled me into a New World life
of scary improvisations and heady explorations. Until my lunchbreak wedding, I had seen myself as an Indian foreign student
who intended to return to India to live. The five-minute
ceremony in the lawyers office suddenly changed me into a
transient with conflicting loyalties to two very different cultures.
The first 10 years into marriage, years spent mostly in my
husbands native Canada, I thought of myself as an expatriate
Bengali permanently stranded in North America because of
destiny or desire. My first novel, The Tigers Daughter,
embodies the loneliness I felt but could not acknowledge, even to
myself, as I negotiated the no mans land between the country of

my past and the continent of my present. Shaped by memory,

textured with nostalgia for a class and culture I had abandoned,
this novel quite naturally became an expression of the expatriate
consciousness.
It took me a decade of painful introspection to put nostalgia in
perspective and to make the transition from expatriate to
immigrant. After a 14-year stay in Canada, I forced my husband
and our two sons to relocate to the United States. But the
transition from foreign student to U.S. citizen, from detached
onlooker to committed immigrant, has not been easy.
The years in Canada were particularly harsh. Canada is a country
that officially, and proudly, resists cultural fusion. For all its
rhetoric about a cultural mosaic, Canada refuses to renovate its
national self-image to include its changing complexion. It is a
New World country with Old World concepts of a fixed,
exclusivist national identity. Canadian official rhetoric
designated me as one of the visible minority who, even though
I spoke the Canadian languages of English and French, was
straining the absorptive capacity of Canada. Canadians of
color were routinely treated as not real Canadians. One
example: In 1985 a terrorist bomb, planted in an Air-India jet on
Canadian soil, blew up after leaving Montreal, killing 329
passengers, most of whom were Canadians of Indian origin. The
prime minister of Canada at the time, Brian Mulroney, phoned
the prime minister of India to offer Canadas condolences for
Indias loss.
Those years of race-related harassments in Canada politicized me
and deepened my love of the ideals embedded in the American
Bill of Rights. I dont forget that the architects of the
Constitution and the Bill of Rights were white males and
slaveholders. But through their declaration, they provided us
with the enthusiasm for human rights, and the initial framework
from which other empowerments could be conceived and
enfranchised communities expanded.
I am a naturalized U.S. citizen and I take my American
citizenship very seriously. I am not an economic refugee, nor am
I a seeker of political asylum. I am a voluntary immigrant. I
became a citizen by choice, not by simple accident of birth.
Yet these days, questions such as who is an American and what is
American culture are being posed with belligerence, and being
answered with violence. Scapegoating of immigrants has once
again become the politicians easy remedy for all that ails the
nation. Hate speeches fill auditoriums for demagogues willing to
profit from stirring up racial animosity. An April Gallup poll
indicated that half of Americans would like to bar almost all
legal immigration for the next five years.
The United States, like every sovereign nation, has a right to
formulate its immigration policies. But in this decade of
continual, large-scale diasporas, it is imperative that we come to
some agreement about who we are, and what our goals are for
the nation, now that our community includes people of many
races, ethnicities, languages, and religions.
The debate about American culture and American identity has to
date been monopolized largely by Eurocentrists and
ethnocentrists whose rhetoric has been flamboyantly divisive,
pitting a phantom us against a demonized them.
All countries view themselves by their ideals. Indians idealize
the cultural continuum, the inherent value system of India, and

are properly incensed when foreigners see nothing but poverty,

intolerance, strife, and injustice. Americans see themselves as the
embodiments of liberty, openness, and individualism, even as the
world judges them for drugs, crime, violence, bigotry, militarism,
and homelessness. I was in Singapore in 1994 when the
American teenager Michael Fay was sentenced to caning for
having spraypainted some cars. While I saw Fays actions as
those of an individual, and his sentence as too harsh, the
overwhelming local sentiment was that vandalism was an
American crime, and that flogging Fay would deter Singapore
youths from becoming Americanized.
Conversely, in 1994, in Tavares, Florida, the Lake County School
Board announced its policy (since overturned) requiring middle
school teachers to instruct their students that American culture,
by which the board meant European-American culture, is
inherently superior to other foreign or historic cultures. The
policys misguided implication was that culture in the United
States has not been affected by the American Indian, AfricanAmerican, Latin-American, and Asian-American segments of the
population. The sinister implication was that our national identity
is so fragile that it can absorb diverse and immigrant cultures
only by recontextualizing them as deficient.
Our nation is unique in human history in that the founding idea
of America was in opposition to the tenet that a nation is a
collection of like-looking, like-speaking, like-worshiping people.
The primary criterion for nationhood in Europe is homogeneity
of culture, race, and religion which has contributed to bloodsoaked balkanization in the former Yugoslavia and the former
Soviet Union.
Americas pioneering European ancestors gave up the easy
homogeneity of their native countries for a new version of
utopia. Now, in the 1990s, we have the exciting chance to follow
that tradition and assist in the making of a new American culture
that differs from both the enforced assimilation of a melting
pot and the Canadian model of a multicultural mosaic.
The multicultural mosaic implies a contiguity of fixed, selfsufficient, utterly distinct cultures. Multiculturalism, as it has
been practiced in the United States in the past 10 years, implies
the existence of a central culture, ringed by peripheral cultures.
The fallout of official multiculturalism is the establishment of
one culture as the norm and the rest as aberrations. At the same
time, the multiculturalist emphasis on race- and ethnicity-based
group identity leads to a lack of respect for individual differences
within each group, and to vilification of those individuals who
place the good of the nation above the interests of their particular
racial or ethnic communities.
We must be alert to the dangers of an us vs. them mentality.
In California, this mentality is manifesting itself as increased
violence between minority, ethnic communities. The attack on
Korean-American merchants in South Central Los Angeles in the
wake of the Rodney King beating trial is only one recent
example of the tragic side effects of this mentality. On the
national level, the politicization of ethnic identities has
encouraged the scapegoating of legal immigrants, who are
blamed for economic and social problems brought about by
flawed domestic and foreign policies.
We need to discourage the retention of cultural memory if the
aim of that retention is cultural balkanization. We must think of
American culture and nationhood as a constantly re-forming,
transmogrifying we.

In this age of diasporas, ones biological identity may not be

ones only identity. Erosions and accretions come with the act of
emigration. The experience of cutting myself off from a
biological homeland and settling in an adopted homeland that is
not always welcoming to its dark-complexioned citizens has
tested me as a person, and made me the writer I am today.

Bart Schneider (New York: Clarkson Potter, 1997). Mukherjee

and her husband, Clark Blaise, wrote about Salman Rushdies
travails for Mother Jones shortly after he was forced into hiding
in 1989.

I choose to describe myself on my own terms, as an American,

rather than as an Asian-American. Why is it that hyphenation is
imposed only on nonwhite Americans? Rejecting hyphenation is
my refusal to categorize the cultural landscape into a center and
its peripheries; it is to demand that the American nation deliver
the promises of its dream and its Constitution to all its citizens
equally.
My rejection of hyphenation has been misrepresented as race
treachery by some India-born academics on U.S. campuses who
have appointed themselves guardians of the purity of ethnic
cultures. Many of them, though they reside permanently in the
United States and participate in its economy, consistently
denounce American ideals and institutions. They direct their rage
at me because, by becoming a U.S. citizen and exercising my
voting rights, I have invested in the present and not the past;
because I have committed myself to help shape the future of my
adopted homeland; and because I celebrate racial and cultural
mongrelization.
What excites me is that as a nation we have not only the chance
to retain those values we treasure from our original cultures but
also the chance to acknowledge that the outer forms of those
values are likely to change. Among Indian immigrants, I see a
great deal of guilt about the inability to hang on to what they
commonly term pure culture. Parents express rage or despair at
their U.S.-born childrens forgetting of, or indifference to, some
aspects of Indian culture. Of those parents I would ask: What is it
we have lost if our children are acculturating into the culture in
which we are living? Is it so terrible that our children are
discovering or are inventing homelands for themselves?
Some first-generation Indo-Americans, embittered by racism and
by unofficial glass ceilings, construct a phantom identity,
more-Indian-than-Indians-in-India, as a defense against
marginalization. I ask: Why dont you get actively involved in
fighting discrimination? Make your voice heard. Choose the
forum most appropriate for you. If you are a citizen, let your vote
count. Reinvest your energy and resources into revitalizing your
citys disadvantaged residents and neighborhoods. Know your
constitutional rights, and when they are violated, use the
agencies of redress the Constitution makes available to you.
Expect change, and when it comes, deal with it!
As a writer, my literary agenda begins by acknowledging that
America has transformed me. It does not end until I show that I
(along with the hundreds of thousands of immigrants like me) am
minute by minute transforming America. The transformation is a
two-way process: It affects both the individual and the nationalcultural identity.
Others who write stories of migration often talk of arrival at a
new place as a loss, the loss of communal memory and the
erosion of an original culture. I want to talk of arrival as gain.
Bharati Mukherjees books include The Middleman and Other
Stories (which won the National Book Critics Circle Award in
1988), Jasmine, and The Holder of the World. This essay is
adapted from Race: An Anthology in the First Person, edited by

Biography
Born in Calcutta, India, on July 27, 1940, into an upper middleclass Hindu Brahmin family surrounded by servants and
bodyguards: Indian-American novelist Bharati Mukherjee. The
second of three daughters of Sudhir Lal, a chemist, and Bina
(Banerjee) Mukherjee, she lived with nearly 50 relatives until the
age of eight, when she discovered the beauty and power of
Russian novelists such as Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. From an
extraordinarily close-knit and intelligent family, Mukherjee and
her sisters were always given ample academic opportunities and
have all pursued academic endeavors in their careers. In 1947,
Mukherjees father accepted a job in England, and he brought his
family to live there until 1951, providing Mukherjee an
opportunity to develop her English language skills.
One night, as her father entertained a group of American scholars
over dinner, he asked, I want [my] daughter to be a writer,
where do I send her? They told him to send her to the Iowa
Writers Workshop at the University of Iowa. So, after being
graduated with a B.A from the University of Calcutta and an
M.A. in English and Ancient Indian Culture from the University
of Baroda in 1961, she came to the United States of America,
where she took advantage of a scholarship from the University of
Iowa. She planned to study there to earn her Masters of Fine
Arts before returning to India to marry a bridegroom of her
fathers choosing in her class and caste. She earned her M.F.A.
in Creative Writing in 1963 and her Ph.D. in English and
Comparative Literature in 1969.

While attending the university, she met a Canadian student from

Harvard. She impulsively married Clark Blaise, a Canadian
writer, in a lawyers office above a coffee shop after only two
weeks of courtship. She received her M.F.A. that same year, and
then she went on to earn her Ph.D. in English and comparative
literature from the University of Iowa in 1969.

Most recently, Mukherjee is the author of The Holder of the

World (1993) and Desirable Daughters (2002).

Mukherjee emigrated to Canada with her husband and became a

naturalized citizen in 1972. Her 14 years there were some of the
most trying of her life, as she found herself discriminated against
and treated, as she says, as a member of the visible minority.
She has spoken in many interviews of her difficult life in
Canada, a country that she sees as hostile to its immigrants and
one that opposes the concept of cultural assimilation. Although
those years were challenging, Mukherjee was able to write her
first two novels, The Tigers Daughter (1971) and Wife (1975)
while working up to professorial status at McGill University in
Montreal. During those years, she also collected many of the
sentiments found in her first collection of short stories, Darkness
(1985), a collection that in many stories reflects her mood of
cultural separation while living in Canada.

Major Themes

Tired of her struggle to fit into Canadian life, Mukherjee and her
family moved to the United States in 1980, where she was sworn
in as a permanent U.S. resident. In 1986, she was awarded a
National Endowment for the Arts grant. After holding several
posts at various colleges and universities, she eventually settled
in 1989 at the University of California-Berkeley. Because of the
distinctly different experiences she has had throughout life, she
has been described as a writer who has lived through several
phases of life. First, as a colonial, then as a National subject in
India. She then led a life of exile as a post-colonial Indian in
Canada. Finally, she shifted into a celebratory mode as an
immigrant, then citizen, in the United States. She now fuses her
several lives and backgrounds together with the intention of
creating new immigrant literature.

The Tigers Daughter is a story about a young girl named Tara

who ventures back to India after many years of being away only
to return to poverty and turmoil. This story parallels Mukherjees
own venture back to India with Clark Blaise in 1973 when she
was deeply affected by the chaos and poverty of Indian and
mistreatment of women in the name of tradition, What is
unforgivable is the lives that have been sacrificed to notions of
propriety and obedience (Days and Nights... 217). Her husband,
however, became very intrigued by the magic of the myth and
culture that surrounded every part of Bengal.; These differences
of opinion, her shock and his awe, are seen in one of their joint
publications, Days and Nights in Calcutta.

Known for her playful and well developed language, Mukherjee

rejects the concept of minimalism, which, she says, is designed
to keep anyone out with too much story to tell. Instead, she
considers her work a celebration of her emotions and herself a
writer of the Indian diaspora who cherishes the melting pot of
America. Her main theme throughout her writing discusses the
condition of Asian immigrants in North America, with particular
attention to the changes taking place in South Asian women in a
new world.

While the characters in all her works are aware of the brutalities
and violence that surround them and are often victimized by
various forms of social oppression, she generally draws them as
survivors. Mukherjee has been praised for her understated prose
style and her ironic plot developments and witty observations.
As a writer, she has a sly eye with which to view the world, and
her characters share that quality. Although she is often racially
categorized by her thematic focus and cultural origin, she has
often said that she strongly opposes the use of hyphenation when
discussing her origin, in order to avoid otherization and the
self-imposed marginalization that comes with hyphenation.
Rather, she prefers to refer to herself as an American of BengaliIndian origin.

Mukherjees works focus on the phenomenon of migration, the

status of new immigrants, and the feeling of alienation often
experienced by expatriates as well as on Indian women and
their struggle (Alam 7). Her own struggle with identity first as an
exile from India, then an Indian expatriate in Canada, and finally
as a immigrant in the United States has lead to her current
contentment of being an immigrant in a country of immigrants
(Alam 10).
Mukherjees works correspond with biographer Fakrul Alams
catagorization of Mukherjees life into three phases. Her earlier
works, such as the The Tigers Daughter and parts of Days and
Nights in Calcutta, are her attempts to find her identity in her
Indian heritage.

The second phase of her writing, according to Alam,

encompasses works such as Wife, the short stories in Darkness,
an essay entitled An Invisible Woman, and The Sorrow and the
Terror, a joint effort with her husband. These works originate in
Mukherjees own experience of racism in Canada, where despite
being a tenured professor, she felt humiliated and on the edge of
being a housebound, fearful, affrieved, obsessive, and
unforgiving queen of bitterness (Mukherjee, qtd. in Alam 10).
After moving back to the United States, she wrote about her
personal experiences. One of her short stories entitled Isolated
Incidents explores the biased Canadian view towards
immigrants that she encountered, as well as how government
agencies handled assults on particular races. Another short story
titled The Tenant continues to reflect on her focus on
immigrant Indian women and their mistreatment. The story is
about a divorced Indian woman studying in the States and her
experiences with interracial relationships. One quotation from
the story hints at Mukherjees views of Indian men as being too
preoccupied to truly care for their wives and children: All
Indian men are wife beaters, Maya [the narrator] says. She
means it and doesnt mean it.
In Wife, Mukherjee writes about a woman named Dimple who
has been surpressed by such men and attempts to be the ideal
Bengali wife, but out of fear and personal instability, she murders
her husband and eventually commits suicide. The stories in
Darkness further endeavor to tell similar stories of immigrants
and women.

In her third phase, Mukherjee is described as having

accepted being an immigrant, living in a continent of
immigrants (M. qtd in Alam 9). She describes herself
as American and not the hyphenated Indian-American
title:
I maintain that I am an American writer of Indian
origin, not because Im ashamed of my past, not
because Im betraying or distorting my past, but
because my whole adult life has been lived here, and I
write about the people who are immigrants going
through the process of making a home here... I write in
the tradition of immigrant experience rather than
nostalgia and expatriation. That is very important. I am
saying that the luxury of being a U.S. citizen for me is
that can define myself in terms of things like my
politics, my sexual orientation or my education. My
affiliation with readers should be on the basis of what
they want to read, not in terms of my ethnicity or my
race. (Mukherjee qtd. in Basbanes)
Mukherjee continues writing about the immigrant experience in
most of the stories in The Middle Man and Other Stories, a
collection of short stories which won her the National Book
Critics Circle Award for Best Fiction, Jasmine, and essays. These
stories explore the meeting of East and West through immigrant
experiences in the U.S. and Canada along with further describing
the idea of the great melting pot of culture in the United States.
Jasmine develops this idea of the mixing of the East and West
with a story telling of a young Hindu woman who leaves India
for the U.S. after her husbands murder, only to be raped and
eventually returned to the position of a caregiver through a series
of jobs (Alam 100). The unity between the First and Third
worlds is shown to be in the treatment of women as subordinate
in both countries.
Her latest works include The Holder of the World, published in
1993, and Leave It to Me, published in 1997. The Holder of the
World is a beautifully written story about Hannah Easton, a
woman born in Massachusetts who travels to India. She becomes
involved with a few Indian lovers and eventually a king who
gives her a diamond know as the Emperors Tear. (Alam 120).
The story is told through the detective searching for the diamond
and Hannahs viewpoint. Mukherjees focus continues to be on
immigrant women and their freedom from relationships to
become individuals. She also uses the female characters to
explore the spatiotemporal (Massachusetts to India) connection
between different cultures. In Leave It to Me, Mukherjee tells the
story of a young woman sociopath named Debby DiMartino,
who seeks revenge on parents who abandoned her. The story
reveals her ungrateful interaction with kind adoptive parents and
a vengeful search for her real parents (described as a murderer
and a flowerchild). The novel also looks at the conflict between
Eastern and Western worlds and at mother-daughter relationships
through the political and emotional topics by the main characer
in her quest for revenge. Candia McWilliam of The London
Review of Books describes Mukherjee appropriately as A writer
both tough and voluptuous in her works.

Works

The Tigers Daughter, Houghton, 1972.

Wife, Houghton, 1975.
Kautilyas Concept of Diplomacy: A New Interpretation,
Minerva, 1976.
(With Blaise) Days and Nights in Calcutta (nonfiction),
Doubleday: Garden City, New York, 1977.
An Invisible Woman, McClelland & Stewart, 1981.
Darkness, Penguin, 1985.
(With Blaise) The Sorrow and the Terror: The Haunting Legacy
of the Air India Tragedy, Viking, 1987.
The Middleman and Other Stories, Grove, 1988.
Jasmine, Grove, 1989.
Political Culture and Leadership in India (nonfiction), South
Asia, 1991.
Regionalism in Indian Perspective (nonfiction), South Asia,
1992.
The Holder of the World, Knopf: New York City, 1993.
Leave It to Me, A.A. Knopf: New York City, 1997.

Holders of the Word:

An Interview with Bharati Mukherjee

By Tina Chen and S.X. Goudie

University of California, Berkeley
Copyright (c) 1997 by Tina Chen and S.X. Goudie, all rights
reserved. This text may be used and shared in accordance with
the fair-use provisions of U.S. copyright law, and it may be
archived and redistributed in electronic form, provided that the
editors are notified and no fee is charged for access. Archiving,
redistribution, or republication of this text on other terms, in any
medium, requires the consent of the author and the notification
of the editors.
1.

In her epilogue to Days and Nights in Calcutta , Bharati

Mukherjee proclaims the spirit that motivates her
writing: Even more than other writers, I must learn to
astonish, to shock (299). Bharati Mukherjee has indeed
produced a body of work that both sustains wonder and
evokes surprise. The author of four novels: The Tigers
Daughter , Wife , Jasmine , and The Holder of the
World ; two short-story collections, Darkness and The
Middleman and Other Stories ; as well as The Sorrow
and the Terror and Days and Nights in Calcutta , two
works of non-fiction co-authored with her husband
Clark Blaise, Mukherjee has deliberately, sometimes
flamboyantly, fused her many impulses, backgrounds,
and selves to create a new immigrant literature that
embodies her sense of what it means to be a woman
writer of Bengali-Indian origin who has lived in, and
been indelibly marked by, both Canada and the United
States. In the process, she has broken boundaries and
refused to limit herself to easy categories. She sees
herself as a pioneerof new territories, experiences,
and literaturesand coextensive with her mission to

2.

3.

4.

explore new worlds is her intention to disturb what

came before.
Though adamant about her desire not to be classified as
a postcolonial writer/critic, Mukherjee nonetheless
addresses a network of issues of great importance to
scholars and writers less violently opposed to being
identified as postcolonial. In addition, her writing has
been the subject of significant scholarly engagement in
recent years: many of the most recognized figures in
postcolonial studies have addressed, often vociferously,
the goals of Professor Mukherjees critical and creative
project. Because of their concerns, seasoned and
aspiring scholars alike turn to her work to engage a
wide variety of critical perspectives and theoretical
approaches. Such scholarly interest suggests that,
whatever a critics point of view, both Professor
Mukherjee and the postcolonial studies community are
vested in proliferating discussion on matters involving
race, class, gender, and nation in national and
transnational contexts. In fact, despite the heretofore
adversarial relationship between some postcolonial
scholars and Professor Mukherjee, one of the virtues of
this interview, we believe, is that it points out
significant areas of shared concern between Professor
Mukherjee and her detractors, despite attempts by both
parties to disavow such mutual interest.
In interviewing Professor Mukherjee for Jouvert: a
journal of postcolonial studies , we utilized an
interviewing strategy that negotiated the intersections of
her artistic vision and the questions and concerns raised
by critics in response to it. Professor Mukherjee, a
writer who also prides herself on being a scholar and a
critic, responded graciously to the challenges of such a
conversation. Conducted during the summer of 1996,
the interview addresses a constellation of questions and
issues on the process of writing, reading, and
interpreting fiction. Even as critical sites of possible
alliance between Professor Mukherjee and the
postcolonial studies community dot the surface of the
interview, many of the disagreements that exist between
them are cast into relief. Together, these locations map
the beginnings of a productive and exciting literary
cartography.
The interview opens with a statement volunteered by
Professor Mukherjee, followed by five discrete sections.
The first, Vision and Voice, originates from
Mukherjees admission that the problem of voice is the
most exciting (Days and Nights 298) and explores her
artistic agenda before addressing what critics and
scholars have had to say about her deployment of this
aesthetic. The next section, The Anxiety of
Influence?, fleshes out Mukherjees relationships to
other writers and asks her to consider the multiple levels
of engagement between readers, writers, and critics. In
the third section of the interview, The Politics of New
Immigrant Writing, Mukherjee discusses the
ideological contours of the type of writing she has
engaged in. She comments on several leading
postcolonial scholars and what she perceives to be their
relationships to her work. At times she draws explicit
boundaries between the goals and orientation of
postcolonial studies and her own mission as a new
immigrant writer. In States of Violence, section IV,
we talk about the crucial space of violence in her
fiction, both on textual and metatextual levels. Finally,
in section V, Writing and Technology, we examine the
critical debate surrounding Mukherjees most recent
novel, The Holder of the World. Appreciative of Jouvert

5.

6.

s investment in the intersections between information

technology and scholarly practice, we ask a series of
questions about Mukherjees use of virtual reality as a
trope for dislocating and transforming literary, cultural,
and historical topographies of Mughal India and
colonial, 19th, and 20th-century United States.
Collectively, then, the five sections of the interview
respond to the multiple demands of literary production
and interpretation. By providing additional insight into
Professor Mukherjees critical and creative project
while simultaneously affording her a forum in which to
critique postcolonial scholars and critics who have
expressed interest in her work, we offer a survey of
territorial disputes that are all the more provocative for
being still unsettled.
M: Postcolonial studies seems an inappropriate category
in which to place my works. I dont think of myself as a
postcolonial person stranded on the outer shores of the
collapsed British Empire. I havent thought of myself as
a postcolonial since I finished co-authoring, with my
husband Clark Blaise, Days and Nights in Calcutta.
Writing my half of that book was my way of thinking
through who I was, where I was, where Id rather be. If
I had chosen to return to India after writing that book in
1977, or if, like Salman Rushdie, Id spent my entire
adult life in Britain instead of in North America, I might
have evolved as a postcolonial whose creative
imagination is fueled primarily by the desire to create a
new mythology of Indian nationhood after the Rajs
brutalization of Indian culture. But I didnt. I came to
the U.S., initially as a student, because in 1961 the
University of Iowa was the only place in the world
offering a degree in the area I wanted to study, and
because American universities had scholarships to offer
me. When I first arrived on campus, I thought of myself
as a Bengali rather than as an Indian. You were who you
were because of the language and dialect you spoke, the
location of the village of your male ancestors, the
family and religion you were born into. I was a Bengali
and proud of it, which meant that I claimed as heritage a
culture distinct from that of a Bihari or a Punjabi or a
Gujarati or a Tamil. Thats the way we were brought up
in Calcutta in the Fifties. We were encouraged to set
ourselves apart from people of other Indian states. In
Iowa, where I didnt run into too many Bengalis, I
began to see and feel affinities with rather than
hostilities towards non-Bengali Indian students on
campus.
If you insist, on this beautiful May afternoon in 1996,
that I describe myself in terms of ethno-nationality, Id
say Im an American writer of Bengali-Indian origin. In
other words, the writer/political activist in me is more
obsessed with addressing the issues of minority
discourse in the U.S. and Canada, the two countries I
have lived and worked in over the last thirty odd years.
The national mythology that my imagination is driven
to create, through fiction, is that of the post-Vietnam
United States. I experience, simultaneously, the
pioneers capacity to be shocked and surprised by the
new culture, and the immigrants willingness to de-form
and re-form that culture. At this moment, my Calcutta
childhood and adolescence offer me intriguing,
incompletely-comprehended revelations about my
hometown, my family, my place in that community: the
kind of revelations that fuel the desire to write an
autobiography rather than to mythologize an Indian
national identity.

1.

2.

