Yvonne Battle-Felton

There is something to be said about realizing one's own limitations.

And I realize mine.

No matter how objectively I approach a play, I find myself reading or watching it with growing anticipation. No matter the type of play, they are all a sort of mystery to me where every word, every action, every prop is a clue and every word, every action, every prop is suspect. I find I expect to be changed from the experience: to learn from it, to grow. I read a play as if it contains a message hidden to me, one revealed typically through discussion. Without discussion I am bound by my own interpretations however limiting they may be. Discussion does not always mean agreement-for me it rarely does- for my intention is not to find like minds but to understand the motives, the perceptions of others. But none the less I approach plays with the respect of someone who lacks the patience to write one. Because I have not approached plays as a modern form of entertainment, I am often cast in the role of the uncomfortable dinner guest: still hungry.

My first introduction to Suzan-Lori Parks was a brief one; I was intrigued by this young African-American woman playwright featured on a PBS show. PBS followed Parks for a period of time before her debut of TopDog/ Underdog. I was drawn in to the momentum of her circus of casting, rewriting and anticipating. The camera captured candid glimpses of the expert way this young playwright carries herself with directors and actors she admires. Through its lens we see her sometimes perplexed look at the way an actor delivers a line, the way she timidly, then more forcefully asserts her vision despite quick editing and rewriting; and the grace with which she takes suggestion after suggestion. I was impressed by her.

I was not impressed by the play itself. I was not surprised at the audience reaction to Parks, she seems an engaging character and she deserved the standing ovation as did the actors, I suppose. But I am surprised by the success of this play. I have read the play and needless to say my first impression is a lasting one. Recognizing my limitations, my need for discussion to perhaps glean the reason for the success, the message I am missing I have decided to moderate and narrate a discussion in the form of a brief play. The obvious limits are that the moderation will only be as good as the moderator, but I am willing to take the chance that my imagination will prevail and my subconscious and research will overcome the limitations I have admitted to. So from one hungry diner to another, shall we dine?

Cast of Characters

Professor Meredith
Audra Student, 30-something Drama major
Leslie Student, late 20's Drama enthusiast
Harris Student, 50ish
Riley Student, 30-something
Dana Student, 50ish
Nicolas Student, early 20s

Writer's note: all characters are fictitious and any resemblance to characters real or fictional is unintentional.

Setting: It is early evening on the University of Maryland campus. The weather is unusually warm, the sky exceptionally clear. There is an air of anticipation on campus. Students slowly enter the classroom engaged in various on-going conversations.

Audra :( animated) But did you see those bikers? I mean really, it kills me how indecisive they are.

Nicolas: How what?

Audra: Indecisive. One minute they want to be cars so they ride in the street, the next minute they want to be pedestrians so they ride on the sidewalk, it's crazy. And those pedestrians! Don't get me started! They just walk out of a building and right smack in to the street, they really take that cross walk thing seriously on campus don't they?

Dana: ...my boyfriend and I went to see that play in D.C. I was telling you about...

Leslie: (confused) I thought you already saw that.

Dana: no, you're thinking of the one I saw the other week-with my husband.

Leslie: that's right, so this one is better?

Dana: oh yeah...he's a lot better than my husband

Leslie:-well I mean the play, was the play better than the other one?

Dana: (chuckle) same answer.

Harris: (on cell phone)...yes...I did...well; I said I did...it sounded what? No, I didn't mean it to...I...uh...yes, dear...sure...your mother's coming...I'm sure you mentioned it...right...if you say so...I mean yes, you're right...

Nicolas: (enters, glances at Dana. Leslie glances at Nicolas)

Professor: Good evening class, oh...small class tonight (checks notes...) a couple of students won't be in tonight but I'm sure we can have a lively discussion about Top Dog/Underdog

(Riley enters apologetically, slides in to a chair)