I. Vision and Voice

7. J: In A Four-Hundred Year Old Woman, you state
that your image of artistic structure and excellence is
the Mughal miniature painting with its crazy
foreshortening of vanishing point, its insistence that
everything happens simultaneously, bound only by
shape and color (38). Would you give an example of
how the Mughal miniature translates into your writing?
8. M: The best example probably is Courtly Vision,
the last story in the collection Darkness. I have an
obsessive love of Mughal miniature painting. The
miniatures that speak to me most eloquently were
painted during the reign of Emperor Akbar. I suppose
thats because mine is a writerly love. Each of the
Akbari paintings that Im mesmerized by is so crowded
with narrative, sub-narratives, sometimes metanarratives, so taut with passion and at the same time so
crisp with irony. Every separate story in the miniature
matters, every minor character has a dramatic
function. But all the strands and details manage to
cohere, thats whats amazing! And each is framed by
an elaborately painted border. The border shouldnt be
dismissed as the artists excessive love of adumbration.
The border forces you to view the work not primarily as
a source of raw sociological data, but as sociology
metaphorized ; that is, as a master-artists observation
on life/history/national psyche cast in the aesthetic
traditions of the community and transmuted into art.
The story, Courtly Vision, was inspired by a number
of Akbari paintings, particularly one that shows the
Emperor in battle dress, leading his massive, battleready army out of his fortressed capital. The painting
anticipates victory, and evokes a celebratory mood. The
mood is historically tenable: Akbar, wise, tolerant,
brave, won his wars. But what drew the writer in me to
the painting was the contextual irony of such victory on
the battlefield. Akbar built an exquisite capital city in
Fatehpur Sikri, but he had to abandon it because hed
sited it in a drought zone. He was affably curious about
the other, which meant he allowed in European
peddlers, freebooters, Christian missionaries, and so
unintentionally facilitated the power grab by the many
European East India Companies, and the eventual
debilitation of the Mughals. When I started Courtly
Vision, I was aiming to close with that epiphanic
contextual irony. But before I finished the first draft, the
frameconverting verisimilitude into meta-narrative
had worked itself in. The frame made the reader
witness to a painters (via authors) re-presentation of
history as evidenced in a slick Sothebys catalogue, and,
through the inclusion of the cheap estimated price,
upped the final irony into Europes devaluation of
Mughal art.
Until recent decades, Eurocentric art criticism dismissed
Mughal miniatures as unsophisticated, as lacking
mastery of perspective. The point is that Mughal artists
had developed a Mughal aesthetic. They preferred to
work with many points of focus. I had some idea, while
I was writing the stories for Darkness and The
Middleman , how much about form and principle I had
absorbed from the 16th- and 17th-century paintings I so
loved. But it was as I drafted the essay, A FourHundred Year Old Woman, that I thought through, and
articulated, my Mughal-inspired narrative aesthetic. I
like to move narrative by indirection, to create apparent

lumps and spills along the through-line. This

applies to novels like Jasmine and The Holder of the
World as well as to the short stories. The zigzag route,
one of my characters confesses, is the shortest. The
indirect narratives are, of course, designed to parallel or
to undermine the main characters story. The parts,
when added up and framed, should reveal authorial
vision. The frame and voicethe term that we
writers communally use to indicate aesthetic strategy
are what make the sum of the parts, 2+2+3, not 7 but
10.
3.

4.

5.
6.

J: So you work like a bricoleur , parts are used and

reused and shaped and reshaped, much like the
character Jasmines identity. As with time and space in
the novel, things do seem to recur though with a
difference, even as Jasmine suggests shes given up one
identity and moved on to another. There are a series of
transformations...
M: Yeah, Jasmine goes through several transformations,
and I like to think that she is still open to many more
self-inventions. She lives on, very fully, inside my head.
But when I was talking about indirection , I was trying
to insist that the novel, Jasmine , be read as more than
the story of Jasmines change. Thats why the novel
provided so many different points of focus: the
experience of dislocation and relocation is handled by
each of the immigrant characters. As in Akbari
miniatures, my novel compresses the immigration
histories of many minor characters. Professorji, his
wife, his elderly parents, the Caribbean housekeepers in
Manhattan, the Guatemalans in Florida, Du and his
Asian-American friend in Iowa: even within an ethnic
group, each minor character has a distinct response. And
white Americans, including the volunteer for the
Sanctuary Movement, treat these various minor
characters variously. The opposed parallel that moved
me most as I was writing was the one between Jasmine
and Du. Jasmines very open to new experience and
optimistic about outcome. Her attitude is: Hey, you
cant rape me and get away with it! You cant push me
around! Im here, Im gonna stay if I want to, and Im
gonna conquer the territory! Du, who has to attend
school in the U.S., probably outwardly dresses more
like U.S.-born Americans than does Jasmine, and
certainly is more familiar with American colloquialisms
and pop culture, but hes cynical of post-Vietnam
America, hes aware of the limits of the American
Dream and makes his guerrilla attacks on that Dream.
The total picture: thats the heady part of writing, the
creating of all these...
J: little miniature universes within the frame.
M: Right. In a way, I suppose thats being a Hindu, I
mean, this being constantly aware of the existence of
many universes, this undermining of biography and
individual ego. The cosmology that my characters and I
inhabit derives very much from the Puranic tales. The
Puranas are cycles of tales (think of them as morality
tales, religious fables, there are thousands of them) that
every Hindu child is told the way that kids in the U.S.
are exposed to fairytales and bedtime stories. As
story, they really work, too! Conflict, heroes, villains,
obstacles, action, surprise revelation! But the stories
metaphorize the Hindu concepts of cosmology, time and
space. Current discoveries in astronomy are certainly
pointing up the existence of universes other than ours. I
believe in re-incarnation, which, too, may be a

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.
12.

13.

14.

15.

metaphor for some geo-biological phenomenon, why

not?
J: Has your background as a Hindu enabled you to
create an intimacy with the reader, from a New World
perspective, that is distinct from other stylistic and
narrative techniques youve encountered in American
writing?
M: I dont know if all Hindu-American writers see the
world in the way that I do and the way that I mix Islam
with Hindu art, because Ive been exposed to both of
these, really results in a very syncretic narrative
strategy. As such, my incorporation of Hinduism might
be quite opposed to how some other Hindu writer living
in New York may think of Hinduism or exercise it. I
dont want to lump all Hindus together.
J: Youve identified voice as the prime aesthetic of
your writing. In this context, it seems particularly
interesting that Jasmine has been critiqued for the
inauthenticity of the protagonists voice; as Liew-Geok
Leong writes, [t]he voice of Jasmine, surprisingly
articulate and assured, is not always believable, given
her background and circumstances; it is her creators
voice that takes over and speaks for her, the result
perhaps of too close an identification with the subject
(494). Upon reflection, do you see any validity in this
evaluation?
M: Leong would appear to be ignorant of the craftrelated lexicon of contemporary American writers. Just
as terms such as essentialism, subaltern, agency,
and signifier are accepted by academics as shorthand
for certain conceptual constructs, so voice is our
shorthand for the process of decision-making regarding
tone, diction, pacing, texture, withholding, etc. in a
given work.
J: In other words, youre suggesting that your notion of
voice is more expansive, that youre not striving after
some sort of realistic, mimetic voice.
M: I am saying that being a scholar as well as a writer, I
expect myself to do my homework very, very
thoroughly, before I make public pronouncements.
Voice should not have been confused with tone,
diction, etc. Of course I am not striving after some sort
of realistic, mimetic voice. I leave that to taperecorders. Art is about selection, stylization, and
metaphoric revelation.
J: Other writers have been subject to the same sort of
criticism in terms of voice, right? For example, the
African American writer Charles Johnson has been
criticized severely by some because the protagonist of
his award-winning novel Middle Passage , a freed
slave, speaks in highly philosophical language, and his
narrative voice tends to be anachronistic.
M: James Alan McPherson gets the same flak for not
using inner city American-English exclusively or
predominantly. Its absurd. Its as absurd as saying that
because Gayatri Spivak was born into a Bengali family
and grew up in Calcutta, she has no right to public
expression in non-Bengali languages, especially not in
the languages of former colonialist nations such as
England or France, nor to derive any theoretical model
from Marx or other European white males. I believe that
if you are literate, all literature that you expose yourself
to is your heritage to claim or reject.
J: Again, it seems that your major concern with such
critics is that, in the interests of authenticity, they
restrict you from using the assembly of creative tools in
your bag, that theres a prescribed way in which voice
is supposed to be rendered.

16. M: Its patronizing, elitist, and classist of such critics to

presume that the poor and the de- privileged do not have
sophisticated thoughts and poetic articulation. They
need to acquaint themselves with scholarship regarding
oral literature. In addition, I am very bothered by their
reduction of art to sociological statement. Fiction
transmits its message (by which I mean its authors
vision) very differently from essays.
17. J: Given your criticism of V.S. Naipaul 1 along those
lines during an interview some years ago (A
Conversation), it must be particularly painful to be
criticized for a certain failure in voice. In that interview,
you attacked Naipauls notion that the dispossessed are
incapable of articulating, in sophisticated ways, their
pain, desires, etc. He suggested to you that he feels
theyre incapable of speaking in any complex or
redemptive way due to their psychological, social, and
cultural fragmentation as a result of colonialism. You
are now subject to an attack that is the flip side of the
same coin. The suggestion is that youre still not
allowing them to think and speak for themselves. Critics
argue that youre just...
18. M: They have taken a Naipaulian position about me and
my writing, from a high moral ground, and I resent that,
and Im saying that...
19. J:... theyre the ones who want to speak. That they want
to speak for these people and have you renounce your
right to speak in the ways you wish?
20. M: Right. Thats where my ire is located. The writer
claims only to speak for her unique, eccentric
characters. These critics, on the other hand, though they
locate themselves in North America and participate in
the North American competitive, materialist economy,
invent or appropriate the positions of populous, Asiabased communities, and worse, they reduce the
diversity of those communities positions into one that
fits most neatly into their favored theory. The Indian
graduate students and junior faculty members I have
talked to on western Indian campuses in the last two
years have expressed growing resentment of such
usurpation. The theorist they most often named was
Spivak, perhaps because she is the best-known of the
Indo-American group.
Some recent publications by serious Indian literary
critics based in India, for instance by Professors Aijaz
Ahmad and Harish Trivedi of the University of Delhi,
indicate an emerging resentment of the appropriation of
Indianality and postcoloniality by scholars of Indian
origin (or of non-European origin) who have opted for
U.S. citizenship and/or permanent residence in North
America. The Jouvert community is no doubt well
aware of Ahmads direct attack on Edward Saidand
by extension, it would seem, his indirect attack on
1

Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul, Kt. (Knight Bachelor), TC (The

Trinity Cross is the highest national award in Trinidad and Tobago), born
August 17, 1932 in Chaguanas, Trinidad and Tobago, better known as V. S.
Naipaul, is a Trinidadian-born British writer of Indo-Trinidadian descent,
currently resident in Wiltshire.
Naipaul was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1990 and awarded the
Nobel Prize in Literature in 2001.
He is the son, older brother, uncle, and cousin of published authors
Seepersad Naipaul, Shiva Naipaul, Neil Bissoondath, and Vahni Capildeo,
respectively. His current wife is Nadira Naipaul, a former Pakistani
journalist.

Spivakfor internationalizing the periphery. (Thats

Ahmads phrase, not mine. I myself prefer to reject the
center/periphery template, and so, resist Eurocentric
vocabulary.) Professor Trivedi, who lectured here at
Berkeley a few months ago on the Eurocentric
implications of the term postcolonial, was more direct
in his attack on the right of Spivak, a U.S. citizen and
long-term U.S. resident, to speak for the periphery.
21. J: Spivak has cautioned against reading her as someone
who claims to give voice to those she represents; she
has said in The Postcolonial Critic and Im
paraphrasingthat to read her as speaking for the
periphery is to read her, wrongly, as a Third World
informant.
22. M: But then she goes on to, at the same time, trounce
others for providing versions, portraits that dont
coincide with hers so that she, Im not going to say that
shes lying, but theres this problematic position...
23. J: You dont get the same reception?
24. M: Oh, I get severely attacked by many Indian critics,
but for a very different reason! Whereas I have heard
Spivak being attacked for appropriation of the so-called
periphery, I have been virulently attacked for defining
myself as an American writer of Indian origin writing of
the diasporic and immigrant experience. It started with a
response to a journalists question during a press
conference in Delhi in 1990. I was asked, Wouldnt
you, if you had your rathers, come back to live in
India? and, thinking of my husband and children
settled in the States, answered, Frankly, no. That no
was misinterpreted as a betrayal of my Indian heritage.
But, now that so many Indian families have relatives
settled in the U.S., my immigrant material is being
read or re-read in fresh ways.
25. J: In this discussion about who gets to speak and who
doesnt, there seems to be an implicit criticism that your
characters are not authentic.
26. M: Right, and Im saying that this Leong should be
listening to rap, doing some more hanging out in
inner cities to see how much poetry there is in ordinary
lives. How can any critic have the audacity to assume
that all members of a group think, feel, react, and
verbalize identically? How do you explain one brother
from a dysfunctional family becoming a writerIm
thinking obviously of John Edgar Wideman, author of
Philadelphia Fire and his brother becoming a
murderer? So, to assume that you are identical with
everyone else in your class is to not understand human
beings.
27. J: And when she accuses you of perhaps identifying too
closely with your subject and writing an inauthentic
character as a result of that identification, would your
charge be no, youre also identifying with the subject
but your identification forecloses the possibility of the
life which I choose to explore?
28. M: Well, not only that. I hear Leong saying that
someone from Jasmines background and circumstances
cannot speak the way that she does. You see, thats very
different from the way youre verbalizing it. I am saying
that to think all people who are born poor are therefore
incapable of thought, imagination, and speech, is a very
elitist and classist kind of assumption; I need to see
them as individuals rather than types.
29. J: It seems that you are responding to this question on at
least two different levels.
30. M: My response to this question is structured on three
different levels. One is that the critic doesnt understand

voice; she simply is ignorant about how writers use this

term. My second point is that no fine fiction, no good
literature, is anchored in verisimilitude. Fiction must be
metaphor. It is not transcription of real life but its a
distillation and pitching at higher intensification of life.
Its always a distortion. And then the third point is that
just because Jasmine happens to be poor doesnt mean
she is incapable of imagination, intelligence, and
articulate speech.
II. Anxiety of Influence?

31. J: Are there Indian writers writing in English whose

work you admire?
32. M: Do you mean Anglophone writers who are Indian
citizens and are residing in India? R.K. Narayan. I keep
nominating him for the Nobel Prize. Im also very
interested in younger fiction writers and poets like R.
Raj Rao and Ranjit Hoskhote.
33. J: In addition to Naipaul, were wondering what other
Caribbean writers have influenced you in any way:
Wilson Harris and his AmerIndian aesthetics, Michele
Cliff, Edouard Glissant, or Maryse Cond and their
notions of cross-cultural poetics, etc.
34. M: None of them have influenced me, though, of
course, I have enjoyed reading each of them. About
Naipaul, I cant say that he influenced me, but I can say
that A House for Mr. Biswas inspired me when I read it
as a student in the early Sixties. I hadnt read any fiction
about Trinidad Indians before that. That novel gave me
the self-confidence to claim my own fictional world.
35. J: If, as with Joseph Conrads Heart of Darkness ,
canonical texts exercise an influence, however
disturbing, on the formerly colonizedand in some
instances, newly immigrated what colonialist texts
have left their mark on you?
36. M: None, really. By the way, I didnt read Heart of
Darkness until I came to the States. Of all English
literature I was exposed to, Shakespeares tragedies
moved most. I could recite soliloquies by Macbeth,
Hamlet, Portia, Shylock, King Lear, Cordelia with great
feeling. I think it was the music of the lines, the sound
of the words, that excited me. Elocution was my most
favorite subject in school. I loved to read poetry out
loud. Tagore and Keats, oh, they were so heady when I
was a schoolgirl in Calcutta. I responded to the euphony
first; then to the ideas. I didnt know any Buddhists and
came from a staunch Hindu family, but Tagore made me
weep over the persecution of Buddhist converts in
ancient India. Same with Keats; Id never been to
Greece, not even seen pictures of the country, but I sure
could visualize the friezescapes in the Ode on a
Grecian Urn. There was something fresh about Keats
because he was rebelling against the narrowness of
British conventions. Though India was a sovereign
nation when I first encountered Keats, my conventschool campus remained a very English spot. You
know, we had to sing Gilbert and Sullivan comic
operas, that sort of thing, and we were expected to
admire the logic and orderliness of the British mind.
Keats was resisting those values in his poems. I suppose
loving Keats poems for me was a quiet form of
guerrilla warfare against my teachers.
37. J: Before deciding to use it for The Holder of the
World , did Keats or Ode on a Grecian Urn ever take

38.

39.
40.

41.

42.
43.
44.

on a different aura for you? You have said elsewhere

that your life and work should be divided into three
distinct phasesas a colonial, then national, subject in
India, as a postcolonial Indian in Canada, and as an
immigrant, later a citizen, of the United States. Did
Keats and his ode accompany you through those
transformations?
M: Im not sure I even thought about Keats for twenty
years after leaving India. When I sat down to write The
Holder , I was a very different person from the girl who
had recited the odes out loud for pleasure, and the Ode
on a Grecian Urn was very much on my mind because,
like Keats, I was playing with history and imagination.
Thats the marvelous thing about the writing process:
you dont know when and how a memory, a scrap of
conversation overheard, an allusion or image, is
suddenly going to surface and work itself into your
story. That ode came to me; I didnt seek it out. Thats
the way the creative process works for me. I knew right
away that I would use the Keats references to control
and ironize what my characters had to say about time,
and to make authorial meta-statements about writing.
J: Is there a distinction between the way that Keats sees
the Grecian urn and the way you see a Mughal painting?
M: Thats not the contrast that I would make. I would
make it between virtual reality and the urn. The urn is
still, the action is frozen, and one can only observe. Im
not so much concerned with what Keats is saying about
these people as I am with how action has been stuck in
time and cant be redone. The people are always going
to have their hands and feet in one particular posture,
whereas with interactive technology, youre changing
the narrative by inputting new information according to
your new mood. The ways virtual technology will be
used for therapy, to help autistic children or to enable
people to overcome their fears, is very close to what Im
talking about. The individual experiencing the image,
not simply the image itselfboth are going to be
transformed by interaction.
J: Weve asked you to discuss your literary influences
but we also wonder what critics [literary and
otherwise] you consider important to the development
of your own critical project in delineating the future of
American writing?
M: None.
J: Do you find the writer-critic a more effective,
perhaps even more productive, type of critic than the
scholar?
M: For writers and readers, yes. Writers writing about
fiction see the text as process whereas scholars reduce it
to product. Writer-critics explore the work from inside
out; they divine the aesthetic decisions that the texts
writer has made to best get across the authorial vision,
and then they assess the effect of those decisions. They
let the work set up the criteria by which it should be
judged instead of imposing their arbitrary grid on the
work; they aim to open up the work instead of
reducing it to a dutifully-followed or sloppily-followed
set of narrative rules thought up by a scholar. I think the
best essays on the art of fiction, on beginnings,
endings, etc., to date have been written by writers. A
book of essays on writing Id recommend is How
Stories Mean , edited by John Metcalf and J.R.
Struthers. Contemporary scholars seem to have
deliberately removed themselves from primary texts, so
that not only do they sometimes get their data wrong
(and I mean titles of works, names of characters), but
they often discard those complexities in the text that

dont fit their theories, and they devalue those aesthetic

innovations that challenge their particular sociopolitical agendas. Scholars seem to just talk to scholars,
using a language of the initiated. The subaltern critics
might wish to speak for the de-privileged, but they
certainly dont speak to them.
III. The Politics of New Immigrant Writing

45. J: You have remarked that no longer do you find exilic

writers as provocative as they once were. Yet theyre
still quite popular. Why do you think expatriate writers
like Naipaul continue to enjoy such popularity,
specifically with Western audiences?
46. M: I dont know how popular they are or what you
mean by popularity. I think an awful lot of minority
writers and expatriate writers complain that their books
dont get into bookstores, that they may get reviews, or
the same few will get reviews, but that there really isnt
any kind of cross-fertilization of readers. I think there
are two kinds of writers and Im not saying that its only
about exilic writers or immigrant writers but all writers:
those who reinforce what the public thinks, the
conventional values, and those who constantly
interrogate the conventional values. An awful lot of the
exilic writers, the expatriate writers, are providing the
kinds of portraits, moods, positions, and problems with
which the readership, the publishing industry, and the
scholarsor critics anywayare familiar and
comfortable. The few who are obliterating that
particular kind of discourse between Third World and
First World, margin and center, or minority and
mainstream, have a much harder time being understood
or being recognized. Ive been writing and publishing
since 1971 but its taken me an awfully long time to get
any attention, largely because I was, for a while, an
Indian citizen living in Canada as a landed immigrant
and writing about people outside of India. Then I
became a Canadian citizen but writing, let us say, about
immigrants in New York. They didnt know how to
classify me, whether by my passport or by my material,
which was about immigrants at a time when there was
no such category as immigrant fiction that wasnt
about Europeans coming to North America during the
19th century. So I dont know about popularity. Very
recently there was an article I read in the Times on
Spanish-speaking writers in New York objecting
vociferously to the ways in which they are shut out
when they write middle-class fiction about middle-class
characters who speak in perfectly educated, sensitive
English, even though theyre second or third generation.
The stereotype is that if youre going to write about
Hispanics, youd better make them lettuce-pickers and
have a spiritualist. The kind of criticism from literary
critics and theorists who have encountered my own
work stems from their belief that if youre India-born,
you must write about India and you must write about an
Indian woman or peasants being victimized.
47. J: They want it primitivized in some way.
48. M: Yes, stereotyped. Its absurd, when you think that
Im writing about the post-1965 immigrationtransformed America, and that the majority of South
Asians granted visas are urban, educated professionals
and their families. The aim of fiction is to break down
stereotypes. Unfortunately, the publishing and

49.

50.

51.

52.

academic industries seem to profit more from

reinforcing stereotypes. This is what AfricanAmerican intellectuals have to deal with too. Thats why
I feel Im on the same wavelength with Henry Louis
Gates, Jr., Cornel West, James Alan McPherson. Why
should a minority person be made to feel guilty because
she believes education leads to both self-improvement
and national enlightenment? To me, class is as divisive
as race.
J: Just as there is a risk of becoming locked into ones
own exilic condition to the point of pathetic selfabsorption, isnt there a danger of being too celebratory
about the enabling aspects of an immigrants
multicultural point of view?
M: Im going to object to the word multicultural here
because Ive spoken so vociferously against this whole
official multiculturalism in Canada. Im going to limit it
to an immigrants point of view, all right? Yes, my work
has sometimes been cited for celebrating too
enthusiastically the swagger of immigration, the
energies released in the process of transformation. It is
as though certain readers cannot see beyond the color of
my characters skin, or their gender, or their
predetermined view of America, without linking them,
automatically, to the long sad history of New World
exploitation. Yes, they are victims but they are resilient
victims, unviolated in their core of need and
imagination. Rocky, being white, can pick himself off
the canvas, land a few blows, and be a hero; Rakesh,
however, a laid-off engineer with three kids and no
American certification, opens a dingy spice store and
Hindi video outlet and somehow is perceived as
pathetic. This is the stereotyping that has to end. My
Professorji, who used to be a doctor in his home country
and is now having to sell human hair for making wigs
or electronic equipment in some basement video store in
Queens, is somehow seen, necessarily, as a pathetic
character rather than as a resilient hero, who says all
right, this didnt work, but something else will work.
J: By identifying yourself as an immigrant writer, you
resist being classified by postcolonial scholars as an
exilic or expatriate writer. You also dont seem to stake
out an intellectual position as a writer/scholar akin to
what Abdul R. JanMohamed has termed the specular
border intellectual, a category for writers from
formerly colonized or enslaved places who engage in a
critique of multiple locations from a position of
homelessness-as-home.
M: Just the fact you bring up JanMohamed is troubling
to me. Were very, very different kinds of Indians.
Simply because of skin color and South Asian ancestry,
the non-South Asian is likely to lump us together just as
they have long lumped the Samuel Selvons and the V.S.
Naipauls together as part of the Indian diaspora.
JanMohamed, having been brought up in Africa
according to a different religion, a different language, a
different cultural and revolutionary experience, has
surely more to say about minority discourse in Africa
and about how to apply his particular African training
and African experience to being a minority in a whitedominated world in the U.S. and less about mainstream
India and Indian writing. The mission of postcolonial
studies as a discipline is to level all of us to our skin
color and ethnic origin whereas as a writer, my job is to
open up, to discover and say we are all individuals. In
fiction we are writing about individuals; none of them is
meant to be a crude spokesperson for whole groups,
whether those groups are based on gender or race or

53.
54.

55.

56.

57.

class. If the story of one individual reveals something

about the way in which human nature works, great, if it
doesnt, then it has failed as art.
J: How would you characterize, then, the relationship
that exists between postcolonialism and your creative
project?
M: The mission of postcolonial studies seems to be to
deliberately equate Art and journalism, to reduce
novels to specimens for the confirming of their
theories. If an imaginative work doesnt fit the cultural
theories they approve of, its dismissed as defective.
The relationship between the artist and the postcolonial
scholar has become adversarial. It doesnt have to be,
thats whats so sad. Im not denigrating all scholarship,
but only that particular school of postcolonial criticism
that is hostile to art and aesthetics. All that, as a writer, I
valuepower of word-choice and placement of
punctuation, imagery, texture, pacingall the strategies
that I employ to articulate my vision as precisely as I
can to the reader, these scholars treat as debris to be
cleared for the exposing of camouflaged hegemonic
agendas in the narrative.
J: You make some very clear distinctions between
writers and scholars. In the field of Caribbean
postcolonial studies, such distinctions are not so clear.
People like Edouard Glissant, Wilson Harris, and
Maryse Cond would all be considered both important
postcolonial scholars and writers. Isnt there an
opportunity for solidarity between scholar/writers or
havent you reached out to those voices?
M: Oh, Im friends with Maryse Cond, and am
familiar with the work of Harris and Glissant. Im glad
to hear that scholars of Caribbean studies are not as
anti-imaginative literature as are the Spivak-influenced
Indo-American postcolonial graduate students who
write papers or dissertation chapters on my work. I find
so many glaring errors in their so-called scholarship; I
mean getting really basic data wrong, like titles or genre
of a text, names of significant characters. I dont know
how such shoddy work gets past a dissertation
supervisor in any respectable university! I recently
came across a paper by an Indo-American woman
scholar that accused me, not my character(s), of being
anti-America, and recommended that I should try to feel
more comfortable living in the United States, all on the
basis of having read one single story, the title of which
she got wrong. It sometimes appears that all I value as a
writer are being deliberately denigrated or disregarded
by the scholars. What is important to me is Isaac Babel
saying, A comma placed just right will stab the heart,
whereas for a lot of these scholars, judging from the
papers that Ive read, to worry about artistic or metereffective placement of punctuation is to be sort of rightwing.
J: In his book In Theory , Aijaz Ahmad critiques the
notion of adversarial internationalization by arguing
that while Said speaks, inexplicably, of intellectual
and scholarly work from the peripheries, done either by
immigrants or by visitors, both of whom are generally
anti-imperialist....[t]he vast majority of immigrants and
visitors who go from the peripheries to the Western
center in the United States either take no part in politics
and scholarly endeavor or turn out to be right-wing
people (207-8). He characterizes you as the ultimate
representative of this second type of person. Have you
had a chance to respond to this assertion in any formal
way?

58. M: Yes, yes I have. I did it for an Indian publication that

is the equivalent, sort of, of the New York Times Sunday
Magazine. Theyd invited writers to write about the
notion of internationalizing the periphery, if you like.
First of all, I want to know where Aijaz Ahmad gets his
statistics for making this kind of generalization? I didnt
find it in his footnotes and I certainly didnt find it in
the text. And then, has he ever done research on my
voting records? Does he know that I was a very active
member of the NDP in Canada? The choice I was faced
with in the late 70s just prior to leaving for the United
States in 1980 was to either give up writing and run for
public office as an NDP candidate, or say to myself,
Politics, someone else will carry on. I live my most
real life through writing.
59. J: These are highly provocative rejoinders to level at
Ahmad, especially considering how he criticizes Said
for not checking his facts or statistics. Ahmad even goes
so far to suggest that Said hasnt really read your
writing, or the writings of your immigrant peers, and
that Saids classification of you as anti-imperialist is
gleaned from what other critics have said about
immigrant texts rather than a first-hand reading of them.
60. M: Yeah, well, I dont think that Ahmad has checked his
facts about me or read any of my essays either, let alone
my fiction. And then I want to know, what does rightwing mean in the context of his quotation? Does it
mean simply that anyone who is not a Marxist is rightwing? If right-wing, for Ahmad, applies to anyone
who agrees with the spirit behind the American
Constitution and the idea of democracy, then I suppose I
am. I do not wish to trivialize democratic ideals by
equating America with blue jeans and Coca-Cola, which
is a very cheap, easy shot that Europeans as well as
many South Asian intellectuals take. As such, Im
placing my faith in fighting for civil rights and this is
where I talk about my political aesthetics in this essay.
The cause that I have now put a great deal of my energy
into is fighting for gay rights; for gay rights to be
treated as an extension of civil rights. When I lived in
Canada, it was the gay groups who worked hardest for
us South Asians, in fighting discrimination. South
Asians were at the bottom of Canadas race-based totem
pole. The feminists let us [people of color] down as they
obtained their goals regarding womens rights. If the
Constitution gives me a way of forcing Newt Gingrichs
feet to the fire, a way of forcing American politicians to
live up to the letter of the law, then Im going to do that.
And if that means being right-wing by Ahmads
standard then too bad. I find these categories totally,
totally useless. In India, among the intellectuals that I
see once or twice a year while traveling, there is no
agreement about what constitutes right-wing and leftwing. In my hometown, Calcutta, there are four distinct
communist political parties. For instance Calcuttas
Maoists call the citys Moscow-Marxists right-wing,
so I dont know where Ahmad is coming from, and he
ought to know better.
61. J: Yet in terms of the American scene, Ahmad seems
to argue that immigrant writers such as yourself have readopted the notion of America as melting pot. Hes
suggesting that ironically, by using the melting-pot
mode of writing, youre allowing yourself to be coopted
yet again by the mainstream: to hybridicize in a
syncretized fashion can be a very conservative position
to adopt. While your writing can be seen as progressive
and action-oriented, scholars such as Kristin CarterSanborn argue that many of your heroines are passive,

women who are changed by, rather than changing, the

American landscape. Despite their seeming adaptability,
the argument is that you are romanticizing their
domestication. These critics would like to see,
ostensibly, more resistance to the assimilation and
cooptation of these non-traditional immigrants.
62. M: Jasmine or Hannah Easton arent passive women, by
anyones measure. They quite literally cross oceans,
transform their worlds, and in the process leave behind
a heap of bruised hearts and bleeding bodies! I dont
think Ahmad has read my works. If he had read them,
he would have known that I dont use European or
Euro-American models for my narratives. Im having to
invent a whole new structure for American fiction, a
whole new kind of sentence to express non-traditional
immigrant emotions and psychic texture. Its very hard
for critics in the U.S. and in India to understand who
Jasmine is, or where shes coming from, because shes
not a familiar American or Indian character. To resist
and remain the way you were in India is to perpetuate,
and more disturbingly, is to valorize, an awful lot of
cultural vices such as sexism, patriarchy, castism,
classism. Would Ahmad consider it cooptation when an
American woman writer who has emigrated from a
clitoridectomy-valorizing Muslim community, lets say
from Togo, chooses to adopt for herself and to support
through her fictionthe U.S. social/cultural/legal
response to ritualized female mutilation? The immigrant
writer decides what to let go and what to retain. Its
always a two-way transformation. To resist cultural and
ideological mutation simply because one want to retain
racial/cultural/religious/caste purity? is, in my
opinion, evil. Im against that kind of Hitlerian racial
and ethnic pride; Im against the retention of pure
culture for the sake of purity.
I think a very significant, thought probably
unanticipated consequence of the controversy generated
by In Theory has been the legitimation of immigrant
fiction by writers of Indian origin as a genre quite
distinct from post-Independence fiction by Indian
writers residing in India, and from exilic fiction by
India-born writers residing outside India. The works of
Indian-Caribbean writers like Roop Lal Monar, IndianCaribbean-Canadian writers like Sam Selvon, Sonny
Ladoo, Cyril Dabydeen, Neil Bissoondath, IndianAfrican-Canadian writers like Moyse Vassanji, GoanAfrican writers like Violet Diaz Lannoy, Indian-British
writers like Hanif Kureishi, are more intelligently
explored in the context of exile. For works like
Midnights Children , The Trotter-Nama , The Great
Indian Novel , however, the most appropriate context is
exilic mythologization (of personal and national
histories). On my more recent annual trips to India,
especially when Ive taken part in panels with Indian
academics on the literature of the Indian diaspora or
conducted Fiction Workshops on the University of
Baroda campus, Ive noted my Indian colleagues
increased awareness of the discrete aims of these two
genres.
63. J: In Immigrant Writing, you discuss how America
has lost the power to transform the worlds
imagination. You suggest that no one as yet has spoken
for New Americans from non-traditional immigrant
countries. Why is it the burden, or privilege
depending on how one looks at itof new American

64.

65.

66.
67.

68.

immigrant writers to reinvigorate not only American

writing, but also the worlds imagination?
M: First of all, I dont think that the writer starts to
work on her novel by saying, Im going to invigorate
all of American writing. Any writer who does so will
end up producing a sterile, agenda-ridden text and not
literature. What I, as immigrant writer, hope for is to
transform as well as be transformed by the world Im
re-imagining and re-creating through words. Id like to
think that ideas and feelings generated by my fiction
will trickle into other cultures and literatures through
translation, and provoke re-thinking of what citizenship
entails. Jasmine has been translated into 18 languages.
Im very touched and humbled by the letters I get from
immigrant readers who have read the book in their own
language and have integrated Jasmines adventures into
their own personal/cultural experience.
J: Thats an intriguing dialectic, this idea of immigrant
writers and their characters simultaneously transforming
and being transformed. Maurice Merleau-Ponty defines
intersubjectivity in a related way as the trespassing of
ones self on the other and of the other on ones self...
for him, contact with the other is not all about
assimilation.
M: Yeah, and Ive written at great length on that idea, as
early as 1990.
J: To move beyond Ahmad and his concerns with your
writing, what relationship do you see in the future
between what weve called immigrationismnot a
term you used but one that seems to capture the spirit of
the project you outline in Immigrant Writingand
postcolonialism? What do you think keeps the South
Asian postcolonialists with whom youve expressed
dissatisfaction from listening to you in the way you feel
you should be listened to?
M: Arrogance. And a lack of sensitivity to literature. I
think that they come to works of fiction with closed-off,
ready-made, perfectly sealed theories and that theyre
not willing to discover any new ground. Just as in
travelogues, some travelers, like a V.S. Naipaul, quite
often go with preconceived notions about the country
and find only what they expect to find: reinforcement
and confirmation of their preconceived notions. There
are other travelers, and I hope Im one of these, who
come with a fluid, open mind, and let the locals speak
for themselves; they experience the place on its own
terms. There are those who confirm social, political
stereotypes and other writers who interrogate the
stereotypes. William Gass will have a respected small
audience, but hes never going to have a wide, popular
audience because he isnt entertaining and comforting
the average reader by expressing the ideas and
articulating the philosophies that make you feel good
about yourself.
In terms of seeing connections between the South
Asian postcolonialists and immigrationism, I see
diasporality as a kind of continuum with
immigrants and immigrationists at one end of the
scale and expatriate or exilic figures and
postcolonialists at the other. Those who decide, all
right, Im going to go on with my life, the past is going
to color my present and the present is going to color my
future, but here and now, Im a different person, these
people reflect the spirit of immigrant writing by keeping
themselves open to new experiences and responding
second by second. Theyre changing and being
changed: you are a new person every second of your life

depending on how you act and whether you are open to

bruisings and dentings. This energy is completely
opposed to the postcolonial who, if he or she is not
within the immediate postcolonial context, is simply
talking about the past and ignoring or obliterating the
present because its so much safer to talk about a dead
debate.
69. J: Has the marketplace proven itself open to new
experiences and how has that dynamic affected the
reception of your work?
70. M: In 1985 no U.S. publisher was willing to publish the
manuscript of Darkness because at that time there was
no marketing category for ethnic immigrant American
fiction. The issues facing the South Asian community
of naturalized citizens were perceived as irrelevant to
real Americans, meaning whites, African-Americans
and dispossessed American Indians. Editors would say,
This collection is incredibly powerful, even though its
so dark in its outlook, but we cant imagine any
American reader wanting to read about these people.
The book was eventually bought for $3500 Canadian
dollars by Penguin Canada, and came out as a
paperback original that was meant to get lost. In the
introduction to the collection, I talked about seeing
myself as a series of fluid identities. Since then, Ive
found corroboration in the fascinating published
material of psychologists and academicsAlan
Rolands work on the contextual self and in Robert J.
Liftons work on the protean self. I would have had an
easier time getting published, and being paid more
decent advances, if I had written in the exilic tradition
of nostalgia and loss.
71. J: What about someone whose fluidity is forestalled,
who is unable to move beyond the past despite a
willingness to engage in the present? Dimple, in Wife ,
seems to be just such a character.
72. M: Several of my characters fail to move from
expatriate to immigrant in the diasporality spectrum.
Some of the characters dont try, dont want to. In my
narratives, I want to represent a varied set of responses
to the experience of un-housement. And these characters
help to piece together an unsentimental portrait of the
United States. I certainly know what I love about the
spirit of America, but Ive also written at great length
about the underside of the American Dream. Hannah, in
The Holder , is an embodiment of the guts, imagination
and assertiveness of that American spirit, and its
undersidethe will to imperialize.
73. J: As youve outlined above, much of the energy
which marks good writing stems from its willingness to
engage in the bruisings and dentings of life. Are
writing programs doing enough to impress upon young
writers the benefits of engaging the real world
political, ethnic, and racial struggles in American
society?
74. M: The answer is No. All fiction is political and
moral, but very few works of fiction in this country
are about politics or morality. Novelists humanize
the other, and reveal a just, generous, ideal world,
but they dont hector nor dictate as do demagogues
and pamphleteers. I think that minority American
writers are more likely to want toand attempt to
create national mythologies through their fiction
than are white Americans, because history and
memory are of powerful consequence to them. The
original white settlers dream of rugged
individualism is anti-history.

1.

2.

IV. States of Violence

81. J: Youve commented before that a lot of your
stories are about transfiguration or psychic
transformation, not economic transformation, and that
you consequently are interested in psychic violence and
its effect on the individual, often female Asian
Americans, rather than group violence and its effect on
the masses. Why do you think youve concentrated
more on psychic violence inflicted upon the individual
and less on political unrest and labor agitation in your
work, especially as you were subject to the threats of
such violence during your childhood in Calcutta?
82. M: Good fiction concentrates on the emotional,
intellectual and physical responses of a small cast of
characters when they are thrust into a situation that is
not routine for them. Politics and history, or rather
political and historical events, provide the context for
the characters varying reactions. And, by forcing the
reader to live through the particular characters in their
particularized situations, the author hopes that readers
will make an epiphanic connection to the world of real
politics and issues around them. Remember Cynthia
Ozicks story, The Shawl? In that extraordinarily
moving story, Ozick doesnt once mention the word,
Holocaust; she focuses on the conflicts of a mother and
her two daughters trying to survive the horrors of deathcamp internment. Thats what good fiction does, and
should do. When I want to directly address the evil of
racism, the denying of civil rights to gay men and
women, etc., I prefer to do so in essays.

5.

6.

As for providing the larger context of politics, class and

race, Ive done that from my first novel on. In The
Tigers Daughter , individual actions are shaped by,
and/or reactions to, the Naxalite revolution in Calcutta,
and the imminence of the establishment of a Marxist
government in West Bengal state. In Wife , Dimple
experiences racist discrimination in a Queens shop,
gendrist discrimination at home, and classist
discrimination at meetings with white feminists. I just
wish that scholars would go back to reading the primary
texts before presuming to make [mis]pronouncements
on them!

V. Writing and Technology

7.
In terms of psychic violence and female sexuality, I
grew up at a time and in a class in Calcutta when you
couldnt say the word sex. Id never said the word
sex and we certainly were not allowed to think of it; I
didnt even know how the male anatomy was
constructed. So for me or for my characters who are
coming not from villages but upper-class, urban Indian
settings, sexuality becomes the mode of resistance or a
way to rebel. After all, if youre coming out of a society
where sex is the unspeakable, the unutterable, then
doing it or acknowledging your sexuality results not
only in individual rebellion but actually constitutes an
attack on a whole patriarchal, Victorian, hypocritical
society. And why psychic violence? Ultimately, physical
injuries are less affecting than the wounds inside. You
lose a leg, you get a prosthetic. But what do you do
about the scarred psyche?
3.
4.

J: Youve written elsewhere about the need to make

the familiar exotic and the exotic familiar.
M: Yes, to bring out the luminosity in the most banal
moment, and to elicit sympathy for the least familiar
character.

J: By privileging psychic as opposed to physical

violence, does your work implicitly cultivate an
aestheticization of violence? For example, violence
appears to be somewhat benign in its after-effects on
Jasmineshe doesnt seem to bear too many psychic or
physical scars from her traumatic experiences with Suki
and Half-Face. Similarly, in The Holder , violence
seems to be surprisingly positive in its effects on
Hannah, transforming her in its crucible from an
unfinished, unformed woman into a goddess-in-themaking. To borrow the structural trope of The Holder ,
is the violence you write about somehow like the
virtual reality Beigh experiences, transformative and
enlightening to be sure, but somehow less than real?
M: First of all, before I get to the idea of virtual reality
and violence, I want you to come to the kitchen with
me. This is Goddess Kali, the image of the Godhead as
Destroyer. The Godhead as Kali is what I worship. Most
Hindu Bengalis in Calcutta do. Most Hindu Bengali
families have an altar to Her in their homes. I do; in my
bedroom. You can see for yourself that Kali isnt one bit
passive. She has strung Herself a garland of severed
heads, and Shes hefting Her blood-stained weapons to
decapitate more evil men. Kali is what Jasmine was
mythologizing herself into when she killed her rapist,
Half-Face. In Christianity, humans are made in the
image of God. But in Hinduism, all creatures are
manifestations of the Godhead. Why doesnt Jasmine
agonize more over having killed the man who brutalized
her? Why is her reaction benign? Her goal is the
Hindu ideal of non-attachment. To allow oneself to be
utterly destroyed by the violence done to her and done
by her would be to fall victim to maya. Youve read
R.K. Narayans The Guide ; youre familiar with the
Hindu concept of non-attachment. The difficult feat for
the Hindu American writer is to dramatize the benignity
of non-attachment without making characters appear
uncaring or grimly stoic.

J: Considering the potential violence of representation,

do you see writingor virtual technology, in the case of
Beigh becoming Bhagmati in The Holderas a violent
medium?
8. M: I dont know if I think of the medium as violence.
Its certainly a medium that forces the author and the
reader to take enormous risks, to expose oneself to
emotions one would rather avoid.
9. J: Well, you have talked about the physical and psychic
violence that necessarily accompanies transformation
for the immigrant. Given the transformative capability
of technological developments in writing, has your own
evolution as a writer been marked by epistemological
violence?
10. M: I have no idea. I started with orality. I come from a
culture where grandmothers and mothers tell endless
stories. There wasnt a single night that I didnt fall
asleep to my mother telling stories at dinner-time. We
sat on raffia mats on the floor and ate off brass plates.
She mashed rice and fish into little balls and fed me,
quite literally, with her fingers while she told me stories
from the historical novels or biographies that shed
read. Stories about Marie Antoinette, Napoleon, Mary
Queen of Scots. Bigger than life characters and

adventures. I marvel at it now: my mother putting food

into my mouth and, simultaneously, putting the wonder
of narrative into my head.
It was by listening that I visualized and was mesmerized
by conflict, by character, by romance, whatever. I
started to read and write very earlyI was in regular
school by the age of threeand at that time, we used
pens that you dip into an inkwell. I dont know if that
was violence, but you did immediately start thinking in
wholly different ways and the scratchingI can still see
the blots of ink, the scratching on the paperslows you
down, but also gives you time to think. Then my
relationship to story again became very different when
we graduated by age nine to fountain pens. Also, the
paper was so different over there; you could see bugs
worked into the fabric, or big seams... the paper was
rough and pocked with shiny bits. Seeing whether the
pen nib would go over the shiny impurities or not
resulted in a wholly different way of dealing with
orthography and a different mental process which
accompanies the writing of stories. There wasnt ever a
time that I can remember when I wasnt writing stories
and I remember what a big breakthrough it was when
my father brought back ballpoint pens from Paris. They
all melted in the heat but you could write so much
faster! That was very empowering, and I went straight
from that in the States to typewriter and when I started
thinking on electric typewriter, again, suddenly my
relationship with the word, and therefore with narrative,
became very, very different, more conscious.
If by technological developments in writing you mean
the availability of computers, software, data storage and
retrieval facilities, information-design programs, virtual
reality, etc., then I have to confess that technology has
been for me a means of exploring and expanding
knowledge without losing the writerly sense of wonder.
Clark and I were among the very first batch of
American writers to get into computers.
11. J: Oh, really?
12. M: Yes. In fact, Clark was on a program on NPR to
discuss the ways in which the form and the process of
writing has changed as a result of his switch to the
word-processor. Technology has broken down linear
thought as well as linear plot-movement. I dont think
of technology as an enemy of Art. Technology serves
the artist.
13. J: That sentiment is consistent with your writing in The
Holder , where technology is employed throughout as a
literary and thematic device. Nevertheless, the novel
implies that such media are only actualized through
data-gathering by sensitive and careful human beings
like Beigh, people who have a personal investment in
such projects. For example, Venn, who tries to
experience the past using the interactive computer
program, ends up with nothing more than a postcard
view of modern Madras; he cant access the experience
Beigh can, in large part because he hasnt cultivated the
kind of sensitivity that she has from tracing Hannahs
life. The technology acts as a gatekeeper of sorts,
which we find very interesting, especially when
considering how technology structures First and Third
World relationships of power and hierarchy.
14. M: To me, creative imagination is the gatekeeper. The
technician downloads a statistics-rich experience; the

artist, using the same program, wrests a vision. And

each time you use that program, you learn or dis-learn
some element because you are made up of a series of
fluid identities. Similarly, each time you read The
Holder , I hope you come up with new insights.
Im not sure I agree with you that technology privileges
First World over Third. Much of the information
transfer and accounting for U.S. corporations and megamultinationals with European headquarters is done
offshore, meaning in areas that you are designating as
Third. Ive done homework on this. Its class , not
geography, thats providing the hierarchy grid. Urban,
upper-middle classes and professionals in Bombay,
Singapore, Hong Kong, Manila, etc. have all the latest
electronics and communications instruments. But the
poor and the homeless in all areas of the world,
including
North
America,
are
increasingly
disempowered by technological advances. Your
question seems to arise from the need of postcolonial
studies scholars to impose politics as the dominant grid
for measuring art. But for the writer of serious fiction,
politics or race or gender is only one element of many
hundred elements that go into the making of a character.
Novelists aim for fullness of catharsis, not a political
pamphlet.
15. J: Yet, isnt it difficult to separate the aesthetic from the
political? For example, two reviews suggest that while
the use of virtual reality is a clever device in The
Holder , the representation of 17th-century Indiawith
its excessive emphasis on violence and ornamentation
ironically reduplicates exoticized representations of
India found in colonialist texts and period pieces (see
Koshy and Parameswaran). These reviewers argue that
any attempt to alter or deconstruct such representations
through the use of virtual reality is undermined by your
perhaps unconscious kinship with Orientalists of the
past. How do you respond to such charges, and upon
reflection, do you wish youd used virtual reality any
differently?
16. M: Absolutely not. One, this is not a book about India,
but about the making of America and American national
mythology. Thats why I used the two women
characters, Hannah the pre-America American, and
Beigh, the post-deEuropeanized American, to dramatize
the need to redefine what it means to be an American
in the 1990s. Two, Im sure the two reviewers you are
referring to havent done eleven years of research into
mercantilism in 17th-century India as I have. Crucial
new material on 17th-century trade, especially on intraAsian trade, has been published in the early 1990s by
Indian and Sri Lankan scholars. So its simply
ignorance of Indian mercantile and military histories on
the part of these two reviewers. Thats what I find most
frustrating about being a scholar/writer: that academics
and journalists with insufficient knowledge of the
contextual material have the audacity to make such
public pronouncements! I dont know where this animus
comes from. Why is it so hard for them to deal with
impassioned, well-researched, provocative fiction by a
woman author?
17. J: Part of these critics suggestions, though, is that
despite careful research, your revisions of colonialist or
orientalist accounts of the seventeenth century are not
substantive enough.

18. M: My suggestion to them is that they bring greater

intelligence and sensitivity to bear on the act of reading
literature, including The Holder.
19. J: This is a book about the process of history making,
specifically about the American way of making and
re-making history. Yet, one might argue that the
representations of Native Americans in the early
sections of the novel set in Puritan New England
perhaps unwittingly repeat the imperialist tendencies of
many colonial and nineteenth-century American texts.
Specifically, the miscegenetic encounter between
Rebecca and her Nipmuc lover recalls similar
encounters depicted in novels by nineteenth-century
New England women, including Lydia Childs
Hobomok and Maria Sedgwicks Hope Leslie. In those
works, such encounters are subversive to the extent that
they allow for a female voice to emerge and suggest
possible new alliances between women and Native
Americans. Yet the Native American never really
speaks in these novels... a romanticized version does,
and thus these amorous encounters serve, one could
argue, merely to empower and exoticize colonial and
nineteenth-century Anglo-American women at the
expense of Native Americans.
20. M: Well, in my novel, I have Rebeccas bi-racial
children very much alive and present to recount their
own tales when they are ready to. Rebeccas Nipmuc
lover has several prototypes in history, of course. Ill
leave it to other authors to write the lovers story.
Actually Im very interested in writing King Philips
story from his point of view some day. An author
focuses on a few individual characters, and hopes that a
larger frisson of emotion and revelation comes across to
the reader. I would be guilty of bad writing if I insisted
on making Rebeccas lover stand for all Nipmucs let
alone for all original Americans, or Bhagmati all Hindu
women. Margaret Atwood has written: You tell the
story you have to tell; let others tell the story that they
have to tell. My message to these academics: Read the
story that I have told in The Holder ; dont fabricate a
story that I didnt tell, but that you need to pretend I did
so that you can distort the text into a convenient target
of hate. Ive been quoted in an article in Harpers as
saying these postcolonial scholars are assassins of the
imagination.
21. J: While we certainly do not intend to assassinate the
imagination, we would argue that by relegating
Rebeccas bi-racial children to the margins of the text as
unspeaking subjects, their narratives, as is the case in
much colonial American writing, are endlessly deferred.
Nonetheless, we feel that much of the richness and
strength of the novel derives from the interventions you
make in the captivity narrative tradition and the canon
of 19th-century American literature.
22. M: Well, perhaps next time you read The Holder youll
have new takes on the significance of my metafictional use of Sitas, Bhagmatis, and Hannahs
captivity narratives.
23. J: In conclusion, wed like to go back to the idea of
Mughal painting you articulated earlier as a governing
aesthetic in your writing. Youve said that I will be
writing, in the Mughal style, till I get it right (FourHundred Year Old Woman 38). The Holder seems to
be very much predicated upon Mughal aesthetics. It
seems to be an excellent example of the complication
and elaboration of Mughal miniature painting and
reflects the sense of the interpenetration of all things
which you have identified as a compelling aspect of

such an aesthetic. Having said all that, have you finally

gotten it right? And if so, where are you going from
here?
24. M: Who knows? The characters surprised me draft by
draft; the structure of the novel evolved almost in spite
of myself. I should add that my structures are also
inspired by my obsession with chaos theory and
fractals. In fact, a couple of European scholars have
published essays on the operation of chaos theory in
Jasmine. Where am I going? I dont want to know too
far ahead.