Let's start with a bit about the playwright, Suzan-Lori Parks. According to Bedford St. Martin's Press, Parks, born 1964, Parks has been awarded grants from the Rockefeller and Ford foundations and the National Endowment for the Arts. She has written quite a few plays performed on Broadway as well as off Broadway. Betting on the Dust Commander, Fishes, The Sinners' Place, and The America Play as well as The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World and In the Blood. "Her full-length play Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom, won the Obie Award for the best off-Broadway play of 1990". She also wrote Venus which won the Obie award in 1996. According to "Women of color Women of Words." Parks is Associate Artist at the Yale School of Drama and was voted LA Times Faces to Watch 2000. She was awarded Macarthur Fellow in 2001 and that same year The New York Times voted her the year's most promising playwright. In 2002 she received the Pulitzer for Topdog/Underdog.
Despite winning a Pulitzer Prize, the play didn't always receive good reviews, here's one from the New York Times:
"''TOPDOG/UNDERDOG'' sent quite a jolt through Broadway in 2002 when it played at the Ambassador Theater, so much so that many companies may be reluctant to revisit it without letting a few decades pass first. But Luna Stage here has taken up the challenge, a doubly bold gamble given that in Luna's tiny house there is no buffer zone between actors and audience; if the performers fail, they fail a few feet from the front row.

Happily, though, the two men in this production, Jamahl Marsh and Shane Taylor, do not fail. They give a riveting account of Suzan-Lori Parks's sometimes funny, ultimately ugly tale of two down-on-their-luck brothers. In fact, watching this production, you begin to suspect that the performers are -- heresy alert -- better than the play, which won the Pulitzer Prize for drama"

The rest of the review praises the actors, but points out limitations of the writing. What do you all think? What's the play about?

Dana: Well the play is about two brothers Lincoln and Booth and it kind of explains their life, their circumstances...how they got where they are. One, Lincoln, works as a wax copy of the President replaying the scene where he gets shot by Booth-which is sort of ironic- and Booth, well he doesn't work but it is his place and he is sort of the housewife, but he doesn't really seem to clean and he doesn't cook either but he does dictate where the money goes. So I guess he's like the stronger of the two, the more powerful. Anyway, the play is about their relationship and how they survive.

Harris: but it's also about how they live and how they choose to live. I mean one doesn't even work, he steals for a living and it's not like he steals stuff they need, he steals what he wants. They had a name for guys like that in my day: crooks. And he wants to be a playboy but playboys have money so he's gotta pretend he has money so he can play the role of the playboy. He wants this girl, this Grace, to think he's the successful one so he steals these big shot clothes and he does look after his brother too, he gets him some-but he steals these clothes because clothes make the man, he said that right on page 27 and so now he's made.

Meredith: ok, so what is the play about? Is it about brothers, survival, what?

Riley: I think my objection to it is it's not real life. I don't know any one like them.

Meredith: who says plays mirror real life? And besides, for someone somewhere this may be their reality. So you are saying it's not real but you mean it's not real to you.

Riley: exactly. I feel like I was invited to glimpse someone's life, someone's dirty little secrets, like the business about them being abandoned and their inheritance, well really Booth's inheritance. I'm left wondering why did the mother leave? Why did the father leave? Not why did they leave one another, that's easy, but why did they leave their kids? Then I have to reflect on parenthood and parenting in America and figure out if Parks is saying parenting doesn't fulfill everyone like people say it does and I guess I don't accept that or like that. And I have to decide who considers $500 to be enough to leave two kids.

Audra: well it is just heartbreaking, it really is. What kind of people leave their kids anyway? What kind of people would choose to do that?

Riley: well who is to say they chose? I mean things were bad at home and maybe they felt the kids would be better off without them, which is pretty harsh to say life is awful with us but maybe it will be less awful without us. Who is to say Parks isn't addressing the American dream? Maybe this is the American family. They started out as the family of four: a mother, father, and two sons. Then there were two. But there is a dichotomy in their relationship where they even play to being...see right here on page...well in my book it starts on page 23. When Lincoln gets his paycheck he and Booth play a husband and wife routine. They rely on one another.

Nicolas: yeah but it's pretty messed up the way their parents split. It's like it's about legacies. Lincoln gets shot by Booth, I mean in real life and that's solved but its not over, Lincoln's not the only president to be assassinated, killed by a fellow countrymen, a brother. And in this play you have two brothers, for some reason they are pitted against each other even as boys, both parents choose one son over the other to leave $500 to and then the kids are bound to be messed up. The parents left because they were working hard to maintain a house, a family: the American dream and it still wasn't enough. They were still struggling against poverty, against each other and it was just too much.