Bibliography
Ahmad, Aijaz. In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures. London and
New York: Verso, 1992.
Carter-Sanborn, Kristin. We Murder Who We Were: Jasmine and
the Violence of Identity. American Literature 66.3 (Sept. 1994): 57393.
JanMohamed, Abdul R. Worldliness-without-World, Homelessnessas-Home: Toward a Definition of the Specular Border Intellectual.
Edward Said: A Critical Reader. Ed. Michael Sprinker. Oxford:
Blackwell, 1992. 96-120.
Koshy, Susan. Rev. of The Holder of the World, by Bharati
Mukherjee. Amerasia Journal 20.1 (1994): 188-90.
Leong, Liew-Geok. Bharati Mukherjee. International Literature in
English. Ed. Robert Ross. New York and London: Garland Publishing,
1991. 487-500.
Metcalf, John and J.R. Struthers, eds. How Stories Mean. Erin,
Ontario: Porcupines Quill, 1993.
Mukherjee, Bharati. Darkness. Markham, Ontario: Penguin, 1985.
-. A Four-Hundred Year Old Woman. The Writer on Her Work.
Ed. Janet Sternburg. Vol. 2. New York: W.W. Norton, 1991. 33-38.
-. The Holder of the World. New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1993.
-. Immigrant Writing: Give Us Your Maximalists! New York
Times Book Review. 28 Aug. 1988: 29.
-. Jasmine. New York: Grove Wiedenfield, 1989.
-. The Middleman and Other Stories. New York: Viking Penguin,
1988.
-. The Tigers Daughter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1971.
-. Wife. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1975.
Mukherjee, Bharati, and Clark Blaise. Days and Nights in Calcutta.
Saint Paul, MN: Hungry Mind Press, 1995.
-. The Sorrow and the Terror: The Haunting Legacy of the Air India
Tragedy. Markham, Ontario: Viking Penguin, 1987.
Mukherjee, Bharati, and Robert Boyers. A Conversation with V.S.
Naipaul. Salmagundi 5051 (Fall 1980-Winter 1981): 4-22.
Parameswaran, Uma. Rev. of The Holder of the World, by Bharati
Mukherjee. World Literature Today 68.3 (1994): 636-7.
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. The Problem of Cultural SelfRepresentation. The Post-Colonial Critic: Interviews, Strategies,
Dialogues. Ed. Sarah Harasym. New York and London: Routledge,
1990.

10
Sandra Cisneros
The

without a fence. This was the house Papa talked about when he
held a lottery dckefand this was the house Mama dreamed up in
the stories sfie told us before we went to bed.
But the house on Mango Street is not the way they told it
at all. It's small and red with tight steps in front and windows so
small you'd think they were holding their breath. Bricks are
crumbling in places, and the front door is so swollen you have to
push hard to get in. There is no front yard, only four litde elms
the city planted by the curb. Out back is a small garage for the
car we don't own yet and a small yard?that looks smaller
between the two buildings on either side. There are stairs in our
house, but they're ordinary hallway stairs, and the house has only
one washroom. Everybody has to share a bedroomMama and
Papa, Carlos and Kiki, me and Nenny.
Once when we were living on Loomis, a nun from my
school passed by and saw me playing out front. The laundromat
downstairs had been boarded up because it had been robbed two
days before and the owner had painted on the wood YES WE'RE
OPEN so as not to lose business.
Where do you live? she asked.
There, I said pointing up to the third floor.
You live there?
There. I had to look to where she pointedthe third floor,
the paint peeling, wooden bars Papa had nailed on the windows
so we wouldn't fall out. You live there? The way she said it made
me feel like nothing. There. I lived there. I nodded.
I knew then I had to have a house. A real house. One I
could point to. But this isn't it. The house on Mango Street isn't
it. For the time being, Mama says. Temporary, says Papa. But I
know how those things go.
And all I hear is the clapping when the music stops. My
uncle and me bow and he walks me back in my thick shoes to
my mother who is proud to be my mother. All night the boy who
is a man watches me dance. He watched me dance.

House onMango Street

Hips
TheHouse onMango Street
We didn't always live on Mango Street, teefore that we lived on
Loomis on the third floor, and before that we lived on Keeler.
Before Keeler it was Paulina, and before that I can't remember.
But what I remember most is moving a lot. Each time it seemed
there'd be one more of us. By the time we got to Mango Street
we were sixMama, Papa, Carlos, Kiki, my sister Nenny and
me.
The house on Mango Street is ours, and we don't have to
pay rent to anybody, or share the yard with the people
downstairs, or be careful not to make too much noise, and there
isn't a landlord banging on the ceiling with a broom. But even so,
it's not the house we'd thought we'd get.
We had to leave the flat on Loomis quick. The water pipes
broke and the landlord wouldn't fix them because the house was
too old. We had to leave fast. We were using the washroom next
door and carrying water over in empty milk gallons. That's why
Mama and Papa looked for a house, and that's why we moved
into the house on Mango Street, far away, on the other side of
town.
They always told us that one day we would move into a
house, a real house that would be ours for always so we wouldn't
have to move each year. And our house would have running
water and pipes that worked. And inside it would have real stairs,
not hallway stairs, but stairs inside like the houses on T.V. And
we'd have a basement and at least three washrooms so when we
took a bath we wouldn't have to tell everybody. Our house would
be white with trees around it, a great big yard and grass growing

I like coffee, I like tea.

I like the boys and the boys like me.
Yes, no, maybe so. Yes, no, maybe so . . .
One day you wake up and they are there. Ready and
waiting like a new Buick with the keys in the ignition. Ready to
take you where?
They're good for holding a baby when you're cooking,
Rachel says, turning the jump rope a little quicker. She has no
imagination.
You need them to dance, says Lucy.
If you don't get them you may turn into a man. Nenny says
this and she believes it. She is this way because of her age.
That's right, I add before Lucy or Rachel can make fun of
her. She is stupid alright, but she is my sister.
But most important, hips are scientific, I say repeating
what Alicia already told me. It's the bones that let you know
which skeleton was a man's when it was a man and which a
woman's.
They bloom like roses, I continue because it's obvious I'm
the only one who can speak with any authority; I have science on
my side. The bones just one day open. Just like that. One day you
might decide to have kids, and then where are you going to put
them? Got to have room. Bones got to give.
But don't have too many or your behind will spread. That's
how it is, says Rachel whose mama is as wide as a boat. And we
just laugh.
What I'm saying is who here is ready? You gotta be able to
know what to do with hips when you get them, I say making it

up as I go. You gotta know how to walk with hips, practice you
knowlike if half of you wanted to go one way and the other
half the other.
That's to lullaby it, Nenny says, that's to rock the baby
asleep inside you. And then she begins singing seashells, copper
bells, eevy, ivy, o-ver.
I'm about to tell her that's the dumbest thing I've ever
heard, but the more I think about it. . .
You gott;a get the rhythm, and Lucy begins to dance. She
has the idea, though she's having trouble keeping her end of the
double-dutch steady.
It's gotta be just so, I say. Not too fast and not too slow.
Not too fast and not too slow.
We slow the double circles down to a certain speed so
Rachel who has just jumped in can practice shaking it.
I want to shake like hoochi-coochie, Lucy says. She is
crazy.
I want to move like heebie-jeebie, I say picking up on the
cue.
I want to be Tahiti. Or merengue. Or electricity. Or
tembleque!
Yes, tembleque. That's a good one. And then it's Rachel
who starts it:
Skip, skip,
snake in your hips.
Wiggle around
and break your lip.
Lucy waits a minute before her turn. She is thinking. Then
she begins:
The waitress with the big fat hips
who pays the rent with taxi tips . . .
says nobody in town will kiss her on the lips
because . . .
because she looks like Christopher Columbus!
Yes, no, maybe so. Yes, no, maybe so.
,
She misses on maybe so. I take a little while before my
turn, take a breath, and dive in:
Some are skinny like chicken lips.
Some are baggy like soggy Band-Aids
after you get out of the bathtub.
I don't care what kind I get.
Just as long as I get hips.
Everybody getting into it now except Nenny who is still
humming not a girl, not a boy, just a little baby. She's like that.
When the two arcs open wide like jaws Nenny jumps in
across from me, the rope tick-ticking, the little gold earrings our
mama gave her for her First Holy Communion bouncing. She is
the color of a bar of naphtha laundry soap, she islike the little
brown piece left at the end of the wash, the hard little bone, my
sister. Her mouth opens. She begins:
M y mother and your mother were washing clothes.
M y mother punched your mother right in the nose.
What color blood came out?
Not that old song, I say. You gotta use your own song.
Make it up, you know? But she doesn't get it or won't. It's hard to
say which. The rope turning, turning, turning.
Engine, engine number nine,
running down Chicago line.
If the train runs off the track
do you want your money back"?
Do you want your MONEY back?
Yes, no, maybe so. Yes, no, maybe so . . .

I can tell Lucy and Rachel are disgusted, but they don't
say anything because she's m y sister.
Yes, no, maybe so. Yes, no, maybe so . . .
Nenny, I say, but she doesn't hear me. She is too many
light-years awgiy. She is in a world we don't belong to anymore.
Nenny I Going. Going.
Y-E-S spells yes and out you go!
TheFirstJob
It wasn't as if I didn't want to work. I did. I had even gone
to the social security office the month before to get my social
security number. I needed money. The Catholic high school cost
a lot, and Papa said nobody went to public school unless you
wanted to turn out bad.
I thought I'd find an easy job, the kind other kids had,
working in the dime store or maybe a hotdog stand. And though I
hadn't started looking yet, I thought I might the week after next.
But when I came home that afternoon, all wet because Tito had
pushed me into the open water hydrantonly I had sort of let
himMama called me in the kitchen before I could even go and
change, and Aunt Lala was sitting there drinking her coffee with
a spoon. Aunt Lala said she had found a job for me at the Peter
Pan Photo Finishers on North Broadway where she worked,
andkhow old was I, and to show up tomorrow saying I was one
year older, and that was that.
So the next morning I put on the navy blue dress that
made me look older and borrowed money for lunch and bus fare
because Aunt Lala said I wouldn't get paid till the next Friday,
and I went in and saw the boss of the Peter Pan Photo Finishers
on North Broadway where Aunt Lala worked and lied about my
age like she told me to and sure enough, I started that same day.
In my job I had to wear white gloves. I was supposed to
match negatives with their prints, just look at the picture and
look for the same one on the negative strip, put it in the
envelope, and do the next one. That's all. I didn't know where
these envelopes were coming from or where they were
going/ljust did what I was told.
It was real easy, and I guess I wouldn't have minded it
except thatryou got tired after a while and I didn't know if I could
sit down or not, and then I started sitting down only when the
two ladies next to me did. After a while they started to laugh and
came up to me and said I could sit when I wanted to, and I said I
knew.
When lunchtime came, I was scared to eat alone in the
company lunchroom with all those men and ladies looking, so I
ate real fast standing in one of the washroom stalls and had lots
of time left over, so I went back to work early. But then break
time came, and not knowing where else to go, I went into the
coatroom because there was a bench there.
I guess it was the time for the night shift or middle shift to
arrive because a few people came in and punched the time clock,
and an older Oriental man said hello and we talked for a while
about my just starting, and he said we could be friends and next
time to go in the lunchroom and sit with him, and I felt better. He
had nice eyes and I didn't feel so nervous anymore. Then he
asked if I knew what day it was, and when I said I didn't, he said
it was his birthday and would I please give him a birthday kiss. I
thought I would because he was so old and just as I was about to
put my lips on his cheek, he grabs my face with both hands and
kisses me hard on the mouth and doesn't let go.

NoSpeakEnglish

Mamacita is the big mama of the man across the street,

third-floor front. Rachel says her name ought to be Ma-masota,
but I think that's mean.
The maxi saved his money to bring her here. He saved and
saved because she was alone with the baby boy in that country.
He worked two jobs. He came home late and he left early. Every
day.
Then one day Mamacita and the baby boy arrived in a
yellow taxi. The taxi door opened like a waiter's arm. Out
stepped a tiny pink shoe, a foot soft as a rabbit's ear, then the
thick ankle, a flutter of hips, fuchsia roses and green perfume.
The man had to pull her, the taxicab driver had to push. Push,
pull. Push, pull. Poof!
All at once she bloomed. Huge, enormous, beautiful to
look at, from the salmon-pink feather on the tip of her hat down
to the little rosebuds of her toes. I couldn't take my eyes off her
tiny shoes.
Up, up, up the stairs she went with the baby boy in a blue
blanket, the man carrying her suitcases, her lavender hatboxes, a
dozen boxes of satin high heels. Then we didn't see her.
Somebody said because she's too fat, somebody because
of the three flights of stairs, but I believe she doesn't come out
because she is afraid to speak English, and maybe this is so since
she only knows eight words. She knows to say: He not here for
when the landlord comes, No speak English if anybody else
comes, and Holy smokes. I don't know where she learned this,
but I heard her say it one time and it surprised me.
My father says when he came to this country he ate
hamandeggs for three months. Breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Hamandeggs. That was the only word .he knew. He doesn't eat
hamandeggs anymore.
Whatever her reasons, whether she is fat, or can't climb
the stairs, or is afraid of English, she won't come down. She sits
all day by the window and plays the Spanish radio show and
sings all the homesick songs about her country in a voice that
sounds like a seagull.
Home. Home. Home is a house in a photograph, a pink
house, pink as hollyhocks with lots of starded light. The man
paints the walls of the apartment pink, but it's not the same, you
know. She still sighs for her pink house, and then I think she
cries. I would.
Sometimes the man gets disgusted. He starts screaming
and you can hear it all the way down the street.
A y, she says, she is sad.
Oh, he says. Not again.
Cudndo, cudndo, cudndo? she asks.
Ay, cafay! We are home. This is home. Here I am and
here I stay. Speak English. Speak English. Christ!
Ay! Mamacita, who does not belong, every once in a
while lets out a cry, hysterical, high, as if he had torn the only
skinny thread that kept her alive, the only road out to that
country.
And then to break her heart forever, the baby boy, who has
begun to talk, starts to sing the Pepsi commercial he heard on
T.V.
No speak English, she says to the child who is singing in
the language that sounds like tin. No speak English, no speak
English, and bubbles into tears. No, no, no, as if she can't believe
her ears.

Sandra Cisneros

Drawing heavily upon her childhood experiences and ethnic

heritage Sandra Cisneros (born 1954) creates characters who are
distinctly Hispanic and often isolated from mainstream American
culture by emphasizing dialogue and sensory imagery over
traditional narrative structures.
Born in Chicago, Cisneros was the only daughter among seven
children. Concerning her childhood, Cisneros recalled that
because her brothers attempted to control her and expected her to
assume a traditional female role, she often felt like she had
"seven fathers." The family frequently moved between the
United States and Mexico because of her father's homesickness
for his native country and his devotion to his mother who lived
there. Consequently, Cisneros often felt homeless and displaced:
"Because we moved so much, and always in neighborhoods that
appeared like France after World War IIempty lots and burnedout buildingsI retreated inside myself." She began to read
extensively, finding comfort in such works as Virginia Lee
Burton's The Little House and Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures
in Wonderland. Cisneros periodically wrote poems and stories
throughout her childhood and adolescence, but she did not find
her literary voice until attending the University of Iowa's Writers
Workshop in the late 1970s. A breakthrough occurred for
Cisneros during a discussion of French philosopher Gaston
Bachelard's The Poetics of Space and his metaphor of a house;
she realized that her experiences as a Hispanic woman were
unique and outside the realm of dominant American culture. She
observed: "Everyone seemed to have some communal
knowledge which I did not haveand then I realized that the
metaphor of house was totally wrong for me. I had no such
house in my memories. This caused me to question myself, to
become defensive. What did I, Sandra Cisneros, know? What
could I know? My classmates were from the best schools in the
country. They had been bred as fine hothouse flowers. I was a
yellow weed among the city's cracks."
Shortly after participating in the Iowa Workshop, Cisneros
decided to write about conflicts directly related to her
upbringing, including divided cultural loyalties, feelings of
alienation, and degradation associated with poverty.
Incorporating these concerns into The House on Mango Street, a
work that took nearly five years to complete, Cisneros created
the character Esperanza, a poor, Hispanic adolescent who longs
for a room of her own and a house of which she can be proud.
Esperanza ponders the disadvantages of choosing marriage over
education, the importance of writing as an emotional release, and
the sense of confusion associated with growing up. In the story
"Hips," for example, Esperanza agonizes over the repercussions
of her body's physical changes: "One day you wake up and there
they are. Ready and waiting like a new Buick with the key in the
ignition. Ready to take you where?" Written in what Penelope
Mesic called "a loose and deliberately simple style, halfway
between a prose poem and the awkwardness of semiliteracy," the
pieces in The House on Mango Street won praise for their lyrical
narratives, vivid dialogue, and powerful descriptions.
Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories is a collection of
twenty-two narratives revolving around numerous MexicanAmerican characters living near San Antonio, Texas. Ranging
from a few paragraphs to several pages, the stories in this volume
contain the interior monologues of individuals who have been
assimilated into American culture despite their sense of loyalty to
Mexico. In "Never Marry a Mexican," for example, a young
Hispanic woman begins to feel contempt for her white lover
because of her emerging feelings of inadequacy and cultural guilt
resulting from her inability to speak Spanish. Although Cisneros
addresses important contemporary issues associated with

minority status throughout Woman Hollering Creek and Other

Stories, critics have described her characters as idiosyncratic,
accessible individuals capable of generating compassion on a
universal level. One reviewer observed: "In this sensitively
structured suite of sketches, [Cisneros's] irony defers to her
powers of observation so that feminism and cultural imperialism,
while important issues here, do not overwhelm the narrative."
Although Cisneros is noted primarily for her fiction, her poetry
has also garnered attention. In My Wicked Wicked Ways, her
third volume of verse, Cisneros writes about her native Chicago,
her travels in Europe, and, as reflected in the title, sexual guilt
resulting from her strict Catholic upbringing. A collection of
sixty poems, each of which resemble a short story, this work
further evidences Cisneros's penchant for merging various
genres. Gary Soto explained: "Cisneros's poems are intrinsically
narrative, but not large, meandering paragraphs. She writes
deftly with skill and idea, in the 'show-me-don't-tell-me' vein,
and her points leave valuable impressions." In her poetry, as in
all her works, Cisneros incorporates Hispanic dialect,
impressionistic metaphors, and social commentary in ways that
reveal the fears and doubts unique to Hispanic women. She
stated: "If I were asked what it is I write about, I would have to
say I write about those ghosts inside that haunt me, that will not
let me sleep, of that which even memory does not like to
mention. Perhaps later there will be a time to write by
inspiration. In the meantime, in my writing as well as in that of
other Chicanas and other women, there is the necessary phase of
dealing with those ghosts and voices most urgently haunting us,
day by day."

A Latina of many colors, Sandra Cisneros

by Miriam Martinez
Latino Leaders: The National Magazine of the Successful
American Latino, April-May, 2004
Her works have not only left their mark among academics but
also in the lives of many readers. The House on Mango Street,
Woman Hollering Creek, and her long awaited novel Caramelo,
masterfully deliver her own voice and tell of a meaningful part of
America's history.
Meeting Sandra Cisneros at Tortes Tam Haven in her adopted
office in San Antonio over some tacos, the phone ringing at the
counter, the noise and the spicy aromas from the taqueria's busy
kitchen, reveal that being one of the most remarkable voices of
contemporary literature in the US does not necessarily mean an
unapproachable intellectual immersed in dense theories and
unable to relate to everyday things and real people.
Sandra Cisneros is just the opposite, highly energetic and an
eager convensationalist. The framework of her poetry and fiction
are precisely everyday many Latinas have experienced:
restrictions on the grounds of race, class, and gender, but it also
portrays a burgeoning sensuality, women's solidarity and humor.
Cisneros has made it into the mainstream literary, tradition of her
country and has surmounted the "minority writer" label, but she
still has a chamaca spirit, fortunately.
She has been a sort of medium that channels the voices of
women like Lucy, Chayo, Lupe, or Esperanza, the leading

character of the book that propelled her to fame, The House on

Mango Street. The book has sold over 2 million copies and is
required reading at all levels ranging from elementary to
university level.
Book magazine's Dagoherto Gilb said of her staggering success,
"I knew Sandra Cisneros before she was Sandra Cisneros. She's
like my sister. We came up together but her rise went much
higher than mine. Talking about Sandra Cisneros these days is
like talking about Frida Kahlo."
Sandra Cisneros, like Esperanza, also grew up in Chicago. Born
to a Mexican lather and a Mexican-American mother, Cisneros
was the third child and only daughter in a family of seven
children. She describes herself as a (laughter with six father. "My
father always defined my gender to my brothers. He'd say, 'This
is your sister, you must take care of her.'"
Sandra's father emigrated to the US, where he spent some time
looking for a place to settle until he eventually arrived in
Chicago, where the Mexican community was striving to make
some bucks. Her Mexican-American mother had to give up
school for a job at a couple of factories. This was a time when
the Cisneroses led some sort of a Gypsy life. To save on rent, the
family spent summers back in Mexico with the grandparents. But
going back to Chicago meant struggling to find a place to live in
a variety of ethnic neighborhoods sharing space with Italians,
Puerto Ricans, blacks, and Poles. Finally in 1965 at age ten,
Sandra and her family found a somewhat fixed place on
Campbell Avenue near Humboldt Park.
Sandra's father became her reference for Mexican popular
culture, Mexican comic books such as Familia Burron, the music
of Agustin Lara, Mexican cinema, and fotonovelas. But it was
her mother who exposed the children to arts and literature. Every
time they had the chance, her mother would take the kids to free
concerts in the park and on museum visits. "She was the more
educated of the two, even though she was self educated, didn't go
beyond 9th grade and working class, she passed my father as far
as curiosity and hunger for learning is concerned. My father had
studied a year in UNAM (Mexico City's vast national university)
when he left Mexico, and then he had to learn a trade when he
mine to the US.
"My mother used to take us all to the public library. We didn't
have books because we couldn't afford them. I loved books. Even
before I could read I loved the public library, maybe because it
was quiet, unlike my house, where the radio and TV were on,
and my brothers were fighting. I just loved the place," recalls
Cisneros.
Growing up in Chicago, Sandra attended crowded Catholic
schools where the nuns and teachers were oppressive,
unsupportive, and, worst of all, very racist. An example of such
an experience is skillfully portrayed in Eleven, a short story
where an abusive teacher forces an eleven year old to wear an
abandoned sweater that is not even her own.
"I suffered a lot when I yeas a child, feeling things. But I also
experienced beautiful things very deeply, not just sorrows. As a
kid I used to look at a flower, and I'd feel this unity with the
universe. I would look at a tree, and he would talk to me. That
introversion was good; it shaped me as a writer."
Sandra became an introspective child who found comfort in
Dickens, Carroll, the Brothers Grimm, and Andersen. "I think, in

a way, I was collecting my own mythology," and "adds, "along

with that I was coloring in my father's fotonovela magazines.
With a little red pencil dipped in spit, I would color lipstick on
all the ladies' pictures."

Cisneros finds herself in a position to chart those barrio ditches

and borderland arroyos that have not appeared on most copies of
the American literary map but which, nonetheless, also flow into
their "mainstream."

Sandra knew she wanted to attend college when she was in 5th
grade. At that age, she had some sort of a vision. "I kind of
visualized my name in the card catalogue. I wanted my name,
my family name on the spine of a book. This was very important
to me because my brothers 'always kept telling me that I was not
a real Cisneros, because I would get married and lose my name. I
think that's why I'm single," she chuckled her almost-childlike
laughter. That was a secret she kept to herself for some time.

Cisneros went back to Chicago and got involved in teaching

literacy, Spanish literature, and Spanish for Latino students. She
also ran a poetry workshop and at the saner time worked as a
counselor at Loyola, all this while working on The House on
Mango Street. In the meantime she received her first National
Endowment for the Arts grant. She hit the road to Europe, and
came back with her book published originally by Arte Publico
Press in 1984, which won the Before Columbus American Book
Award.

Cisneros was ready for college and the civil rights movement and
worked hard towards getting grants for minority groups. "My
father, in the Mexican tradition, was planning to send me to
college en busca de un marido. So he thought I was going to find
un hombre preparado. That's what he wanted me to go to college
far. However, when I finished college with two degrees, one in
humanities and another in creative writing, my dad was very
disappointed because I had no husband." Recalling all these
events, Cisneros is quite effective in cracking these stories as
jokes.
After graduating from Loyola University of Chicago, Cisneros
embarked on the prestigious Iowa University Writers Workshop.
Established true blue American mentality writers were the norm,
so Sandra felt frightened. During a discussion on Gaston
Bachelard's The Poetics of Space, the topic was the archetypical
idea of the house, but for Cisneros it became an issue. A woman
started talking about her grandmother's house, her house in
Rome, and her house on the beach. "Everyone was in this
animated discussion of homes and attics and stairwells and
basements and nooks and crannies." The topic on The House did
not make any sense to a soon-to-be writer who lived in gritty
places in Chicago. She felt inadequate and unsure of her
capabilities to understand what was clear for the rest.
Everyone seemed to have some communal knowledge, which
Cisneros did nor have. There was no such house in bet
memories, and that led her to questioning her place in the world
as a writer. What had once made her feet inadequate and
awkward, she suddenly retired was maybe her best asset. From
that moment onwards she became a rebel by finally discovering
her own voice. She knew first "hand the reality none of her
classmates were capable of writing about. The House on Mango
Street was the result of that epiphany.
Through a series of brief vignettes, and a good dose of
autobiographical memoirs, the reader witnesses the coming-ofage of Esperanza, and the painful knowledge that she earns the
hard way while growing up in a Mexican barrio in Chicago.
Women oppressed by their offspring, household chores, abusive
relationships, and the overwhelming impact of a male world is
the universe found in The Home on Mango Street, where a sense
of belonging is almost nonexistent. At the end of the book,
Esperanza eventually and painstakingly finds the way to
liberation and choice, and as a critic pointed out, the character
becomes a metaphor for possibility.
Jim Sagel of Publishers Weekly said, "Such identification with
her characters and her culture is altogether natural for Sandra
Cisneros, a writer who has always found her literal/voice in the
real voices of her people, her immediate family, and the extended
familias of Latino society.

She wanted a space of her own and moved to San Antonio,

where she worked as literary director at the Guadalupe Cultural
Arts Center but quit after some differences with the directors. "I
was a little too avant-garde for this group of very progressive
leftist Chicano artists."
Cisneros, was awarded the Dobie-Paisano fellowship in 1986,
and she found meager support through a writing seminar
announced by fliers in laundromats. She accepted a pint at
Carroll State University in California, and Cisneros took a walk
on the down side, afraid of academia and struggling with her
battered self-confidence That moment of turbulence--Cisneros
was calling counseling lines, saying she wanted to kill herself
and her cat Pablo--led her to the book of poems My Wicked
Wicked Ways, published by Third Woman Press.
In the meantime, her soon-to-be agent, Susan Bergholtz, was so
impressed with The House on Mango Street that she was
determined to offer her a contract at Random House. It took four
years for Bergholtz to convince Cisneros. In her darkest hour, an
NEA grant and regained confidence made clear for Cisneros that
she was up to the task of living off her pen, and she called
Bergholz. Next, a collection of short stories, Woman Hollering
Creek, Cisneros's long-awaited book after The House on Mango
Street, sold nearly 20,000 hardback copies and almost 80,000
paperback volumes.
Loose Woman, a poetry book that spent a long season under
Cisneros's bed, was not meant to be published, but Bergholz
persuaded her to let the world know about it. Good reviews and
good sales resulted in the advance for Caramelo, so far her best
work. What started as a 12-page short story, became larger than
any of her other books. "Well, it turns out that the story got
bigger and bigger like dough. I could never get to an end. I
showed it to my friend, and he said, 'You have a novel here.' I put
it aside, finished Woman Hollering Creek, and took the story
back out, and with 50 pages I got an advance, and that's how I
started it." The novel took nine years in the making. "How long
would it take? How do I know? OK, three years. Three years
(went by) and the book wasn't done, and three years morn and
nine years. If I'd known it would take nine years I wouldn't have
started it. It was like a nine-year pregnancy. With every year, just
like a pregnant woman, I became crankier and meaner and more
difficult. It was a very difficult pregnancy."
In 1992, with improved finances, what was a long time obsession
became a reality, a house of her own, "a home in the heart." After
a while, Cisneros refurbished her vintage 1903 metal-roofed
house, located in San Antonio's historical King William district.
According to the city council, painting a home purple, turquoise,
and pit& violated the historical guidelines of the area. The

Incident hit the front page of many newspapers, and the legal
battle went on for a couple of years while the sun was toning
down the house to a mole "appropriate" lilac.
During the making of Caramelo, Cisneros received the "genius"
MacArthur Foundation fellowship, and with it she came to terms
with her father, who for years opposed Cisneros's career choice
toward literature instead of marriage.
Caramelo is Cisneros' homage to her father, and also a three
generations family saga, very much like her own. The story takes
a stroll through different times, as if they we're a long, glossy,
and intricate rebozo.
"Spanish is the "language of tenderness for me. Even if I don't
write in Spanish, the Spanish sensibilidad, the Spanish syntax,
the language thing of looking at a word comes in English (but)
it's (infused with Spanish) whether I like it or not. It makes the
English so particularly my voice that people lead it, and they
know it's my writing. It's my fingerprint."

The Sandra Cisneros Story: Publications and Achievements

Sandra Cisneros' Works
Bad Boys (poems), Mango Publications, 1980. The House on
Mango Street, Arte Publico, 1984; Vintage, 1991. (Translated
into Spanish by Elena Poniatowska, Alfaguara, Vintage Espanol,
1994). My Wicked, Wicked Ways (poems), Third Woman Press,
1987, Random House 1992.
Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories (short stories),
Random House, 1991; Vintage 1992. Hairs / Pelitos (children's
book), illustrated by Terry Ybanez, Knopf, 1994. Loose Woman
(poems), Knopf, 1994; Vintage, 1995 Caramelo (novel), Knopf,
2002: Vintage, 2003. Vintage Cisneros (anthology), Vintage,
2004

Cisneros turned down lucrative advertising deal with GAP

because she thinks the company does little for Latinos. Likewise,
she refuses to allow her work to be published in anthologies that
classify her as a "Hispanic" writer, because she sees the term as
one imposed on Latinos by other Americans.
Through Spanish Eyes
"Spanish gives me a way of looking at myself and the world in a
new way, For those of us living between worlds, our job in the
universe is to help others see with more than their eyes during
this period of chaotic transition. Our work as bicultural citizens
is to help others become visionary, to help us examine our
dilemmas in multiple ways and arrive at creative solutions;
otherwise we all will perish" Sandra Cisneros in Los Angeles
Times.

The Beauty of Prose

"Lucy Anguiano, Texas girl who smells like corn, like Frito
Bandito chips, like tortillas, something like that warm smell of
nixtamal or bread the way her head smells when she's leaning
close to you over a paper cut-out doll or on the porch when we
are squatting over marbles trading this pretty crystal that leaves
blue stars on your hand for that giant cat-eye with a grasshopper
green spiral in the center like the juice of bugs on the windshield
when you drive to the border, like the yellow blood of
butterflies." Woman Hollering Creek
Miriam Martinez "A Latina of many colors, Sandra Cisneros".
Latino Leaders: The National Magazine of the Successful
American Latino. FindArticles.com. 05 May, 2009.

JUNOT DIAZ

Her audience has expanded wider. Her work has been translated
into languages such as Chinese, Danish, Dutch, French, Galician,
Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Spanish of course, and most
recently into Greek, SerboCroatian, Swedish, Turkish, and Thai.
Achievements
1984, Illinois Artists Grant 1984, Texas Institute of Letters
Dobie-Paisano Fellowship 1985, Before Columbus American
Book Award for The House on Mango Street 1986, Chicano
Short Story Award, University of Arizona 1988, Roberta
Holloway Lectureship at the University of California, Berkeley
1988, 1982, National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship 1993,
Honorary Doctor of Letters from the State University of New
York, Purchase 1995, MacArthur Foundation Fellowship 2002,
Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Loyola University,
Chicago 2003, Texas Medal of the Arts Award
A Rebel with a cause.

JUNOT
DIAZ
(1968-) was born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic and is
the author of Drown and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
which won the John Sargent Sr. First Novel Prize, the National
Book Critics Circle Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the
Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the 2008 Pulitzer Prize. His
fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, African Voices, Best

American Short Stories (1996, 1997, 1999, 2000), in Pushcart

Prize XXII and in The O'Henry Prize Stories 2009.
He has received a Eugene McDermott Award, a fellowship from
the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, a Lila
Acheson Wallace Readers Digest Award, the 2002 Pen/Malamud
Award, the 2003 US-Japan Creative Artist Fellowship from the
National Endowment for the Arts, a fellowship at the Radcliffe
Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and the
Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He
is the fiction editor at the Boston Review and the Rudge (1948)
and Nancy Allen professor at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology.

Fiesta 1980

Mami's youngest sistermy ta Yrmafinally made it to the

United States that year. She and to Miguel got themselves an
apartment in the Bronx, off the Grand Concourse and everybody
decided that we should have a party. Actually, my pops decided,
but everybodymeaning Mami, ta Yrma, to Miguel and their
neighborsthought it a dope idea. On the afternoon of the party
Papi came back from work around six. Right on time. We were
all dressed by then, which was a smart move on our part. If Papi
had walked in and caught us lounging around in our underwear,
he would have kicked our asses something serious.
He didn't say nothing to nobody, not even my moms. He just
pushed past her, held up his hand when she tried to talk to him
and headed right into the shower. Rafa gave me the look and I
gave it back to him; we both knew Papi had been with that
Puerto Rican woman he was seeing and wanted to wash off the
evidence quick.
Mami looked really nice that day. The United States had
finally put some meat on her; she was no longer the same flaca
who had arrived here three years before. She had cut her hair
short and was wearing tons of cheap-ass jewelry which on her
didn't look too lousy. She smelled lilce herself, like the wind
through a tree. She always waited until the last possible minute
to put on her perfume because she said it was a waste to spray it
on early and then have to spray it on again once you got to the
party.
Wemeaning me, my brother, my little sister and Mami
waited for Papi to finish his shower. Mami seemed anxious, in her
usual dispassionate way. Her hands adjusted the buckle of her belt
over and over again. That morning, when she had gotten us up
for school, Mami told us that she wanted to have a good time at
the party. I want to dance, she said, but now, with the sun sliding
out of the sky like spit off a wall, she seemed ready just to get this
over with.
Rafa didn't much want to go to no party either, and me, I
never wanted to go anywhere with my family. There was a
baseball game in the parking lot outside and we could hear our
friends, yelling, Hey, and, Cabrn, to one another. We heard the
pop of a ball as it sailed over the cars, the clatter, of an aluminum
bat dropping to the concrete. Not that me or Rafa loved baseball;
we just liked playing with the local kids, thrashing them at
anything they were doing. By the sounds of the shouting, we
both knew the game was close, either of us could have made a
difference. Rafa frowned and when I frowned back, he put up his
fist. Don't you mirror me, he said.
Don't you mirror me, I said.
He punched meI would have hit him back but Papi
marched into the living room with his towel around his waist,
looking a lot smaller than he did when he was dressed. He had a

few strands of hair around his nipples and a surly closed-mouth

expression, like maybe he'd scalded his tongue or something.
Have they eaten? he asked Mami.
She nodded. I made you something.
You didn't let him eat, did you?
Ay, Dios mio, she said, letting her arms fall to her side.
Ay, Dios mio is right, Papi said.
I was never supposed to eat before our car trips, but earlier,
when she had put out our dinner of rice, beans and sweet
platanos, guess who had been the first one to clean his plate? You
couldn't blame Mami really, she had been busycooking,
getting ready, dressing my sister Madai. I should have reminded
her not to feed me but I wasn't that sort of son.
Papi turned to me. Coo, muchacho, why did you eat?
Rafa had already started inching away from me. I'd once told
him I considered him a low-down chickenshit for moving out of
the way every time Papi was going to smack me.
Collateral damage, Rafa had said. Ever heard of it?
No.
Look it up.
Chickenshit or not, I didn't dare glance at him. Papi was oldfashioned; he expected your undivided attention when you were
getting your ass whupped. You couldn't look him in the eye
eitherthat wasn't allowed. Better to stare at his belly button,
which was perfecdy round and immaculate. Papi pulled me to
my feet by my ear.
If you throw up
I won't, I cried, tears in my eyes, more out of reflex than pain.
Ya, Ramon, ya. It's not his fault, Mami said.
They've known about this party forever. How did they think
we were going to get there? Fly?
He finally let go of my ear and I sat back down. Madai was
too scared to open her eyes. Being around Papi all her life had
turned her into a major-league wuss. Anytime Papi raised his
voice her lip would start trembling, like some specialized tuning
fork. Rafa pretended that he had knuckles to crack and when I
shoved him, he gave me a Don't start look. But even that little bit
of recognition made me feel better.
I was the one who was always in trouble with my dad. It was
like my God-given duty to piss him off, to do everything the way
he hated. Our fights didn't bother me too much. I still wanted
him to love me, something that never seemed strange or
contradictory until years later, when he was out of our lives.
By the time my ear stopped stinging Papi was dressed and
Mami was crossing each one of us, solemnly, like we were
heading off to war. We said, in turn, Bendicin, Mami, and she
poked us in our five cardinal spots while saying, Que Dios te
bendiga.
This was how all our trips began, the words that followed me
every time I left the house.
None of us spoke until we were inside Papi's Volkswagen van.
Brand-new, lime-green and bought to impress. Oh, we were
impressed, but me, every time I was in that VW and Papi went
above twenty miles an hour, I vomited. I'd never had trouble with
cars beforethat van was like my curse. Mami suspected it was
the upholstery. In her mind, American thingsappliances,
mouthwash, funny-looking upholsteryall seemed to have an
intrinsic badness about them. Papi was careful about taking me
anywhere in the VW, but when he had to, I rode up front in
Mami's usual seat so I could throw up out a window.
Cmo te sientas? Mami asked over my shoulder when Papi
pulled onto the turnpike. She had her hand on the base of my
neck. One thing about Mami, her palms never sweated.
I'm OK, I said, keeping my eyes straight ahead. I definitely
didn't want to trade glances with Papi. He had this one look,
furious and sharp, that always left me feeling bruised.

Toma. Mami handed me four mentas. She had thrown three out
her window at the beginning of our trip, an offering to Esh; the
rest were for me.
I took one and sucked it slowly, my tongue knocking it up
against my teeth. We passed Newark Airport without any
incident. If Madai had been awake she would have cried because
the planes flew so close to the cars.
How's he feeling? Papi asked.
Fine, I said. I glanced back at Rafa and he pretended like he
didn't see me. That was the way he was, at school and at home.
When I was in trouble, he didn't know me. Madai was solidly
asleep, but even with her face all wrinkled up and drooling she
looked cute, her hair all separated into twists.
I turned around and concentrated on the candy. Papi even
started to joke that we might not have to scrub the van out
tonight. He was beginning to loosen up, not checking his watch
too much. Maybe he was thinking about that Puerto Rican
woman or maybe he was just happy that we were all together. I
could never tell. At the toll, he was feeling positive enough to
actually get out of the van and search around under the basket for
dropped coins. It was something he had once done to amuse
Madai, but now it was habit. Cars behind us honked their horns
and I slid down in my seat. Rafa didn't care; he grinned back at
the other cars and waved. His actual job was to make sure no
cops were coming. Mami shook Madai awake and as soon as she
saw Papi stooping for a couple of quarters she let out this screech
of delight that almost took off the top of my head.
That was the end of the good times. Just outside the
Washington Bridge, I started feeling woozy. The smell of the
upholstery got all up inside my head and I found myself with a
mouthful of saliva. Mami's hand tensed on my shoulder and
when I caught Papi's eye, he was like, No way. Don't do it.
The first time I got sick in the van Papi was taking me to the
library. Rafa was with us and he couldn't believe I threw up. I
was famous for my steel-lined stomach. A third-world childhood
could give you that. Papi was worried enough that just as quick
as Rafa could drop off the books we were on our way home.
Mami fixed me one of her honey-and-onion concoctions and that
made my stomach feel better. A week later we tried the library
again and on this go-around I couldn't get the window open in
time. When Papi got me home, he went and cleaned out the van
himself, an expression of askho on his face. This was a big deal,
since Papi almost never cleaned anything himself. He came back
inside and found me sitting on the couch feeling like hell. It's the
car, he said to Mami. It's making him sick.
This time the damage was pretty minimal, nothing Papi
couldn't wash off the door with a blast of the hose. He was
pissed, though; he jammed his finger into my cheek, a nice solid
thrust. That was the way he was with his punishments:
imaginative. Earlier that year I'd written an essay in school called
"My Father the Torturer," but the teacher made me write a new
one. She thought I was kidding.
We drove the rest of the way to the Bronx in silence. We only
stopped once, so I could brush my teeth. Mami had brought
along my toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste and while every car
known to man sped by us she stood outside with me so I
wouldn't feel alone.
To Miguel was about seven feet tall and had his hair combed up
and out, into a demi-fro. He gave me and Rafa big spleencrushing hugs and then kissed Mami and finally ended up with
Madai on his shoulder. The last time I'd seen To was at the
airport, his first day in the United States. I remembered how he
hadn't seemed all that troubled to be in another country.
He looked down at me. Carajo, Yunior, you look horrible!
He threw up, my brother explained.
I pushed Rafa. Thanks a lot, ass-face.

Hey, he said. To asked.

To clapped a bricklayer's hand on my shoulder. Everybody
gets sick sometimes, he said. You should have seen me on the
plane over here. Dios mio! He rolled his Asian-looking eyes for
emphasis. I thought we were all going to die.
Everybody could tell he was lying. I smiled like he was
making me feel better.
Do you want me to get you a drink? To asked. We got beer
and rum.
Miguel, Mami said. He's young.
Young? Back in Santo Domingo, he'd be getting laid by now.
Mami thinned her lips, which took some doing.
Well, it's true, To said.
So, Mami, I said. When do I get to go visit the D.R.?
That's enough, Yunior.
It's the only pussy you'll ever get, Rafa said to me in English.
Not counting your girlfriend, of course.
Rafa smiled. He had to give me that one.
Papi came in from parking the van. He and Miguel gave each
other the sort of handshakes that would have turned my fingers
into Wonder bread.
Coo, compa'i, cmo va todo? they said to each other.
Ta came out then, with an apron on and maybe the longest
Lee Press-On Nails I've ever seen in my life. There was this one
guru motherfucker in the Guinness Book of World Records who
had longer nails, but I tell you, it was close. She gave everybody
kisses, told me and Rafa how guapa we were Rafa, of course,
believed hertold Madai how bella she was, but when she got to
Papi, she froze a little, like maybe she'd seen a wasp on the tip of
his nose, but then kissed him all the same.
Mami told us to join the other kids in the living room. To
said, Wait a minute, I want to show you the apartment. I was glad
Ta said, Hold on, because from what I'd seen so far, the place
had been furnished in Contemporary Dominican Tacky. The less
I saw, the better. I mean, I liked plastic sofa covers but damn, To
and Ta had taken it to another level. They had a disco ball
hanging in the living room and the type of stucco ceilings that
looked like stalactite heaven. The sofas all had golden tassels
dangling from their edges. Ta came out of the kitchen with some
people I didn't know and by the time she got done introducing
everybody, only Papi and Mami were given the guided tour of
the four-room third-floor apartment. Me and Rafa joined the kids
in the living room. They'd already started eating. We were
hungry one of the girls explained, a pastelito in hand. The boy
was about three years younger than me but the girl who'd
spoken, Leti, was my age. She and another girl were on the sofa
together and they were cute as hell.
Leti introduced them: the boy was her brother Wilquins and
the other girl was her neighbor Mari. Leti had some serious tetas
and I could tell that my brother was going to gun for her. His
taste in girls was predictable. He sat down right between Leti and
Mari and by the way they were smiling at him I knew he'd do
fine. Neither of the girls gave me more than a cursory one-two,
which didn't bother me. Sure, I liked girls but I was always too
terrified to speak to them unless we were arguing or I was calling
them stupidos, which was one of my favorite words that year. I
turned to Wilquins and asked him what there was to do around
here. Mari, who had the lowest voice I'd ever heard, said, He
can't speak.
What does that mean?
He's mute.
I looked at Wilquins incredulously. He smiled and nodded, as
if he'd won a prize or something.
Does he understand? I asked.
Of course he understands, Rafa said. He's not dumb.
I could tell Rafa had said that just to score points with the
girls. Both of them nodded. Low-voice Mari said, He's the best
student in his grade.

I thought, Not bad for a mute. I sat next to Wilquins. After

about two seconds of TV Wilquins whipped out a bag of
dominos and motioned to me. Did I want to play? Sure. Me and
him played Rafa and Leti and we whupped their collective asses
twice, which put Rafa in a real bad mood. He looked at me like
maybe he wanted to take a swing, just one to make him feel
better. Led kept whispering into Rafa's ear, telling him it was
OK.
In the kitchen I could hear my parents slipping into their usual
modes. Papi's voice was loud and argumentative; you didn't have
to be anywhere near him to catch his drift. And Mami, you had to
put cups to your ears to hear hers. I went into the kitchen a few
timesonce so the tos could show off how much bullshit I'd
been able to cram in my head the last few years; another time for
a bucket-sized cup of soda. Mami and Ta were frying tostones
and the last of the pastelitos. She appeared happier now and the
way her hands worked on our dinner you would think she had a
life somewhere else making rare and precious things. She nudged
Ta every now and then, shit they must have been doing all their
lives. As soon as Mami saw me though, she gave me the eye.
Don't stay long, that eye said. Don't piss your old man off.
Papi was too busy arguing about Elvis to notice me. Then
somebody mentioned Mara Montez and Papi barked, Mara
Montez? Let me tell you about Mara Montez, compa'i.
Maybe I was used to him. His voicelouder than most
adults'didn't bother me none, though the other kids shifted
uneasily in their seats. Wilquins was about to raise the volume on
the TV, but Rafa said, I wouldn't do that. Muteboy had balls,
though. He did it anyway and then sat down. Wilquins's pop
came into the living room a second later, a bottle of Presidente in
hand. That dude must have had Spider-senses or something. Did
you raise that? he asked Wilquins and Wilquins nodded.
Is this your house? his pops asked. He looked ready to beat
Wilquins silly but he lowered the volume instead.
See, Rafa said. You nearly got your ass kicked.
I met the Puerto Rican woman right after Papi had gotten the
van. He was taking me on short trips, trying to cure me of my
vomiting. It wasn't really working but I looked forward to our
trips, even though at the end of each one I'd be sick. These were
the only times me and Papi did anything together. When we were
alone he treated me much better, like maybe I was his son or
something.
Before each drive Mami would cross me.
Bendicin, Mami, I'd say.
She'd kiss my forehead. Que Dios te bendiga. And then she
would give me a handful of mentas because she wanted me to be
OK. Mami didn't think these excursions would cure anything, but
the one time she had brought it up to Papi he had told her to shut
up, what did she know about anything anyway?
Me and Papi didn't talk much. We just drove around our
neighborhood.
Occasionally he'd ask, How is it?
And I'd nod, no matter how I felt..
One day I was sick outside of Perth Amboy. Instead of taking
me home he went the other way on Industrial Avenue, stopping a
few minutes later in front of a light blue house I didn't recognize.
It reminded me of the Easter eggs we colored at school, the ones
we threw out the bus windows at other cars.
The Puerto Rican woman was there and she helped me clean
up. She had dry papery hands and when she rubbed the towel on
my chest, she did it hard, like I was a bumper she was waxing.
She was very thin and had a cloud of brown hair rising above her
narrow face and the sharpest blackest eyes you've ever seen.
He's cute, she said to Papi.
Not when he's throwing up, Papi said.
What's your name? she asked me. Are you Rafa?
I shook my head.

Then it's Yunior, right?

I nodded.
You're the smart one, she said, suddenly happy with herself.
Maybe you want to see my books?
They weren't hers. I recognized them as ones my father must
have left in her house. Papi was a voracious reader, couldn't even
go cheating without a paperback in his pocket.
Why don't you go watch TV? Papi suggested. He was looking
at her like she was the last piece of chicken on earth.
We got plenty of channels, she said. Use the remote if you
want.
The two of them went upstairs and I was too scared of what
was happening to poke around. I just sat there, ashamed,
expecting something big and fiery to crash down on our heads. I
watched a whole hour of the news before Papi came downstairs
and said, Let's go.
About two hours later the women laid out the food and like
always nobody but the kids thanked them. It must be some
Dominican tradition or something. There was everything I liked
chicharrones, fried chicken, tostones, sancocho, rice, fried
cheese, yuca, avocado, potato salad, a meteor-sized hunk of
pernil, even a tossed salad which I could do withoutbut when I
joined the other kids around the serving table, Papi said, Oh no
you don't, and took the paper plate out of my hand. His fingers
weren't gentle. What's wrong now? Ta asked, handing me
another plate. He ain't eating, Papi said. Mami pretended to help
Rafa with the pernil. Why can't he eat? Because I said so.
The adults who didn't know us made like they hadn't heard a
thing and To just smiled sheepishly and told everybody to go
ahead and eat. All the kidsabout ten of them nowtrooped
back into the living room with their plates a-heaping and all the
adults ducked into the kitchen and the dining room, where the
radio was playing loud-ass bachatas. I was the only one without
a plate. Papi stopped me before I could get away from him. He
kept his voice nice and low so nobody else could hear him.
If you eat anything, I'm going to beat you. Entiendes?
I nodded.
And if your brother gives you any food, I'll beat him too.
Right here in front of everybody. Entiendes?
I nodded again. I wanted to kill him and he must have sensed
it because he gave my head a little shove.
All the kids watched me come in and sit down in front of the
TV.
What's wrong with your dad? Leti asked.
He's a dick, I said.
Rafa shook his head. Don't say that shit in front of people.
Easy for you to be nice when you're eating, I said.
Hey, if I was a pukey little baby, I wouldn't get no food either.
I almost said something back but I concentrated on the TV. I
wasn't going to start it. No fucking way. So I watched Bruce Lee
beat Chuck Norris into the floor of the Colosseum and tried to
pretend that there was no food anywhere in the house. It was Ta
who finally saved me. She came into the living room and said,
Since you ain't eating, Yunior, you can at least help me get some
ice.
I didn't want to, but she mistook my reluctance for something
else.
I already asked your father.
She held my hand while we walked; Ta didn't have any kids
but I could tell she wanted them. She was the sort of relative who
always remembered your birthday but who you only went to visit
because you had to. We didn't get past the first-floor landing
before she opened her pocketbook and handed me the first of
three pastelitos she had smuggled out of the apartment.
Go ahead, she said. And as soon as you get inside make sure
you brush your teeth.
Thanks a lot, Ta, I said.

Those pastelitos didn't stand a chance.