Riley: about the legacy thing. Using the names, Lincoln and Booth, with a stretch I can say ok, Lincoln is known for having emancipated the slaves and Booth killed him. In the play, Lincoln was trying to emancipate himself and Booth killed him. That's the parallel I get and again, that's a stretch.

Dana: I wonder at the relationships with women in the play.

Leslie: oh yes, good point, they are motherless and now really they are still without women in their lives.

Dana: well, I wonder at the impression of Grace, I get the impression that she is not as serious as either Booth believes she is or as he pretends she is. And I wonder, if he is just reading her wrong or if he is leading us, well Lincoln, wrong.

Leslie: ah yes, I see. There really are no positive relationships in the play. But who is to say in life that every relationship we have is really as we see it? Like with Cookie, why would Booth sleep with his brother's wife?

Riley: why would she sleep with him?

Dana: well that's easy...he offered something Lincoln couldn't.

Nicolas: and he forgave his brother but couldn't forgive his wife (glances long at Leslie and even longer at Dana)

Meredith: maybe he didn't forgive him, one brother is dead and perhaps part of the title is that at any time it could have ended up being the other brother dead.

Harris: I saw the title in the cards. Ok, I used to see guys playing card games on street corners all the time, it was a hustle...a way to make money. The guy with the big talk got the girls. Card sharks aren't lucky, they're cons. So card games are always stacked in their favor that means the deck is stacked against you. You gotta know what you have, what the other guy has, you've gotta know the odds...the rules. Even then, that only stacks things in your favor but you can't really cheat at it, well you can but you end up dead that way. So you stack the cards in your favor and the odds are you're gonna win, and bam! Out of no where someone else wins. Now you know they either cheated you or you cheated you but either way you lose. That's life. You can plan and plot things, you can stack things in your favor: school, money, family, you know things. Odds are you'll win or succeed in this game of life but without warning, bam! Things could change at any time. A short cut here, a short cut there, an unexpected event and you could end up a failure. So Lincoln knows the cards but he has given up on them for a while because his friend died. Cards were how he made a living and how he lived; I mean he was more animated, more successful when he knew the cards, when he could rely on them. Now Booth wants fast money, there's no denying that but he also wants to have some control over his circumstances and cards might give him that but at first, Lincoln is holding out on him. He's reluctant to have him lead that sort of life, to play those sorts of odds but he does it. He teaches his little brother and bam! His little brother beats him at it, or at least gets good enough to think he can beat him at it and then bam! Lincoln comes back and still wins. Booth is humiliated and angry and acts, and then bam! He reacts by killing him or by stacking the odds back in his favor.

Meredith: excellent, excellent! Is this a play about race?

(All except Riley): absolutely, yes.

Riley: Now I wonder at that. Why is it a play about race? In my version of the play it doesn't say anything about the race of the actors. So it is assumed because the playwright is black that this play cuts a slice from black America. I think it is an American play in that it strikes at the American dream and how people are unequipped to attain it. If I hadn't seen it played by black actors on PBS, I probably would have pictured them black because of Parks but I wonder at why.

Meredith: would this play work with colorblind casting?

Audra: oh absolutely. That would add to it, of course, then the play would be about race. I mean if the brothers were played by say Lorenz Tate and Keanu Reeves then we would be wondering if the parents chose one brother over the other because of race; it would just add a different dynamic, another complication.

Meredith: but could the play work with a Chinese cast or a Native American cast?

Riley: yes I don't see why not. Most cultures feel the pull toward the American dream and the same string that pulls them is the same string that tightens around their purses.

Meredith: ok, what makes this play an American drama?

Nicolas: Well there is the element of race, if it is there and I think it is, because what about when Booth questions that Lincoln, a black man, is playing a white president?

Riley: oh I admit it is there, but I object to race existing as an element or a dynamic, I think it just is. Anyway, I like that Lincoln and Booth don't have the "sense of entitlement" of other characters in other plays. I mean they admit their life pretty much sucks as it is and while they are not powerless to fix that, they are powerless to fix it but so much. So despite the ideal that people can move in and out of social class easily in America, perhaps what makes this play an American drama is that Parks points out that the reality differs from the ideal.

Dana: to me, the sexual elements make this an American drama. Parks kind of deals head on with the male libido. She deals with the female sense of stability over sex versus male's sense of sex over stability.

Leslie: the play deals with family and the misconception of family unity and how that varies for people, to use what Riley said, it invites you in to their lives and sort of faces you to stay without asking you to choose sides.

Harris: this play is as American as they come. It has betrayal, adultery, gambling, sex, murder, poverty...what more can you ask for in one play?

Meredith: ok why this play? Why was it published?

Audra: because it gives a voice to what some people are thinking. I mean people feel every day that this is not what they bargained for, like they've been bamboozled. Sold something that just doesn't work any more. The ideal of family and tradition may not be suited for 2006, the family has changed, the economy has changed it. So many people can recognize their sense of bewilderment.

Nicolas: it's like someone changed the rules and no one knows what they are any more. People are succeeding who, well shouldn't be. I mean the college graduate with good credit, the good guy...we all know the good guy always ends up losing. He doesn't get the girl (glances at Dana), he doesn't get the corner office and he can't even afford a house any more.

Leslie: you mean he lives at home with his parents? (Shocked)

Nicolas: He might, she might...I mean the Universal "he." Somewhere along the lines the things we were told matter: rules, fidelity, trust, investment, somewhere they stopped guaranteeing success.

Dana: Even kids, they used to be good for the economy, good for the family image. They meant stability and they took care of their parents in their old age but now, parents are taking care of kids longer because kids can't or won't get good paying jobs.

Nicolas: well that's just it. We were taught you go to college, you get good grades, you graduate, you get a good job. Now people graduate and can't even get jobs in their majors but people without the degrees, they are the success stories.

Harris: but not everyone goes the traditional route. College isn't for everybody. Look at us, we are all adults going back to college because we still believe in the old rules. Someone changed them, we know they are changed but we are still here waiting for them to what? Change back?

Riley: maybe we are just stacking the cards, the odds in our favor. Maybe we do still believe that hard work pays off, that loyalty gets rewarded. I have to believe it. But I also believe in the gamble, not in the making the quick buck the hard way, because face it, life on the streets is hard. But I believe in taking a risk to get what I want and having the foundation of education, investments, common sense and morals to back up whatever I choose.

Leslie: so the play was published and performed because it was the right time to do it. because America is tired of the "get rich quick scheme" and the overnight millionaire?

Riley: and because Americans are tired of someone else stacking the cards.

I have a better understanding of the elements of this play and perhaps of other plays I will read. The value of the play may not be to entertain but to encourage thought, to provoke conversation, to stimulate imagination and to encourage activism. We are faced with reality every day and every day we have an opportunity, an obligation to do something about it. People like Lincoln and Booth are failed by the school system, by family and by society in fiction as well as in life but reading about them doesn't make them real for many of us. Seeing and hearing them breathes life in to them, in to their circumstance and makes them, us. I have gained a better appreciation of Suzan-Lori Parks through writing my discussion. I am proud to say I am again impressed by her.

Works Cited
Genzlinger, Neil. "Makes Them Want to Holler"New York Times. (Late Edition (East Coast)). New York, N.Y.: May 8, 2005. pg. 14NJ.11. ProQuest. 6 May 2006. http://proquest.umi.com.ezproxy.umuc.edu
Parks, Suzan-Lori. Topdog/Underdog. Theatre Communications Group, Inc.: New York, NY. 1999
"Suzan-Lori Parks Biography." Bedford St. Martins. N/D. 6 May 2006.
Weaver, Angela E. "Suzan-Lori Parks." Women of Color Women of Worlds .n/d. 6 May 2006. http://www.scils.rutgers.edu/~cybers/parks2.html

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As appears on AC

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Verdict?

Somewhere in the corner of Enoch Pratt, preferably in a dark corner, with the scent of musk, a faint scent, there lies the memoir for me.  The one that says what I need to hear, when I need to hear it. 

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Very close to intimate, very close to healed.