She sat next to me on the stairs and smoked her cigarette. All
the way down on the first floor and we could still hear the music
and the adults and the television. Ta looked a ton like Mami; the
two of them were both short and light-skinned. Ta smiled a lot
and that was what set them apart the most.
How is it at home, Yunior?
What do you mean?
How's it going in the apartment? Are you kids OK?
I knew an interrogation when I heard one, no matter how
sugar-coated it was. I didn't say anything. Don't get me wrong, I
loved my Ta, but something told me to keep my mouth shut.
Maybe it was family loyalty, maybe I just wanted to protect
Mami or I was afraid that Papi would find outit could have
been anything really.
Is your mom all right?
I shrugged.
Have there been lots of fights?
None, I said. Too many shrugs would have been just as bad as
an answer. Papi's at work too much.
Work, Ta said, like it was somebody's name she didn't like.
Me and Rafa, we didn't talk much about the Puerto Rican
woman. When we ate dinner at her house, the few times Papi had
taken us over there, we still acted like nothing was out of the
ordinary. Pass the ketchup, man. No sweat, bro. The affair was
like a hole in our living room floor, one we'd gotten so used to
circumnavigating that we sometimes forgot it was there.
By midnight all the adults were crazy dancing. I was sitting
outside Ta's bedroomwhere Madai was sleepingtrying not
to attract attention. Rafa had me guarding the door; he and Leti
were in there too, with some of the other kids, getting busy no
doubt. Wilquins had gone across the hall to bed so I had me and
the roaches to mess around with.
Whenever I peered into the main room I saw about twenty
moms and dads dancing and drinking beers. Every now and then
somebody yelled, Quisqueya! And then everybody else would
yell and stomp their feet. From what I could see my parents
seemed to be enjoying themselves.
Mami and Ta spent a lot of time side by side, whispering,
and I kept expecting something to come of this, a brawl maybe.
I'd never once been out with my family when it hadn't turned to
shit. We weren't even theatrical or straight crazy like other
families. We fought like sixth-graders, without any real dignity. I
guess the whole night I'd been waiting for a blowup, something
between Papi and Mami. This was how I always figured Papi
would be exposed, out in public, where everybody would know.
You're a cheater!
But everything was calmer than usual. And Mami didn't look
like she was about to say anything to Papi. The two of them
danced every now and then but they never lasted more than a
song before Mami joined Ta again in whatever conversation
tliey were having,
I tried to imagine Mami before Papi. Maybe I was tired, or
just sad, thinking about the way my family was. Maybe I already
knew how it would all end up in a few years, Mami without Papi,
and that was why I did it. Picturing her alone wasn't easy. It
seemed like Papi had always been with her, even when we were
waiting in Santo Domingo for him to send for us.
The only photograph our family had of Mami as a young
woman, before she married Papi, was th.e one that somebody
took of her at an election party that I found one day while
rummaging for money to go to the arcade. Mami had it tucked
into her immigration papers. In the photo, she's surrounded by
laughing cousins I will never meet, who are all shiny from
dancing, whose clothes are rumpled and loose. You can tell it's
night and hot and that the mosquitos have' been biting. She sits
straight and even in a crowd she stands out, smiling quiedy like

maybe she's the one everybody's celebrating. You can't see her
hands but I imagined they're knotting a straw or a bit of thread.
This was the woman my father met a year later on the Malecon,
the woman Mami thought she'd always be.
Mami must have caught me studying her because she stopped
what she was doing and gave me a smile, maybe her first one of
the night. Suddenly I wanted to go over and hug her, for no other
reason than I loved her, but there were about eleven fat jiggling
bodies between us. So I sat down on the tiled floor and waited.
I must have fallen asleep because the next thing I knew Rafa
was kicking me and saying, Let's go. He looked like he'd been
hitting those girls off; he was all smiles. I got to my feet in time
to kiss Ta and To good-bye. Mami was holding the serving dish
she had brought with her.
Where's Papi? I asked.
He's downstairs, bringing the van around. Mami leaned down
to kiss me.
You were good today, she said.
And then Papi burst in and told us to get the hell downstairs
before some pendejo cop gave him a ticket. More kisses, more
handshakes and then we were gone.
I don't remember being out of sorts after I met the Puerto Rican
woman, but I must have been because Mami only asked me
questions when she thought something was wrong in my life. It
took her about ten passes but finally she cornered me one
afternoon when we were alone in the apartment. Our upstairs
neighbors were beating the crap out of their kids, and me and her
had been listening to it all afternoon. She put her hand on mine
and said, Is everything OK, Yunior? Have you been fighting with
your brother?
Me and Rafa had already talked. We'd been in the basement,
where our parents couldn't hear us. He told me that yeah, he
knew about her.
Papi's taken me there twice now, he said.
Why didn't you tell me? I asked.
What the hell was I going to say? Hey Yunior, guess what
happened yesterday? I met Papi's sucia!
I didn't say anything to Mami either. She watched me, very
very closely. Later I would think, maybe if I had told her, she
would have confronted him, would have done something, but
who can know these things? I said I'd been having trouble in
school and like that everything was back to normal between us.
She put her hand on my shoulder and squeezed and that was that.
We were on the turnpike, just past Exit 11, when I started feeling
it again. I sat up from leaning against Rafa. His fingers smelled
and he'd gone to sleep almost as soon as he got into the van.
Madai was out too but at least she wasnt snoring.
In the darkness, I saw that Papi had a hand on Mami's knee
and that the two of them were quiet and still. They weren't
slumped back or anything; they were both wide awake, bolted
into their seats. I couldn't see either of their faces and no matter
how hard I tried I could not imagine their expressions. Neither of
them moved. Every now and then the van was filled with the
bright rush of somebody else's headlights. Finally I said, Mami,
and they both looked back, already knowing what was
happening.

11

trivial. Atwood's invocation of the garrison concept functions as

parody in the sense described by Linda Hutcheon: "I see parody
as operating as a method of inscribing continuity while
permitting critical difference" (Theory 20). The continuity
inheres in Lois's attitude to nature, which has affinities with that
of many colonial writers; and the critical difference is to be
found in the spuriousness of Lois's fears, cocooned safely as she
is in her luxury condominium.

FOREST AND "FAIRY STUFF":

MARGARET ATWOOD'S
WILDERNESS TIPS
by Faye Hammill
(Department of American and Canadian Studies, University of
Birmingham)
[...]
The malevolent north: "Death by Landscape"
"Death by Landscape" explores Canadian art and culture
primarily through intertextual links with paintings by the Group
of Seven, the best-known of all Canada's artists; and existing
criticism of the story concentrates on this aspect. But "Death by
Landscape" also has subtle connections with Canadian
wilderness writing and with the literary criticism which has
attached to it, and this will be the focus of the present discussion.
The first paragraph of "Death by Landscape" introduces Lois,
who is the centre of consciousness, and indicates her fear of
nature: "Lois has moved to a condominium apartment ... She is
relieved not to have to worry about the lawn, or about the ivy
pushing its muscular little suckers into the brickwork, or the
squirrels gnawing their way into the attic ... This building has a
security system, and the only plant life is in pots in the solarium"
(Wilderness Tips 105). Lois's desire to have nature under control,
or to create a civilised space from which it is shut out,
corresponds to the much-discussed "garrison mentality" which
was a staple of certain brands of Canadian thematic criticism in
the 1970s. It was initially defined by Northrop Frye as a
characteristic of the literature of colonial Canada: a need to build
fortifications both literally, against the encroaching wilderness,
and figuratively, against the unknown. Critics such as John Moss
and DG Jones expanded on this notion, applying it to texts from
all periods of English- and French-Canadian literature. In
comparison with the genuine terrors of the Canadian wilderness,
particularly in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (hostile
natives, disease, wild animals, the rigours of the climate), Lois's
anxieties about the intrusions of squirrels and ivy seem comically

Nature invades Lois's flat indirectly, however, when she hangs

her collection of Group of Seven landscape paintings there:
"Looking at them fills her with a wordless unease. Despite the
fact that there are no people in them or even animals, it's as if
there is something, or someone, looking back out" (106). Lois's
unease reflects her direct and terrifying experience of the places
represented in the pictures, and a flashback section of the
narrative recounts her experiences as a thirteen-year-old at
summer camp. Thus the story enters into the remembered
Algonquin Park landscape (which was a favourite setting for the
Group's work), and the reason for Lois's fear of nature is
revealed. During a canoe expedition, she and her close friend
Lucy left their party to climb up a high lakeside lookout point.
Lucy disappeared from the top of the rock, and her body was
never retrieved. Consequently, Lois cannot believe that Lucy is
really dead, and is unable to exorcise the memory of her: "She
was tired a lot, as if she was living not one life but two: her own,
and another, shadowy life that hovered around her and would not
let itself be realized" (127).
As an adult, Lois believes she knows where Lucy is: "She looks
at the paintings, she looks into them. Every one of them is a
painting of Lucy. You can't see her exactly, but she's there, in
behind the pink stone island or the one behind that" (128). The
coloniser's and the painters' view of landscape as empty and
uninhabited is overlaid by Lois's post-colonial fear of the unseen,
alien presences which haunt the forest:
these paintings are not landscape paintings. Because there aren't
any landscapes up there, not in the old, tidy European sense,
with a gentle hill, a curving river, a cottage, a mountain in the
background, a golden evening sky. Instead there's a tangle, a
receding maze, in which you can become lost almost as soon as
you step off the path. There are no backgrounds in any of these
paintings, no vistas; only a great deal of foreground that goes
back and back, endlessly, involving you in its twists and turns of
tree and branch and rock. (128)
This passage differentiates clearly between unthreatening,
European visions of landscape and sinister Canadian ones.
The idea of the haunted wilderness is another key element in
1970s Canadian thematic criticism. The best-known book
devoted to this topic is probably Margot Northey's The Haunted
Wilderness: The Gothic and Grotesque in Canadian Fiction
(1976), but Atwood has herself contributed to this variety of
criticism in her essay "Canadian Monsters" and in two critical
books: her influential study Survival: A Thematic Guide to
Canadian Literature (1972) and her 1995 collection of lecture
transcripts, Strange Things: The Malevolent North in Canadian
Literature. In Strange Things she argues that Canadian writers
have endlessly reworked ideas about "the uncanny lure of the
North and the awful things it could do to you" (17). The title
"Death by Landscape" signals the story's connection with this
Canadian tradition and also recalls one of the primary motifs of
Survival. One chapter of Survival is entitled "Nature the
Monster", and its epigraph is a quotation from Northrop Frye: "I
have long been impressed in Canadian poetry by a tone of deep

terror in regard to nature" (Bush Garden 225). In this chapter,

Atwood discusses a method of disposing of literary characters
which she terms "Death by Nature":
Death by Nature - not to be confused with "natural deaths" such
as heart attacks - is an event of startling frequency in Canadian
literature; in fact it seems to polish off far more people in
literature than it does in real life. In Death by Nature, something
in the natural environment murders the individual, though the
author, who is of course the real guilty party, since it is he who
has arranged the murder - often disguises the foul deed to make
it look like an accident. (Survival 54-55)
Which, of course, is precisely what happens in "Death by
Landscape". The narrative self-consciously revises Atwood's
earlier take on the subject, but it would be too simplistic to
suggest that she writes naively in Survival and knowingly in
Wilderness Tips. The passage quoted from Survival exhibits an
amused scepticism about literary figurations of malignant nature,
and this scepticism prefigures the tone of "Death by Landscape".
The story offers a parodic version of the haunted wilderness,
taking to its logical limit the idea of nature as monstrous. While
the "Death by Nature" stories cited in Survival all kill their
characters by a relatively plausible means, such as drowning or
freezing, Lois believes that Lucy was simply "polished off" by
some unidentified force in a haunted forest: "Who knows how
many trees there were on the cliff just before Lucy disappeared?
Who counted? Maybe there was one more, afterwards (128).
Lucy is figured as a tree and simultaneously as a ghost capable of
haunting Lois, and thus Lois paradoxically identifies a natural
entity with a supernatural one. It is almost as if she has imbibed
the whole complex of Canadian nature-as-monster myths and
used them to interpret both her past experience and her present
anxieties."

12
JOHN BARTH

LOST IN THE FUNHOUSE

For whom is the funhouse fun? Perhaps for lovers. For
Ambrose it is a place of fear and confusion. He has come to the
seashore with his family for the holiday, the occasion of their
visit is Independence Day, the most important secular holiday of
the United States of America. A single straight underline is the
manuscript mark for italic type, which in turn is the printed
equivalent to oral emphasis of words and phrases as well as the
customary type for titles of complete works, not to mention.
Italics are also employed, in fiction stories especially, for
outside, intrusive, or artificial voices, such as radio
announcements, the texts of telegrams and newspaper articles, et
cetera. They should be used sparingly. If passages originally in
roman type are italicized by someone repeating them, its
customary to acknowledge the fact. Italics mine.
Ambrose was at that awkward age. His voice came
out high-pitched as a childs if he let himself get carried away; to
be on the safe side, therefore, he moved and spoke with
deliberate calm and adult gravity. Talking soberly of
unimportant or irrelevant matters and listening consciously to the
sound of your own voice are useful habits for maintaining
control in this difficult interval. En route to Ocean City he sat in
the back seat of the family car with his brother Peter, age fifteen,
and Magda G , age fourteen, a pretty girl and exquisite young
lady, who lived not far from them on B Street in the town of
D , Maryland. Initials, blanks, or both were often substituted
for proper names in nineteenth-century fiction to enhance the
illusion of reality. It is as if the author felt it necessary to delete
the names for reasons of tact or legal liability. Interestingly, as

with other aspects of realism, it is an illusion that is being

enhanced, by purely artificial means. Is it likely, does it violate
the principle of verisimilitude, that a thirteen-year-old boy could
make such a sophisticated observation? A girl of fourteen is the
psychological coeval of a boy of fifteen or sixteen; a thirteenyear-old boy, therefore, even one precocious in some other
respects, might be three years her emotional junior.
Thrice a year on Memorial, Independence, and Labor
Days the family visits Ocean City for the afternoon and
evening. When Ambrose and Peters father was their age, the
excursion was made by train, as mentioned in the novel The
42nd Parallel by John Dos Passos. Many families from the same
neighborhood used to travel together, with dependent relatives
and often with Negro servants; schoolfuls of children swarmed
through the railway cars; everyone shared everyone elses
Maryland fried chicken, Virginia ham, deviled eggs, potato salad,
beaten biscuits, iced tea. Nowadays (that is, in 19 , the year of
our story) the journey is made by automobile more
comfortably and quickly though without the extra fun though
without the camaraderie of a general excursion. Its all part of
the deterioration of American life, their father declares; Uncle
Karl supposes that when the boys take their families to Ocean
City for the holidays theyll fly in Autogiros. Their mother,
sitting in the middle of the front seat like Magda in the second,
only with her arms on the seat-back behind the mens shoulders,
wouldnt want the good old days back again, the steaming trains
and stuffy long dresses; on the other hand she can do without
Autogiros, too, if she has to become a grandmother to fly in
them.
Description of physical appearance and mannerisms is
one of several standard methods of characterization used by
writers of fiction. It is also important to keep the senses
operating; when a detail from one of the five senses, say visual,
is crossed with a detail from another, say auditory, the readers
imagination is oriented to the scene, perhaps unconsciously. This
procedure may he compared to the way surveyors and navigators
determine their positions by two or more compass bearings, a
process known as triangulation. The brown hair on Ambroses
mothers forearms gleamed in the sun like. Though right-handed,
she took her left arm from the seat back to press the dashboard
cigar lighter for Uncle Karl. When the glass bead in its handle
glowed red, the lighter was ready for use. The smell of Uncle
Karls cigar smoke reminded one of. The fragrance of the ocean
came strong to the picnic ground where they always stopped for
lunch, two miles inland from Ocean City. Having to pause for a
full hour almost within sound of the breakers was difficult for
Peter and Ambrose when they were younger; even at their
present age it was not easy to keep their anticipation, stimulated
by the briny spume, from turning into short temper. The Irish
author James Joyce, in his unusual novel entitled Ulysses, now
available in this country uses the adjectives snot-green and
scrotum-tightening to describe the sea. Visual, auditory, tactile,
olfactory, gustatory. Peter and Ambroses father, while steering
their black 1936 LaSalle sedan with one hand, could with the
other remove the first cigarette from a white pack of Lucky
Strikes and, more remarkably, light it with a match forefingered
from its book and thumbed against the flint paper without being
detached. The matchbook cover merely advertised U.S. War
Bonds and Stamps. A fine metaphor, simile, or other figure of
speech, in addition to its obvious first-order relevance to the
thing it describes, will be seen upon reflection to have a second
order of significance: it may be drawn from the milieu of the
action, for example, or be particularly appropriate to the sensibility of the narrator, even hinting to the reader things of which
the narrator is unaware; or it may cast further and subtler lights
upon the things it describes, sometimes ironically qualifying the
more evident sense of the comparison.
To say that Ambroses and Peters mother was pretty is

to accomplish nothing; the reader may acknowledge the

proposition, but his imagination is not engaged. Besides, Magda
was also pretty, yet in an altogether different way. Although she
lived on B Street she had very good manners and did better
than average in school. Her figure was very well developed for
her age. Her right hand lay casually on the plush upholstery of
the seat, very near Ambroses left leg, on which his own hand
rested. The space between their legs, between her right and his
left leg, was out of the line of sight of anyone sitting on the other
side of Magda, as well as anyone glancing into the rear-view
mirror. Uncle Karls face resembled Peters rather, vice versa.
Both had dark hair and eyes, short husky statures, deep voices.
Magdas left hand was probably in a similar position on her left
side. The boys father is difficult to describe; no particular
feature of his appearance or manner stood out. He wore glasses
and was principal of a T County grade school. Uncle Karl was a
masonry contractor.
Although Peter must have known as well as Ambrose
that the latter, because of his position in the car, would be first to
see the electrical towers of the power plant at V , the halfway
point of their trip, he leaned forward and slightly toward the
center of the car and pretended to be looking for them through
the flat pinewoods and tuckahoe creeks along the highway. For
as long as the boys could remember, Looking for the Towers
had been a feature of the first half of their excursions to Ocean
City, looking for the standpipe of the second. Though the game
was childish, their mother preserved the tradition of rewarding
the first to see the Towers with a candy-bar or piece of fruit. She
insisted now that Magda play the game; the prize, she said, was
something hard to get nowadays. Ambrose decided not to join
in; he sat far back in his seat. Magda, like Peter, leaned forward.
Two sets of straps were discernible through the shoulders of her
sun dress; the inside right one, a brassiere-strap, was fastened or
shortened with a small safety pin. The right armpit of her dress,
presumably the left as well, was damp with perspiration. The
simple strategy for being first to espy the Towers, which
Ambrose had understood by the age of four, was to sit on the
right-hand side of the car. Whoever sat there, however, had also
to put up with the worst of the sun, and so Ambrose, without
mentioning the matter, chose sometimes the one and sometimes
the other. Not impossibly Peter had never caught on to the trick,
or thought that his brother hadnt simply because Ambrose on
occasion preferred shade to a Baby Ruth or tangerine.
The shade-sun situation didnt apply to the front seat,
owing to the windshield; if anything the driver got more sun,
since the person on the passenger side not only was shadowed
below by the door and dashboard but might swing down his sun
visor all the way too.
Is that them? Magda asked. Ambroses mother teased
the boys for letting Magda win, insinuating that somebody
[had] a girlfriend. Peter and Ambroses father reached a long
thin arm across their mother to butt his cigarette in the dashboard
ashtray, under the lighter. The prize this time for seeing the
Towers first was a banana. Their mother bestowed it after
chiding their father for wasting a half-smoked cigarette when
everything was so scarce. Magda, to take the prize, moved her
hand from so near Ambroses that he could have touched it as
though accidentally. She offered to share the prize, things like
that were so hard to find; but everyone insisted it was hers alone.
Ambroses mother sang an iambic trimeter couplet from a
popular song, femininely rhymed:
Whats good is in the Army;
Whats left will never harm me.
Uncle Karl tapped his cigar ash out the ventilator
window; some particles were sucked by the slipstream back into
the car through the rear window on the passenger side. Magda

demonstrated her ability to hold a banana in one hand and peel it

with her teeth. She still sat forward; Ambrose pushed his glasses
back onto the bridge of his nose with his left hand, which he then
negligently let fall to the seat cushion immediately behind her.
He even permitted the single hair, gold, on the second joint of his
thumb to brush the fabric of her skirt. Should she have sat back
at that instant, his hand would have been caught under her.
Plush upholstery prickles uncomfortably through
gabardine slacks in the July sun. The function of the beginning of
a story is to introduce the principal characters, establish their
initial relationships, set the scene for the main action, expose the
background of the situation if necessary, plant motifs and
foreshadowings where appropriate, and initiate the first
complication or whatever of the rising action. Actually, if one
imagines a story called The Funhouse, or Lost in the
Funhouse, the details of the drive to Ocean City dont seem
especially relevant. The beginning should recount the events between Ambroses first sight of the funhouse early in the
afternoon and his entering it with Magda and Peter in the
evening. The middle would narrate all relevant events from the
time he goes in to the time he loses his way; middles have the
double and contradictory function of delaying the climax while
at the same time preparing the reader for it and fetching him to it.
Then the ending would tell what Ambrose does while hes lost,
how he finally finds his way out, and what everybody makes of
the experience. So far theres been no real dialogue, very little
sensory detail, and nothing in the way of a theme. And a long
time has gone by already without anything happening; it makes a
person wonder. We havent even reached Ocean City yet: we will
never get out of the funhouse.
The more closely an author identifies with the narrator,
literally or metaphorically, the less advisable it is, as a rule, to
use the first-person narrative viewpoint. Once three years
previously the young people aforementioned played Niggers and
Masters in the backyard; when it was Ambroses turn to be
Master and theirs to be Niggers Peter had to go serve his evening
papers; Ambrose was afraid to punish Magda alone, but she led
him to the whitewashed Torture Chamber between the woodshed
and the privy in the Slaves Quarters; there she knelt sweating
among bamboo rakes and dusty Mason jars, pleadingly embraced
his knees, and while bees droned in the lattice as if on an
ordinary summer afternoon, purchased clemency at a surprising
price set by herself. Doubtless she remembered nothing of this
event; Ambrose on the other hand seemed unable to forget the
least detail of his life. He even recalled how, standing beside
himself with awed impersonality in the reeky heat, hed stared
the while at an empty cigar box in which Uncle Karl kept stonecutting chisels: beneath the words El Producto, a laureled, loosetogad lady regarded the sea from a marble bench; beside her,
forgotten. or not yet turned to, was a five-stringed lyre. Her chin
reposed on the back of her right hand; her left depended
negligently from the bench-arm. The lower half of scene and
lady was peeled away; the words EXAMINED BY were
inked there into the wood. Nowadays cigar boxes are made of
pasteboard. Ambrose wondered what Magda would have done,
Ambrose wondered what Magda would do when she sat back on
his hand as he resolved she should. Be angry. Make a teasing
joke of it. Give no sign at all. For a long time she leaned forward,
playing cow-poker with Peter against Uncle Karl and Mother and
watching for the first sign of Ocean City. At nearly the same
instant, picnic ground and Ocean City standpipe hove into view;
an Amoco filling station on their side of the road cost Mother and
Uncle Karl fifty cows and the game; Magda bounced back,
clapping her right hand on Mothers right arm; Ambrose moved
clear in the nick of time.
At this rate our hero, at this rate our protagonist will
remain in the funhouse forever. Narrative ordinarily consists of
alternating dramatization and summarization. One symptom of

nervous tension, paradoxically, is repeated and violent yawning;

neither Peter nor Magda nor Uncle Karl nor Mother reacted in
this manner. Although they were no longer small children, Peter
and Ambrose were each given a dollar to spend on boardwalk
amusements in addition to what money of their own theyd
brought along. Magda too, though she protested she had ample
spending money. The boys mother made a little scene out of
distributing the bills; she pretended that her sons and Magda
were small children and cautioned them not to spend the sum too
quickly or in one place. Magda promised with a merry laugh and,
having both hands free, took the bill with her left. Peter laughed
also and pledged in a falsetto to be a good boy. His imitation of a
child was not clever. The boys father was tall and thin, balding,
fair-complexioned. Assertions of that sort are not effective; the
reader may acknowledge the proposition, but. We should be
much farther along than we are; something has gone wrong; not
much of the preliminary rambling seems relevant. Yet everyone
begins in the same place; how is it that most go along without
difficulty but a few lose their way?
Stay out from under the boardwalk, Uncle Karl
growled from the side of his mouth. The boys mother pushed his
shoulder in mock annoyance. They were all standing before Fat
May the Laughing Lady who advertised the funhouse. Larger
than life, Fat May mechanically shook, rocked on her heels,
slapped her thighs while recorded laughter uproarious, female
came amplified from a hidden loudspeaker. It chuckled,
wheezed, wept; tried in vain to catch its breath; tittered, groaned,
exploded raucous and anew. You couldnt hear it without
laughing yourself, no matter how you felt. Father came back
from talking to a Coast-Guardsman on duty and reported that the
surf was spoiled with crude oil from tankers recently torpedoed
offshore. Lumps of it, difficult to remove, made tarry tidelines on
the beach and stuck on swimmers. Many bathed in the surf
nevertheless and came out speckled; others paid to use a
municipal pool and only sunbathed on the beach. We would do
the latter. We would do the latter. We would do the latter.
Under the boardwalk, matchbook covers, grainy other
things. What is the storys theme? Ambrose is ill. He perspires in
the dark passages, candied apples-on-a-stick, delicious-looking,
disappointing to eat. Funhouses need mens and ladies rooms at
intervals. Others perhaps have also vomited in corners and
corridors; may even have had bowel movements liable to be
stepped in in the dark. The word fuck suggests suction and/or
and/or flatulence. Mother and Father; grandmothers and
grandfathers on both sides; great-grandmothers and greatgrandfathers on four sides, et cetera. Count a generation as thirty
years: in approximately the year when Lord Baltimore was
granted charter to the province of Maryland by Charles I, five
hundred twelve women English, Welsh, Bavarian, Swiss of
every class and character, received into themselves the penises
the intromittent organs of five hundred twelve men, ditto, in
every circumstance and posture, to conceive the five hundred
twelve ancestors and the two hundred fifty-six ancestors of the et
cetera et cetera et cetera et cetera et cetera et cetera et cetera et
cetera of the author, of the narrator, of this story, Lost in the
Funhouse. In alleyways, ditches, canopy beds, pinewoods, bridal
suites, ships cabins, coach-and-fours, coaches-and-four, sultry
toolsheds; on the cold sand under boardwalks, littered with El
Producto cigar butts, treasured with Lucky Strike cigarette stubs,
Coca-Cola caps, gritty turds, cardboard lollipop sticks,
matchbook covers warning that A Slip of the Lip Can Sink a
Ship. The shluppish whisper, continuous as seawash round the
globe, tidelike falls and rises with the circuit of dawn and dusk.
Magdas teeth. She was left-handed. Perspiration.
Theyve gone all the way, through, Magda and Peter, theyve
been waiting for hours with Mother and Uncle Karl while Father
searches for his lost son; they draw french-fried potatoes from a
paper cup and shake their heads. Theyve named the children