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Seldom do I wander the pages of someone’s life and so intimately witness what my presence has cost. The privilege of intimacy is paid for by the writer. The cost can be exacted in currencies of privacy, friends, family, self-esteem, confidence, courage. How much is the story of my life worth? Am I willing to pay that price? How to Cook Your Daughter costs Jessica Hendra her privacy, her relationship with her father, and hopefully, her guilt. Within the pages of her memoir, Hendra unravels her life: the motivations behind her bulimia, anorexia, and her often destructive relationships. Incest expertly knots threads of guilt and shame into a jumble of insecurity, silence and anger. Writing this book allows Hendra permission to be angry with her father; and permission to let him go. Finally, Hendra sheds the vows of secrecy to which she is bound.

That’s not quite true. Hendra’s rape is not a secret. She tells friends, lovers, and therapists. She confronts her father on numerous occasions. She does not, however, find the same salvation Tony claims. Choosing to publish gives Hendra a voice. For Hendra, exposing her father means winding down the pathways of her past. It’s a rickety ride. But, it is necessary. According to Hendra, she must publicly confront her father in order to stand up as a mother. Hendra knows the repercussions: Tony’s denials, accusations and anger; the public’s intimate knowledge of her; the impact on her daughters. Still, she does something Tony won’t; she acknowledges he raped her, and that it is wrong. Writing her memoir takes a courage I wasn’t sure Hendra possessed. When we meet her, she is still vulnerable despite her roles as wife and mother. But she summons the courage to publicly challenge his “confessional” memoir.

Still, I have to ask if after 32 years it was worth it to publicly reveal her rape. And I have to answer, yes. According to Hendra, she doesn’t reveal the rape to attack her father’s selective memory. She tells the truth to establish truth in her family; to make truth the legacy she passes on to her children. She tells the truth because her father has denied his impact for too long.

It is a noble statement: if I choose to write a memoir, it will be for my children. I would like to think my memoir will serve as an entry to what defines me. But maybe not. For my memoir to act as a framework of my life, I would have to be dead. And to be honest, I would like to have all of my important conversations with my children the old fashioned way, while I’m living. I like talking with them, sharing with them, interacting: the language of parenting. But for when I’m not here, when all that remains are my words, I would like to leave a memoir. Still, it haunts me that my words will float without context or interpretation on slender pages turned by tear soaked –I am dead after all—fingers.

While my children provide a noble cause, I will have to write my memoir, for me. As a writer, I’m not sure what I take from Hendra’s work. What I take most from How to Cook Your Daughter is not as a writer at all: it is as a woman and a mother. Hendra’s childhood reminds me of the awesome responsibility of motherhood. Through Hendra’s experiences, I am reminded of the choices we make for those we love: of the obligation to make choices. I respect Hendra for writing How to Cook your Daughter for her daughters. I worry, that she could not write this for herself. But because of her systematic unfolding, because she reveals herself as a character rarely in charge of her own plot, I understand. While it may take me some time to realize the writerly benefit of How to Cook Your Daughter, I take what I need from it one page at a time.

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I can not count how many times I finish reading a passage, only to realize I have been holding my breath. I can no longer recall how often my eyes well with tears as a conflict unfolds. I can not remember how often a smile creeps across my face at the vision of a carefully crafted scene. But, I will not soon forget the feelings inspired by John Howard Griffin’s Black Like Me. Through details, setting, language and tension, Griffin has created a narrative that reaches beyond his experiences as a white man with black skin to the experiences of black and white American History. Griffin exposes the side of history that fades the otherwise crimson, virginal and bold colors of our country’s flag. He embarks on a racial research endeavor that teaches him more about himself and more about people in general, than he expects to learn. What unfolds for me is both historical and intimate. The pages breathe.

Seldom do we discuss race. Griffin takes us in and out of the homes of our black and white neighbors. He moves physically and mentally closer than I have been to people of either race, and does so in glimpses that feel more like meals than mere mouthfuls. He is often in the awkward position of justifying the actions of the characters he encounters: Griffin reveals people. By capturing people within their social, political, ethical and racial surroundings, he is able show them as meaningful characters—while not (often) undermining their intentions. Griffin shows us people in their own elements and for the most part, let’s them sink or swim in their own words. Griffin’s is an interesting experiment. I don’t know that I am a skin color away from my neighbor. I don’t think I consider skin color as the only aspect of what defines me as a black woman. As Griffin learns, people exist outside of their skin color. They conform to circumstance and opportunity, they respond to fear and succumb to hatred.