theyll one day have and bring to Ocean City on holidays. Can
spermatozoa properly be thought of as male animalcules when
there are no female spermatozoa? They grope through hot, dark
windings, past Loves Tunnels fearsome obstacles. Some
perhaps lose their way.
Peter suggested then and there that they do the
funhouse; he had been through it before, so had Magda, Ambrose
hadnt and suggested, his voice cracking on account of Fat Mays
laughter, that they swim first. All were chuckling, couldnt help
it; Ambroses father, Ambroses and Peters father came up
grinning like a lunatic with two boxes of syrup-coated popcorn,
one for Mother, one for Magda; the men were to help
themselves. Ambrose walked on Magdas right; being by nature
left-handed, she carried the box in her left hand. Up front the
situation was reversed.
What are you limping for? Magda inquired of
Ambrose. He supposed in a husky tone that his foot had gone to
sleep in the car. Her teeth flashed. Pins and needles? It was the
honeysuckle on the lattice of the former privy that drew the bees.
Imagine being stung there. How long is this going to take?
The adults decided to forgo the pool; but Uncle Karl
insisted they change into swimsuits and do the beach. He wants
to watch the pretty girls, Peter teased, and ducked behind
Magda from Uncle Karls pretended wrath. Youve got all the
pretty girls you need right here, Magda declared, and Mother
said: Now thats the gospel truth. Magda scolded Peter, who
reached over her shoulder to sneak some popcorn. Your brother
and father arent getting any Uncle Karl wondered if they were
going to have fireworks that night, what with the shortages. It
wasnt the shortages, Mr. M -- replied; Ocean City had fireworks
from pre-war. But it was too risky on account of the enemy
submarines, some people thought.
Dont seem like Fourth of July without fireworks,
said Uncle Karl. The inverted tag in dialogue writing is still
considered permissible with proper names or epithets, but sounds
old-fashioned with personal pronouns. Well have em again
soon enough, predicted the boys father. Their mother declared
she could do without fireworks: they reminded her too much of
the real thing. Their father said all the more reason to shoot off a
few now and again. Uncle Karl asked rhetorically who needed
reminding, just look at peoples hair and skin.
The oil, yes, said Mrs. M
Ambrose had a pain in his stomach and so didnt swim
but enjoyed watching the others. He and his father burned red
easily. Magdas figure was exceedingly well developed for her
age. The too declined to swim, and got mad, and became angry
when Peter attempted to drag her into the pool. She always
swam, he insisted; what did she mean not swim? Why did a
person come to Ocean City?
Maybe I want to lay here with Ambrose, Magda teased.
Nobody likes a pedant.
Aha, said Mother. Peter grabbed Magda by one ankle
and ordered Ambrose to grab the other. She squealed and rolled
over on the beach blanket. Ambrose pretended to help hold her
back. Her tan was darker than even Mothers and Peters. Help
out, Uncle Karl! Peter cried. Uncle Karl went to seize the other
ankle. Inside the top of her swimsuit, however, you could see the
line where the sunburn ended and, when she hunched her
shoulders and squealed again, one nipples auburn edge. Mother
made them behave themselves. You should certainly know, she
said to Uncle Karl. Archly That when a lady says she doesnt
feel like swimming, a gentleman doesnt ask questions. Uncle
Karl said excuse him; Mother winked at Magda; Ambrose
blushed; stupid Peter kept saying Phooey on feel like! and
tugging at Magdas ankle; then even he got the point, and
cannonballed with a holler into the pool.
I swear, Magda said, in mock in feigned exasperation.
The diving would make a suitable literary symbol. To go

off the high board you had to wait in a line along the poolside
and up the ladder. Fellows tickled girls and goosed one another
and shouted to the ones at the top to hurry up, or razzed them for
bellyfloppers. Once on the springboard some took a great while
posing or clowning or deciding on a dive or getting up their
nerve; others ran right off. Especially among the younger fellows
the idea was to strike the funniest pose or do the craziest stunt as
you fell, a thing that got harder to do as you kept on and kept on.
But whether you hollered Geronimo! or Sieg heil!, held your
nose or rode a bicycle, pretended to be shot or did a perfect
jackknife or changed your mind halfway down and ended up
with nothing, it was over in two seconds, after all that wait.
Spring, pose, splash. Spring, neat-o, splash, Spring, aw fooey,
splash.
The grown-ups had gone on; Ambrose wanted to converse
with Magda; she was remarkably well developed for her age; it
was said that that came from rubbing with a turkish towel, and
there were other theories. Ambrose could think of nothing to say
except how good a diver Peter was, who was showing off for her
benefit. You could pretty well tell by looking at their bathing
suits and arm muscles how far along the different fellows were.
Ambrose was glad he hadnt gone in swimming, the cold water
shrank you up so. Magda pretended to be uninterested in the
diving; she probably weighed as much as he did. If you knew
your way around in the funhouse like your own bedroom, you
could wait until a girl came along and then slip away without
ever getting caught, even if her boyfriend was right with her.
Shed think he did it! It would be better to be the boyfriend, and
act outraged, and tear the funhouse apart.
Not act; be.
Hes a master diver, Ambrose said. In feigned
admiration. You really have to slave away at it to get that
good. What would it matter anyhow if he asked her right out
whether she remembered, even teased her with it as Peter would
have?
Theres no point in going farther; this isnt getting
anybody anywhere; they havent even come to the funhouse yet.
Ambrose is off the track, in some new or old part of the place
thats not supposed to be used; he strayed into it by some one-ina-million chance, like the time the roller-coaster car left the
tracks in the nineteen-teens against all the laws of physics and
sailed over the boardwalk in the dark. And they cant locate him
because they dont know where to look. Even the designer and
operator have forgotten this other part, that winds around on
itself like a whelk shell. That winds around the right part like the
snakes on Mercurys caduceus. Some people, perhaps, dont hit
their stride until their twenties, when the growing-up business is
over and women appreciate other things besides wisecracks and
teasing and strutting. Peter didnt have one-tenth the imagination
he had, not one-tenth. Peter did this naming-their-children thing
as a joke, making up names like Aloysius and Murgatroyd, but
Ambrose knew exactly how it would feel to be married and have
children of your own, and be a loving husband and father, and go
comfortably to work in the mornings and to bed with your wife
at night, and wake up with her there. With a breeze coming
through the sash and birds and mockingbirds singing in the
Chinese-cigar trees. His eyes watered, there arent enough ways
to say that. He would be quite famous in his line of work.
Whether Magda was his wife or not, one evening when he was
wise-lined and gray at the temples hed smile gravely, at a
fashionable dinner party and remind her of his youthful passion.
The time they went with his family to Ocean City; the erotic
fantasies he used to have about her. How long ago it seemed, and
childish! Yet tender, too, nest-ce pas? Would she have imagined
that the world-famous whatever remembered how many strings
were on the lyre on the bench beside the girl on the label of the
cigar box hed stared at in the tool shed at age ten while, she, age
eleven. Even then he had felt wise beyond his years; hed stroked

her hair and said in his deepest voice and correctest English, as
to a dear child: I shall never forget this moment.
But though he had breathed heavily, groaned as if
ecstatic, what hed really felt throughout was an odd detachment,
as though someone else were Master. Strive as he might to be
transported, he heard his mind take notes upon the scene: This is
what they call passion. I am experiencing it. Many of the digger
machines were out of order in the penny arcades and could not
be repaired or replaced for the duration. Moreover the prizes,
made now in USA, were less interesting than formerly,
pasteboard items for the most part, and some of the machines
wouldnt work on white pennies. The gypsy fortuneteller
machine might have provided a foreshadowing of the climax of
this story if Ambrose had operated it. It was even dilapidateder
than most: the silver coating was worn off the brown metal
handles, the glass windows around the dummy were cracked and
taped, her kerchiefs and silks long faded. If a man lived by
himself, he could take a department-store mannequin with
flexible joints and modify her in certain ways. However: by the
time he was that old hed have a real woman. There was a
machine that stamped your name around a white-metal coin with
a star in the middle: A . His son would be the second, and when
the lad reached thirteen or so he would put a strong arm around
his shoulder and tell him calmly: It is perfectly normal. We have
all been through it. It will not last forever. Nobody knew how to
be what they were right. Hed smoke a pipe, teach his son how to
fish and softcrab, assure him he neednt worry about himself.
Magda would certainly give, Magda would certainly yield a
great deal of milk, although guilty of occasional solecisms. It
dont taste so bad. Suppose the lights came on now!
The day wore on. You think youre yourself, but there
are other persons in you. Ambrose gets hard when Ambrose
doesnt want to, and obversely. Ambrose watches them disagree;
Ambrose watches him watch. In the fun-house mirror room you
cant see yourself go on forever, because no matter how you
stand, your head gets in the way. Even if you had a glass
periscope, the image of your eye would cover up the thing you
really wanted to see. The police will come; therell be a story in
the papers. That must be where it happened. Unless he can find a
surprise exit, an unofficial backdoor or escape hatch opening on
an alley, say, and then stroll up to the family in front of the
funhouse and ask where everybodys been; hes been out of the
place for ages. Thats just where it happened, in that last lighted
room: Peter and Magda found the right exit; he found one that
you werent supposed to find and strayed off into the works
somewhere. In a perfect funhouse youd be able to go only one
way, like the divers off the high board; getting lost would be
impossible; the doors and halls would work like minnow traps on
the valves in veins.
On account of German U-boats, Ocean City was
browned out: streetlights were shaded on the seaward side;
shop-windows and boardwalk amusement places were kept dim,
not to silhouette tankers and Liberty ships for torpedoing. In a
short story about Ocean City, Maryland, during World War II, the
author could make use of the image of sailors on leave in the
penny arcades and shooting galleries, sighting through the
crosshairs of toy machine guns at swastikad subs, while out in
the black Atlantic a U-boat skipper squints through his periscope
at real ships outlined by the glow of penny arcades. After dinner
the family strolled back to the amusement end of the boardwalk.
The boys father had burnt red as always and was masked with
Noxzema, a minstrel in reverse. The grownups stood at the end
of the boardwalk where the Hurricane of 33 had cut an inlet
from the ocean to Assawoman Bay.
Pronounced with a long o, Uncle Karl reminded
Magda with a wink. His shirt sleeves were rolled up; Mother
punched his brown biceps with the arrowed heart on it and said
his mind was naughty. Fat Mays laugh came suddenly from the

funhouse, as if shed just got the joke; the family laughed too at
the coincidence. Ambrose went under the boardwalk to search
for out-of-town matchbook covers with the aid of his pocket
flashlight; he looked out from the edge of the North American
continent and wondered how far their laughter carried over the
water. Spies in rubber rafts; survivors in lifeboats. If the joke had
been beyond his understanding, he could have said:
The laughter was over his head. And let the reader
see the serious wordplay on second reading.
He turned the flashlight on and then off at once even
before the woman whooped. He sprang away, heart athud,
dropping the light. What had the man grunted? Perspiration
drenched and chilled him by the time he scrambled up to the
family. See anything? his father asked. His voice wouldnt
come; he shrugged and violently brushed sand from his pants
legs.
Lets ride the old flying horses! Magda cried. Ill
never be an author. Its been forever already, everybodys gone
home, Ocean Citys deserted, the ghost-crabs are tickling across
the beach and down the littered cold streets. And the empty halls
of clapboard hotels and abandoned funhouses. A tidal wave; an
enemy air raid; a monster-crab swelling like an island from the
sea. The inhabitants fled in terror. Magda clung to his trouser
leg; he alone knew the mazes secret. He gave his life that we
might live, said Uncle Karl with a scowl of pain, as he. The
fellows hands had been tattooed; the womans legs, the womans
fat white legs had. An astonishing coincidence. He yearned to tell
Peter. He wanted to throw up for excitement. They hadnt even
chased him. He wished he were dead.
One possible ending would be to have Ambrose come
across another lost person in the dark. Theyd match their wits
together against the funhouse, struggle like Ulysses past obstacle
after obstacle, help and encourage each other. Or a girl. By the
time they found the exit theyd be closest friends, sweethearts if
it were a girl; theyd know each others inmost souls, be bound
together by the cement of shared adventure; then theyd emerge
into the light and it would turn out that his friend was a Negro. A
blind girl. President Roosevelts son. Ambroses former
archenemy
Shortly after the mirror room hed groped along a musty
corridor, his heart already misgiving him at the absence of
phosphorescent arrows and other signs. Hed found a crack of
light not a door, it turned out, but a seam between the ply
board wall panels and squinting up to it, espied a small old
man, in appearance not unlike the photographs at home of
Ambroses late grandfather, nodding upon a stool beneath a bare,
speckled bulb. A crude panel of toggle- and knife-switches hung
beside the open fuse box near his head; elsewhere in the little
room were wooden levers and ropes belayed to boat cleats. At
the time, Ambrose wasnt lost enough to rap or call; later he
couldnt find that crack. Now it seemed to him that hed possibly
dozed off for a few minutes somewhere along the way; certainly
he was exhausted from the afternoons sunshine and the
evenings problems; he couldnt be sure he hadnt dreamed part
or all of the sight. Had an old black wall fan droned like bees and
shimmied two flypaper streamers? Had the funhouse operator
gentle, somewhat sad and tired-appearing, in expression not
unlike the photographs at home of Ambroses late Uncle Konrad
murmured in his sleep? Is there really such a person as
Ambrose, or is he a figment of the authors imagination? Was it
Assawoman Bay or Sinepuxent? Are there other errors of fact in
this fiction? Was there another sound besides the little slap slap
of thigh on ham, like water sucking at the chine-boards of a
skiff?
When youre lost, the smartest thing to do is stay put till
youre found, hollering if necessary. But to holler guarantees
humiliation as well as rescue; keeping silent permits some saving
of face you can act surprised at the fuss when your rescuers

find you and swear you werent lost, if they do. Whats more you
might find your own way yet, however belatedly.
Dont tell me your foots still asleep! Magda
exclaimed as the three young people walked from the inlet to the
area set aside for ferris wheels, carrousels, and other carnival
rides, they having decided in favor of the vast and ancient merrygo-round instead of the funhouse. What a sentence, everything
was wrong from the outset. People dont know what to make of
him, he doesnt know what to make of himself, hes only
thirteen, athletically and socially inept, not astonishingly bright,
but there are antennae; he has.., some sort of receivers in his
head; things speak to him, he understands more than he should,
the world winks at him through its objects, grabs grinning at his
coat. Everybody else is in on some secret he doesnt know;
theyve forgotten to tell him. Through simple procrastination his
mother put off his baptism until this year. Everyone else had it
done as a baby; hed assumed the same of himself, as had his
mother, so she claimed, until it was time for him to join Grace
Methodist-Protestant and the oversight came out. He was
mortified, but pitched sleepless through his private catechizing,
intimidated by the ancient mysteries, a thirteen year old would
never say that, resolved to experience conversion like St.
Augustine. When the water touched his brow and Adams sin left
him, he contrived by a strain like defecation to bring tears into
his eyes but felt nothing. There was some simple, radical
difference about him; he hoped it was genius, feared it was
madness, devoted himself to amiability and inconspicuousness.
Alone on the seawall near his house he was seized by the
terrifying transports hed thought to find in tool shed, in
Communion-cup. The grass was alive! The town, the river,
himself, were not imaginary; time roared in his ears like wind;
the world was going on! This part ought to be dramatized. The
Irish author James Joyce once wrote. Ambrose M is going to
scream.
There is no texture of rendered sensory detail, for one
thing. The faded distorting mirrors beside Fat May; the
impossibility of choosing a mount when one had but a single ride
on the great carrousel; the vertigo attendant on his recognition
that Ocean City was worn out, the place of fathers and
grandfathers, straw-boatered men and parasoled ladies survived
by their amusements. Money spent, the three paused at Peters
insistence beside Fat May to watch the girls get their skirts
blown up. The object was to tease Magda, who said: I swear,
Peter M , youve got a one-track mind! Amby and me arent
interested in such things. In the tumbling-barrel, too, just inside
the Devils mouth entrance to the funhouse, the girls were
upended and their boyfriends and others could see up their
dresses if they cared to. Which was the whole point, Ambrose
realized. Of the entire funhouse! If you looked around, you
noticed that almost all the people on the boardwalk were paired
off into Couples except the small children; in a way, that was the
whole point of Ocean City! If you had X-ray eves and could see
everything going on at that instant under the boardwalk and in all
the hotel rooms and cars and alleyways, youd realize that all that
normally showed, like restaurants and dance halls and clothing
and test-your-strength machines, was merely preparation and
intermission. Fat May screamed.
Because he watched the going-ons from the corner of
his eye, it was Ambrose who spied the half-dollar on the
boardwalk near the tumbling-barrel. Losers weepers. The first
time hed heard some people moving through a corridor not far
away, just after hed lost sight of the crack of light, hed decided
not to call to them, for fear theyd guess he was scared and poke
fun; it sounded like roughnecks; hed hoped theyd come by and
he could follow in the dark without their knowing. Another time
hed heard just one person, unless he imagined it, bumping along
as if on the other side of the plywood; perhaps Peter coming back
for him, or Father, or Magda lost too. Or the owner and operator

of the funhouse. Hed called out once, as though merrily:

Anybody know where the heck we are? But the query
was too stiff, his voice cracked, when the sounds stopped he was
terrified: maybe it was a queer who waited for fellows to get lost,
or a longhaired filthy monster that lived in some cranny of the
funhouse. He stood rigid for hours it seemed like, scarcely
respiring. His future was shockingly clear, in outline. He tried
holding his breath to the point of unconsciousness. There ought
to be a button you could push to end your life absolutely without
pain; disappear in a flick, like turning out a light. He would push
it instantly! He despised Uncle Karl. But he despised his father
too, for not being what he was supposed to be. Perhaps his father
hated his father, and so on, and his son would hate him, and so
on. Instantly!
Naturally he didnt have nerve enough to ask Magda to
go through the funhouse with him. With incredible nerve and to
everyones surprise he invited Magda, quietly and politely, to go
through the funhouse with him. I warn you, Ive never been
through it before, he added, laughing easily; but I reckon we
can manage somehow. The important thing to remember, after
all, is that its meant to be a funhouse; that is, a place of
amusement. If people really got lost or injured or too badly
frightened in it, the ownerd go out of business. Thered even be
lawsuits. No character in a work of fiction can make a speech
this long without interruption or acknowledgment from the other
characters.
Mother teased Uncle Karl: Threes a crowd, I always
heard. But actually Ambrose was relieved that Peter now had a
quarter too. Nothing was what it looked like. Every instant,
under the surface of the Atlantic Ocean, millions of living
animals devoured one another. Pilots were falling in flames over
Europe; women were being forcibly raped in the South Pacific.
His father should have taken him aside and said: There is a
simple secret to getting through the funhouse, as simple as being
first to see the Towers. Here it is. Peter does not know it; neither
does your Uncle Karl. You and I are different. Not surprisingly,
youve often wished you werent. Dont think I havent noticed
how unhappy your childhood has been! But youll understand,
when I tell you, why it had to be kept secret until now. And you
wont regret not being like your brother and your uncle. On the
contrary! If you knew all the stories behind all the people on
the boardwalk, youd see that nothing was what it looked like.
Husbands and wives often hated each other; parents didnt
necessarily love their children; et cetera. A child took things for
granted because he had nothing to compare his life to and
everybody acted as if things were as they should be. Therefore
each saw himself as the hero of the story, when the truth might
turn out to be that hes the villain, or the coward. And there
wasnt one thing you could do about it!
Hunchbacks, fat ladies, fools that no one chose what
he was was unbearable. In the movies hed meet a beautiful
young girl in the funhouse; theyd have hairs-breadth escapes
from real dangers; hed do and say the right things; she also; in
the end theyd be lovers; their dialogue lines would match up;
hed be perfectly at ease; shed not only like him well enough,
shed think he was marvelous; shed lie awake thinking about
him, instead of vice versa the way his face looked in different
lights and how he stood and exactly what hed said and yet
that would be only one small episode in his wonderful life,
among many many others. Not a turning point at all. What had
happened in the tool shed was nothing. He hated, he loathed his
parents! One reason for not writing a lost-in-the-funhouse story
is that either everybodys felt what Ambrose feels, in which case
it goes without saying, or else no normal person feels such
things, in which case Ambrose is a freak. Is anything more tiresome, in fiction, than the problems of sensitive adolescents?
And its all too long and rambling, as if the author. For all a
person knows the first time through, the end could be just around

any corner; perhaps, not impossibly its been within reach any
number of times. On the other hand he may be scarcely past the
start, with everything yet to get through, an intolerable idea.
Fill in: His fathers raised eyebrows when he
announced his decision to do the funhouse with Magda. Ambrose
understands now, but didnt then, that his father was wondering
whether he knew what the funhouse was for especially since
he didnt object, as he should have, when Peter decided to come
along too. The ticket-woman, witchlike, mortifying him when
inadvertently he gave her his name-coin instead of the halfdollar, then unkindly calling Magdas attention to the birthmark
on his temple: Watch out for him, girlie, hes a marked man!
She wasnt even cruel, he understood, only vulgar and
insensitive. Somewhere in the world there was a young woman
with such splendid understanding that shed see him entire, like a
poem or story, and find his words so valuable after all that when
he confessed his apprehensions she would explain why they were
in fact the very things that made him precious to her . . . and to
Western Civilization! There was no such girl, the simple truth
being. Violent yawns as they approached the mouth. Whispered
advice from an old-timer on a bench near the barrel: Go
crabwise and yell get an eyeful without upsetting! Composure
vanished at the first pitch: Peter hollered joyously, Magda
tumbled, shrieked, clutched her skirt; Ambrose scrambled
crabwise, tight-lipped with terror, was soon out, watched his
dropped name-coin slide among the couples. Shame-faced he
saw that to get through expeditiously was not the point; Peter
feigned assistance in order to trip Magda up, shouted 1 see
Christmas! when her legs went flying. The old man, his latest
betrayer, cackled approval. A dim hail then of black-thread
cobwebs and recorded gibber: he took Magdas elbow to steady
her against revolving discs set in the slanted floor to throw your
feet out from under, and explained to her in a calm, deep voice
his theory that each phase of the funhouse was triggered either
automatically, by a series of photoelectric devices, or else
manually by operators stationed at peepholes. But he lost his
voice thrice as the discs unbalanced him; Magda was anyhow
squealing; but at one point she clutched him about the waist to
keep from falling, and her right cheek pressed for a moment
against his belt-buckle. Heroically he drew her up, it was his
chance to clutch her close as if for support and say: 1 love you.
He even put an arm lightly about the small of her back before a
sailor-and-girl pitched into them from behind, sorely treading his
left big toe and knocking Magda asprawl with them. The sailors
girl was a string-haired hussy with a loud laugh and light blue
drawers; Ambrose realized that he wouldnt have said 1 love
you anyhow, and was smitten with self-contempt. How much
better it would be to be that common sailor! A wiry little Seaman
3rd, the fellow squeezed a girl to each side and stumbled
hilarious into the mirror room, closer to Magda in thirty seconds
than Ambrose had got in thirteen years. She giggled at something
the fellow said to Peter; she drew her hair from her eyes with a
movement so womanly it struck Ambroses heart; Peters
smacking her backside then seemed particularly coarse. But
Magda made a pleased indignant face and cried, All right for
you, mister! and pursued Peter into the maze without a
backward glance. The sailor followed after, leisurely, drawing his
girl against his hip; Ambrose understood not only that they were
all so relieved to be rid of his burdensome company that they
didnt even notice his absence, but that he himself shared their
relief. Stepping from the treacherous passage at last into the
mirror-maze, he saw once again, more clearly than ever, how
readily he deceived himself into supposing he was a person. He
even foresaw, wincing at his dreadful self-knowledge, that he
would repeat the deception, at ever-rarer intervals, all his
wretched life, so fearful were the alternatives. Fame, madness,
suicide; perhaps all three. Its not believable that so young a boy
could articulate that reflection, and in fiction the merely true

must always yield to the plausible. Moreover, the symbolism is

in places heavy-footed. Yet Ambrose M understood, as few
adults do, that the famous loneliness of the great was no popular
myth but a general truth furthermore, that it was as much
cause as effect.
All the preceding except the last few sentences is
exposition that shouldve been done earlier or interspersed with
the present action instead of lumped together. No reader would
put up with so much with such prolixity. Its interesting that
Ambroses father, though presumably an intelligent man (as
indicated by his role as grade-school principal), neither
encouraged nor discouraged his sons at all in any way as if he
either didnt care about them or cared all right but didnt know
how to act. If this fact should contribute to one of thems
becoming a celebrated but wretchedly unhappy scientist, was it a
good thing or not? He too might someday face the question; it
would be useful to know whether it had tortured his father for
years, for example, or never once crossed his mind.
In the maze two important things happened. First, our
hero found a name-coin someone else had lost or discarded:
AMBROSE, suggestive of the famous lightship and of his late
grandfathers favorite dessert, which his mother used to prepare
on special occasions out of coconut, oranges, grapes, and what
else. Second, as he wondered at the endless replication of his
image in the mirrors, second, as he lost himself in the reflection
that the necessity for an observer makes perfect observation
impossible, better make him eighteen at least, yet that would
render other things unlikely, he heard Peter and Magda chuckling
somewhere together in the maze. Here! No, here! they
shouted to each other; Peter said, Wheres Amby? Magda
murmured Amb? Peter called. In a pleased, friendly voice. He
didnt reply. The truth was, his brother was a happy-go-lucky
youngster whodve been better off with a regular brother of his
own, but who seldom complained of his lot and was generally
cordial. Ambroses throat ached; there arent enough different
ways to say that. He stood quietly while the two young people
giggled and thumped through the glittering maze, hurrahd their
discovery of its exit, cried out in joyful alarm at what next beset
them. Then he set his mouth and followed after, as he supposed,
took a wrong turn, strayed into the pass wherein he lingers yet.
The action of conventional dramatic narrative may be
represented by a diagram called Freitags Triangle:
B

or more accurately by a variant of that diagram:

C

in which AB represents the exposition, B the introduction of

conflict, BC the rising action, complication, or development of
the conflict, C the climax, or turn of the action, CD the
denouement, or resolution of the conflict. While there is no
reason to regard this pattern as an absolute necessity, like many
other conventions it became conventional because great numbers
of people over many years learned by trial and error that it was

effective; one ought not to forsake it, therefore, unless one

wishes to forsake as well the effect of drama or has clear cause to
feel that deliberate violation of the normal pattern can better
can better effect that effect. This cant go on much longer; it can
go on forever. He died telling stories to himself in the dark; years
later, when that vast unsuspected area of the funhouse came to
light, the first expedition found his skeleton in one of its
labyrinthine corridors and mistook it for part of the
entertainment. He died of starvation telling himself stories in the
dark; but unbeknownst unbeknownst to him, an assistant
operator of the funhouse, happening to overhear him, crouched
just behind the ply board partition and wrote down his every
word. The operators daughter, an exquisite young woman with a
figure unusually well developed for her age, crouched just
behind the partition and transcribed his every word. Though she
had never laid eyes on him, she recognized that here was one of
Western Cultures truly great imaginations, the eloquence of
whose suffering would be an inspiration to unnumbered. And her
heart was torn between her love for the misfortunate young man
(yes, she loved him, though she had never laid though she knew
him only but how well! through his words, and the deep,
calm voice in which he spoke them) between her love et cetera
and her womanly intuition that only in suffering and isolation
could he give voice et cetera. Lone dark dying. Quietly she
kissed the rough ply board, and a tear fell upon the page. Where
she had written in shorthand Where she had written in shorthand
Where she had written in shorthand Where she et cetera. A long
time ago we should have passed the apex of Freitags Triangle
and made brief work of the dnouement; the plot doesnt rise by
meaningful steps but winds upon itself, digresses, retreats,
hesitates, sighs, collapses, expires. The climax of the story must
be its protagonists discovery of a way to get through the
funhouse. But he had found none, may have ceased to search.
What relevance does the war have to the story? Should
there be fireworks outside or not?
Ambrose wandered, languished, dozed. Now and then
he fell into his habit of rehearsing to himself the unadventurous
story of his life, narrated from the third-person point of view,
from his earliest memory parenthesis of maple leaves stirring in
the summer breath of tidewater Maryland end of parenthesis to
the present moment. Its principal events, on this telling, would
appear to have been A, B, C, and D.
He imagined himself years hence, successful, married,
at ease in the world, the trials of his adolescence far behind him.
He has come to the seashore with his family for the holiday: how
Ocean City has changed! But at one seldom at one ill-frequented
end of the boardwalk a few derelict. amusements survive from
times gone by: the great carrousel from the turn of the century,
with its monstrous griffins and mechanical concert band; the
roller coaster rumored since 1916 to have been condemned; the
mechanical shooting gallery in which only the image of our
enemies changed: His own son laughs with Fat May and wants to
know what a funhouse is; Ambrose hugs the sturdy lad close and
smiles around his pipe stem at his wife.
The familys going home. Mother sits between Father
and Uncle Karl, who teases him good-naturedly who chuckles
over the fact that the comrade with whom hed fought his way
shoulder to shoulder through the funhouse had turned out to be a
blind Negro girl to their mutual discomfort, as theyd opened
their souls. But such are the walls of custom, which even. Whose
arm is where? How must it feel. He dreams of a funhouse vaster
by far than any yet constructed; but by then they may be out of
fashion, like steamboats and excursion trains. Already quaint and
seedy: the draperied ladies on the frieze of the carrousel are his
fathers fathers mooncheeked dreams; if he thinks of it more he
will vomit his apple-on-a-stick.
He wonders: will he become a regular person?
Something has gone wrong; his vaccination didnt take; at the

Boy-Scout initiation campfire he only pretended to be deeply

moved, as he pretends to this hour that it is not so bad after all in
the funhouse, and that he has a little limp. How long will it last?
He envisions a truly astonishing funhouse, incredibly complex
yet utterly controlled from a great central switchboard like the
console of a pipe organ. Nobody had enough imagination. He
could design such a place himself, wiring and all, and hes only
thirteen years old. He would be its operator: panel lights would
show what was up in every cranny of its cunning of its
multivarious vastness; a switch-flick would ease this fellows
way, complicate thats, to balance things out; if anyone seemed
lost or frightened, all the operator had to do was.
He wishes he had never entered the funhouse. But he
has. Then he wishes he were dead. But hes not. Therefore he
will construct funhouses for others and be their secret operator
though he would rather be among the lovers for whom
funhouses are designed. (1968)

Toward a Concept of Postmodernism

Ihab Hassan
The strains of silence in literature, from Sade to Beckett, convey
complexities of language, culture, and consciousness as these
contest themselves and one another. Such eerie music may yield
an experience, an intuition, of postmodernism but no concept or
definition of it. Perhaps I can move here toward such a concept
by putting forth certain queries. I begin with the most obvious:
can we really perceive a phenomenon, in Western societies
generally and in their literatures particularly, that needs to be
distinguished from modernism, needs to be named? If so, will the
provisional rubric postmodernism serve? Can we thenor
even should we at this timeconstruct of this phenomenon some
probative scheme, both chronological and typological, that may
account for its various trends and counter-trends, its artistic,
epistemic, and social character? And how would this
phenomenonlet us call it postmodernismrelate itself to such
earlier modes of change as turn-of-the-century avant-gardes or
the high modernism of the twenties? Finally, what difficulties
would inhere in any such act of definition, such a tentative
heuristic scheme?
I am not certain that I can wholly satisfy my own questions,
though I can assay some answers that may help to focus the
larger problem. History, I take it, moves in measures both
continuous and discontinuous. Thus the prevalence of
postmodernism today, if indeed it prevails, does not suggest that
ideas of institutions of the past cease to shape the present. Rather,
traditions develop, and even types suffer a seachange. Certainly,
the powerful cultural assumptions generated by, say, Darwin,
Marx, Bauldelaire, Nietzsche, Cezanne, Debussy, Freud, and
Einstein still pervade the Western mind. Certainly those
assumptions have been reconceived, not once but many times
else history would repeat itself, forever the same. In this
perspective postmodernism may appear as a significant revision,
if not an original pistem, of twentiethcentury Western
societies.

Some names, piled here pell-mell, may serve to adumbrate

postmodernism, or at least suggest its range of assumptions:
Jacques Derrida, Jean-Francois Lyotard (philosophy), Michel
Foucault, Hayden White (history), Jacques Lacan, Gilles
Deleuze, R. D. Laing, Norman O. Brown (psychoanalysis),
Herbert Marcuse, Jean Baudrillard, Jurgen Habermas (political
philosophy), Thomas Kuhn, Paul Feyerabend (philosophy of
science), Roland Barthes, Julia Kristeva, Wolfgang Iser, the
Yale Critics (literary theory), Merce Cunningham, Alwin
Nikolais, Meredith Monk (dance), John Cage, Karlheinz
Stockhausen, Pierre Boulez (music), Robert Rauschenberg, Jean
Tinguely, Joseph Beuys (art), Robert Venturi, Charles Jencks,
Brent Bolin (architecture), and various authors from Samuel
Beckett, Eugene Ionesco, Jorge Luis Borges, Max Bense, and
Vladimir Nabokov to Harold Pinter, B. S. Johnson, Rayner
Heppenstall, Christine Brooke-Rose, Helmut Heissenbuttel,
Jurgen Becker, Peter Handke, Thomas Bernhardt, Ernest Jandl,
Gabriel Garcia Mrquez, Julio Cortzar, Alain RobbeGrillet,
Michel Butor, Maurice Roche, Philippe Sollers, and, in America,
John Barth, William Burroughs, Thomas Pynchon, Donald
Barthelme, Walter Abish, John Ashbery, David Antin, Sam
Shepard, and Robert Wilson. Indubitably, these names are far too
heterogenous to form a movement, paradigm, or school. Still,
they may evoke a number of related cultural tendencies, a
constellation of values, a repertoire of procedures and attitudes.
These we call postmodernism. Whence this term? Its origin
remains uncertain, though we know that Federico de Onis used
the word postmodernismo in his Antologia de la poesia espaola
e hispanoamericana (1882-1932), published in Madrid in 1934;
and Dudley Fitts picked it up again in his Anthology of
Contemporary Latin-American Poetry of 1942.1 Both meant thus
to indicate a minor reaction to modernism already latent within
it, reverting to the early twentieth century. The term also
appeared in Arnold Toynbee's A Study of History as early as D.C.
Somervell's first-volume abridgement in 1947. For Toynbee,
Post-Modernism designated a new historical cycle in Western
civilization, starting around 1875, which we now scarcely begin
to discern. Somewhat later, during the fifties, Charles Olson
often spoke of postmodernism with more sweep than lapidary
definition.
But prophets and poets enjoy an ample sense of time, which few
literary scholars seem to afford. In 1959 and 1960, Irving Howe
and Harry Levin wrote of postmodernism rather disconsolately
as a falling off from the great modernist movement. 2 It remained
for Leslie Fiedler and myself, among others, to employ the term
during the sixties with premature approbation, and even with a
touch of bravado.3 Fiedler had it in mind to challenge the elitism
of the high modernist tradition in the name of popular culture. I
wanted to explore the impulse of self-unmaking which is part of
the literary tradition of silence. Pop and silence, or mass culture
and deconstruction, or Superman and Godotor as I shall later
argue, immanence and indeterminacy-may all be aspects of the
postmodern universe. But all this must wait upon more patient
analysis, longer history.
Yet the history of literary terms serves only to confirm the
irrational genius of language. We come closer to the question of
postmodernism itself by acknowledging the psychopolitics, if not
the psychopathology, of academic life. Let us admit it: there is a
will to power in nomenclature, as well as in people or texts. A
new term opens for its proponents a space in language. A critical
concept or system is a poor poem of the intellectual
imagination. The battle of the books is also an ontic battle
against death. That may be why Max Planck believed that one
never manages to convince one's opponentsnot even in
theoretical physics!one simply tries to outlive them. William
James described the process in less morbid terms: novelties are

first repudiated as nonsense, then declared obvious, then

appropriated by former adversaries as their own discoveries.
I do not mean to take my stand with the postmoderns against the
(ancient) moderns. In an age of frantic intellectual fashions,
values can be too recklessly voided, and tomorrow can quickly
preempt today or yesteryear. Nor is it merely a matter of
fashions; for the sense of supervention may express some
cultural urgency that partakes less of hope than fear. This much
we recall: Lionel Trilling entitled one of his most thoughtful
works Beyond Culture (1965); Kenneth Boulding argued that
postcivilization is an essential part of The Meaning of the 20th
Century (1964); and George Steiner could have subtitled his
essay, In Bluebeard's Castle (1971); Notes Toward the
Definition of Postculture. Before them, Roderick Seidenberg
published his Post-Historic Man exactly in mid-century; and
most recently, I have myself speculated, in The Right
Promethean Fire (1980), about the advent of a posthumanist era.
As Daniel Bell put it: It used to be that the great literary
modifier was the word beyond.... But we seem to have exhausted
the beyond, and today the sociological modifier is post.4
My point here is double: in the question of postmodernism, there
is a will and counterwill to intellectual power, an imperial de-sire
of the mind, but this will and desire are themselves caught in a
historical moment of supervention, if not exactly of
obsolescence. The reception or denial of postmodernism thus
remains contingent on the psychopolitics of academic life
including the various dispositions of people and power in our
universities, of critical factions and personal frictions, of
boundaries that arbitrarily include or exclude-no less than on the
imperatives of the culture at large. This much, reflexivity seems
to demand from us at the start. But reflection demands also that
we address a number of conceptual problems that both conceal
and constitute postmodernism itself. I shall try to isolate ten of
these, commencing with the simpler, moving toward the more
intractable.
1. The word postmodernism sounds not only awkward, uncouth;
it evokes what it wishes to surpass or suppress, modernism itself.
The term thus contains its enemy within, as the terms
romanticism and classicism, baroque and rococo, do not.
Moreover, it denotes temporal linearity and connotes
belatedness, even decadence, to which no post-modernist would
admit. But what better name have we to give this curious age?
The Atomic, or Space, or Television, Age? These technological
tags lack theoretical definition. Or shall we call it the Age of
Indetermanence (indeterminacy + immanence) as I have halfantically proposed?5 Or better still, shall we simply live and let
others live to call us what they may? 2. Like other categorical
terms-say poststructuralism, or modernism, or romanticism
for that matter-postmodernism suffers from a certain semantic
instability: that is, no clear consensus about its meaning exists
among scholars. The general difficulty is compounded in this
case by two factors: (a) the relative youth, indeed brash
adolescence, of the term postmodernism, and (b) its semantic
kinship to more current terms, themselves equally unstable. Thus
some critics mean by postmodernism what others call avantgardism or even neo-avant-gardism, while still others would call
the same phenomenon simply modernism. This can make for
inspired debates.6
3. A related difficulty concerns the historical instability of many
literary concepts, their openness to change. Who, in this epoch of
fierce misprisions, would dare to claim that romanticism is
apprehended by Coleridge, Pater, Lovejoy, Abrams, Peckham,
and Bloom in quite the same way? There is already some

evidence that postmodernism, and modernism even more, are

beginning to slip and slide in time, threatening to make any
diacritical distinction between them desperate. 7 But perhaps the
phenomenon, akin to Hubble's red shift in astronomy, may
someday serve to measure the historical velocity of literary
concepts.
4. Modernism and postmodernism are not separated by an Iron
Curtain or Chinese Wall; for history is a palimpsest, and culture
is permeable to time past, time present, and time future. We are
all, I suspect, a little Victorian, Modern, and Postmodern, at
once. And an author may, in his or her own lifetime, easily write
both a modernist and postmodernist work. (Contrast Joyce's
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man with his Finnegans Wake.)
More generally, on a certain level of narrative abstraction,
modernism itself may be rightly assimilated to romanticism,
romanticism related to the enlightenment, the latter to the
renaissance, and so back, if not to the Olduvai Gorge, then
certainly to ancient Greece.
5. This means that a period, as I have already intimated, must
be perceived in terms both of continuity and discontinuity, the
two perspectives being complementary and partial. The
Apollonian view, rangy and abstract, discerns only historical
conjunctions; the Dionysian feeling, sensuous though nearly
purblind, touches only the disjunctive moment. Thus
postmodernism, by invoking two divinities at once, engages a
double view. Sameness and difference, unity and rupture,
filiation and revolt, all must be honored if we are to attend to
history, apprehend (perceive, understand) change, both as a
spatial, mental structure and as a temporal, physical process, both
as pattern and unique event.
6. Thus a period is generally not a period at all; it is rather both
a diachronic and synchronic construct. Postmodernism, again,
like modernism or romanticism, is no exception; it requires both
historical and theoretical definition. We would not seriously
claim an inaugural date for it as Virginia Woolf pertly did for
modernism, though we may sometimes woefully imagine that
postmodernism began in or about September, 1939. Thus we
continually discover antecedents of postmodernismin Sterne,
Sade, Blake, Lautreamont, Rimbaud, Jarry, Tzara, Hofmannsthal,
Gertrude Stein, the later Joyce, the later Pound, Duchamp,
Artaud, Roussel, Bataille, Broch, Queneau, and Kafka. What this
really indicates is that we have created in our mind a model of
postmodernism, a particular typology of culture and imagination,
and have proceeded to rediscover the affinities of various
authors and different moments with that model. We have, that is,
reinvented our ancestors-and always shall. Consequently, older
authors can be postmodern-Kafka, Beckett, Borges, Nabokov,
Gombrowicz-while younger authors needs not be soStyron,
Updike, Capote Irving Doc, Irving, Doctorow, Gardner.
7. As we have seen, any definition of postmodernism calls upon
a four-fold vision of complementarities, embracing continuity
and discontinuity, diachrony and synchrony. But a definition of
the concept also requires a dialectical vision; for defining traits
are often antithetical, and to ignore this tendency of historical
reality is to lapse into single vision and Newton's sleep. Defining
traits are dialectical and also plural; to elect a single trait as an
absolute criterion of postmodern grace is to make of all other
writers preterites.8 Thus we can not simply rest-as I have
sometimes done-on the assumption that postmodernism is
antiformal, anarchic, or decreative; for though it is indeed all
these, and despite its fanatic will to unmaking; it also contains
the need to discover a unitary sensibility (Sontag), to cross
the border and close the gap (Fiedler), and to attain, as I have

suggested, an immanence of discourse, an expanded noetic

intervention, a neo-gnostic im-mediacy of mind.9
8. All this leads to the prior problem of periodization which is
also that of literary history conceived as a particular
apprehension of change. Indeed, the concept of post modernism
applies some theory of innovation, renovation, novation, or
simply change. But which one? Heraclitean? Darwinian?
Marxist? Freudian? Kuhnian? Viconian? Derridean? Eclectic? 10
Or is a theory of change itself an oxymoron best suited to
ideologues intolerant of the ambiguities of time? Should
postmodernism, then, be leftat least for the moment
unconceptualized, a kind of literary-historical difference or
trace?11

will obsess the child when he can read. . . But if much of

modernism appears hieratic, hypotactical, and formalist,
postmodernism strikes us by contrast as playful, paratactical, and
deconstructionist. In this it recalls the irreverent spirit of the
avantgarde, and so carries sometimes the label of neo-avantgarde. Yet postmodernism remains cooler, in McLuhan's sense,
than older vanguards-cooler, less cliquish, and far less aversive
to the pop, electronic society of which it is a part, and so
hospitable to kitsch. Can we distinguish postmodernism further?
Perhaps certain schematic differences from modernism will
provide a start:

9. Postmodernism can expand into a still large problem: is it only

an artistic tendency or also a social phenomenon, perhaps even a
mutation in Western humanism? If so, how are the various
aspects of this phenomenon psychological, philosophical,
economic, politicaljoined or disjoined? In short, can we
understand postmodernism in literature without some attempt to
perceive the lineaments of a postmodern society, a Toynbeean
postmodernity, or future Foucauldian pistm, of which the
literary tendency I have been discussing is but a single, elitist
strain?12
10. Finally, though not least vexing, is postmodernism as an
honorific term, used insidiously to valorize writers, however
disparate, whom we otherwise esteem, to hail trends, how ever
discordant which we somehow approve? Or is it, on the contrary,
a term of opprobrium and objurgation? In short, is
postmodernism a descriptive as well as evaluative or normative
category of literary thought? Or does it belong, as Charles Altieri
notes, to that category of essentially contested concepts in
philosophy that never wholly exhaust their constitutive
confusions?13 No doubt, other conceptual problems lurk in the
matter of postmodernism. Such problems, however, can not
finally inhibit the intellectual imagination, the desire to
apprehend our historical presence in noetic constructs that reveal
our being to ourselves. I, move, therefore, to propose a
provisional scheme that the literature of silence, from Sade to
Beckett, seems to envisage, and do so by distinguishing,
tentatively, between three modes of artistic change in the last
hundred years. I call these avant-garde, modern, and postmodern,
though I realize that all three have conspired together to that
tradition of the new that, since Baudelaire, brought into being
an art whose history regardless of the credos of its practitioners,
has consisted of leaps from vanguard to vanguard, and political
mass movements whose aim has been the total renovation not
only of social institutions but of man himself.14
By avant-garde, I means those movements that agitated the
earlier part of our century, including Pataphysics, Cubism,
Futurism, Dadaism, Surrealism, Suprematism, Constructivism,
Merzism, de Stijlsome of which I have already discussed in
this work. Anarchic, these assaulted the bourgeoisie with their
art, their manifestoes, their antics. But their activism could also
turn inward, becoming suicidal-as happened later to some
postmodernists like Rudolf Schwartzkogler. Once full of brio and
bravura, these movements have all but vanished now, leaving
only their story, at once fugacious and exemplary. Modernism,
however, proved more stable, aloof, hieratic, like the French
Symbolism from which it derived; even its experiments now
seem olympian. Enacted by such individual talents as Valry,
Proust, and Gide, the early Joyce, Yeats, and Lawrence, Rilke,
Mann, and Musil, the early Pound, Eliot, and Faulkner, it
commanded high authority, leading Delmore Schwartz to chant
in Shenandoah: Let us consider where the great men are/ Who

Modernism
Romanticism/Symbolism
Form (conjunctive, closed)
Purpose
Design
Hierarchy
Mastery/Logos
Art Object/Finished Work
Distance
Creation/Totalization
Synthesis
Presence
Centering
Genre/Boundary
Semantics
Paradigm
Hypotaxis
Metaphor
Selection
Root/Depth
Interpretation/Reading
Signified
Lisible (Readerly)
Narrative/Grande Histoire
Master Code
Symptom
Type
Genital/Phallic
Paranoia
Origin/Cause
God the Father
Metaphysics
Determinancy
Transcendence

Postmodernism
Pataphysics/Dadaism
Antiform (disjunctive, open)
Play
Chance
Anarchy
Exhaustion/Silence
Process/Performance/Happening
Participation
Decreation/Deconstruction
Antithesis
Absence
Dispersal
Text/Intertext
Rhetoric
Syntagm
Parataxis
Metonymy
Combination
Rhizome/Surface
Against Interpretation/Misreading
Signifier
Scriptible (Writerly)
Anti-narrative/Petite Histoire
Idiolect
Desire
Mutant
Polymorphous/Androgynous
Schizophrenia
Difference-Differance/Trace
The Holy Ghost
Irony
Indeterminancy
Immanence

The preceding table draws on ideas in many fields-rhetoric,

linguistics,
literary
theory,
philosophy,
anthropology,
psychoanalysis, political science, even theology-and draws on
many authors European and American-aligned with diverse
movements, groups, and views. Yet the dichotomies this table
represents remain insecure, equivocal. For differences shift,
defer, even collapse; concepts in any one vertical column are not
all equivalent; and inversions and exceptions, in both modernism
and postmodernism, abound. Still, I would submit that rubrics in
the right column point to the postmodern tendency, the tendency
of indetermanence, and so may bring us closer to its historical
and theoretical definition.
The time has come, however, to explain a little that neologism:
indetermanence: I have used that term to designate two central,
constitutive
tendencies
in
postmodernism:
one
of
indeterminancy, the other of immanence. The two tendencies are
not dialectical; for they are not exactly antithetical; nor do they
lead to a synthesis. Each contains its own contradictions, and
alludes to elements of the other. Their interplay suggests the
action of a polylectic, pervading postmodernism. Since I have
discussed this topic at some length earlier, I can avert to it here
briefly.15
By indeterminacy, or better still, indeterminacies, I mean a
complex referent that these diverse concepts help to delineate:
ambiguity, discontinuity, heterodoxy, pluralism, randomness,
revolt, perversion, deformation. The latter alone subsumes a
dozen current terms of unmaking: decreation, disintegration,
deconstruction,
decenterment,
displacement,
difference,
discontinuity, disjunction, disappearance, decomposition, dedefinition, demystification, detotalization, delegitimization-let
alone more technical terms referring to the rhetoric of irony,
rupture, silence. Through all these signs moves a vast will to
unmaking, affecting the body politic, the body cognitive, the
erotic body, the individual psyche-the entire realm of discourse
in the West. In literature alone our ideas of author, audience,
reading, writing, book, genre, critical theory, and of literature
itself, have all suddenly become questionable. And in criticism?
Roland Barthes speaks of literature as loss, perversion,
dissolution; Wolfgang Iser formulates a theory of reading
based on textual blanks; Paul de Man conceives rhetoric-that
is, literature-as a force that radically suspends logic and opens
up vertiginous possibilities of referential aberration; and
Geoffrey Hartman affirms that contemporary criticism aims at
the hermeneutics of indeterminacy. 16
Such uncertain diffractions make for vast dispersals. Thus I call
the second major tendency of postmodernism immanences, a
term that I employ without religious echo to designate the
capacity of mind to generalize itself in symbols, intervene more
and more into nature, act upon itself through its own abstractions
and so become, increasingly, immediately, by its own
environment. This noetic tendency may be evoked further by
such sundry concepts as diffusion, dissemination, pulsion,
interplay, communication, interdependence, which all derive
from the emergence of human beings as language animals, homo
pictor or homo significans, gnostic creatures constituting
themselves, and determinedly their universe, by symbols of their
own making. Is this not the sign that the whole of this
configuration is about to topple, and that man is in the process of
perishing as the being of language continues to shine ever
brighter upon our horizon? Foucault famously asks.17
Meanwhile, the public world dissolves as fact and fiction blend,
history becomes derealized by media into a happening, science
takes its own models as the only accessible reality, cybernetics
confronts us with the enigma of artificial intelligence, and
technologies project our perceptions to the edge of the receding

universe or into the ghostly interstices of matter.18 Everywhereeven deep in Lacan's lettered unconscious, more dense than a
black hole in space-everywhere we encounter that immanence
called Language, with all its literary ambiguities, epistemic
conundrums, and political distractions.19 No doubt these
tendencies may seem less rife in England, say, than in America
or France where the term postmodernism, reversing the recent
direction of poststructuralist flow, has now come into use.20 But
the fact in most developed societies remains: as an artistic,
philosophical, and social phenomenon, postmodernism veers toward open, playful, optative, provisional (open in time as well as
in structure or space), disjunctive, or indeterminate forms, a
discourse of ironies and fragments, a white ideology of
absences and fractures, a desire of diffractions, an invocation of
complex, articulate silences. Postmodernism veers towards all
these yet implies a different, if not antithetical, movement toward
pervasive procedures, ubiquitous interactions, immanent codes,
media, languages. Thus our earth seems caught in the process of
planetization, transhumanization, even as it breaks up into sects,
tribes, factions of every kind. Thus, too, terrorism and
totalitarianism, schism and ecumenism, summon one another,
and authorities decreate themselves even as societies search for
new grounds of authority. One may well wonder: is some
decisive historical mutation-involving art and science, high and
low culture, the male and female principles, parts and wholes,
involving the One and the Many as pre-Socratics used to sayactive in our midst? Or does the dismemberment of Orpheus
prove no more than the mind's need to make but one more
construction of life's mutabilities and human mortality? And
what construction lies beyond, behind, within, that construction?
[Notes not included]
(From The Postmodern Turn, 1987)