When I write, I write from the vantage point of my experiences and perceptions. Griffin certainly starts with the self. He doesn’t end there. As a writer, I appreciate Griffin’s examples of launching with the self and moving through history and culture in a way that includes political, economical, social and racial perceptions, experiences and motivations. And, Griffin, like no other nonfiction writer I have read, uses the elements of fiction to create an historical nonfiction narrative in a way that saddens, infuriates, and inspires me. Griffin uses the overarching natural tension between black and white and the tensions that exist between his travelling from one realm in to the other to create moments that I will endeavor to duplicate. Suspense slips upon me even at times when I have all the details and know all of the characters. I find my breath catches at the thought of Griffin being harmed or revealed. That tension takes talent to maintain: and Griffin has it.

I am revitalized by this work. Through details, sensory observations and imagery, Griffin pulls you in to uncomfortable images, and makes it impossible to turn away. Griffin’s language and style set scene after scene of despair while not sacrificing the beauty of language: “A burned-out light globe lay on the plank floor in the corner. Its unfrosted glass held the reflection of the overhead bulb, a speck of brightness (page 69)” I can feel the overwhelming weight of gloom chronicled within page after page. Yet, Griffin sprinkles humor where humor is due. The text is balanced.

Reading this work, this topic of race as experienced from someone who knows he is no different black than he is white, offers a perspective I seldom think on. While racism is still a reality, this narrative captures experiences I seldom heard from my grandparents. I rarely glimpsed them as victims. My soul is left whole though bruised from the reading. Griffin has created a work that feels intimately close to him and to history. He brings us closer to the psychology of racism and perhaps face to face with our own psychology. I am so thankful to have read this work. Its language gives me hope for my place in literature teetering as I do between the worlds of fiction and nonfiction. I don’t aspire to change the world with my writing, at this point I can only aspire to change me.

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Somewhere someone, maybe not even a writer, has figured out the precise point where all memoir should begin. And somewhere someone else has figured out no such point exists. It should be easier to begin a memoir. If a memoir is about an experience, it would seem logical to begin at the beginning of the experience. But because experience exists within context, such beginnings aren’t really beginnings, are they? I was pleasantly surprised when the brothers Barthelme began Double Down not in the crib, but in their days of maturity, a few slender pages before they discovered their addiction. I enjoyed the brief introduction and the plunge to the present. Throughout most of the memoir, the narrative is conversational, the tone unhurried. While the pace is steady (not rhythmic) the chorus of “we” unhinges me every time. Still, from the beginning, something about the language has me interested as a reader and as a writer. By entering Double Down on the edge of the authors’ experience, I am intellectually, though not emotionally, vested in the characters—to a point.

As a writer, I have to know where the narrative leads. Before that, I worry about where to begin. Opening too far before the center of the experience may reveal more than I intend. Opening later may give me the opportunity to add color to otherwise shaded narrative. Opening too late means I have to double back and fill in spaces to bring the reader to the point of the narrative. Maybe there is no one way to begin my memoir. While I like the sense of starting it where the experience begins, the problem is separating the experience from its context. The Barthelme’s choice to begin the narrative just before their gambling spree feels like the perfect beginning. And maybe it is the best choice for this story, but because the narrative takes such a repetitive, almost obsessive turn, it feels like the problem stems from the opening chapter. To create context the narrators often revisit the same event or thought. It feels as if there is no theme, no solid ground. There is an undercurrent in the narrative that carries the “I blame my father” stream a bit too far. Instead of rushing in to the past, the brothers choose to back in by sharing glimpses of their parents and glances of other characters. From there, they delve deeper in to their mother and deeper still in to their father. Finally, as they reach the height of their gambling, they point out, again, that they blame their father for their belief that nothing is, for them, impossible.

By starting the narrative as they settle in to Hattiesburg, they risk the readers’ sense of direction and time. Switching between the gambling scenes and the non-gambling scenes, I often lose track of when things are happening and how much is at stake. There is something to be said for the linear narrative. Specifically, the narrative often travels between their father’s death to the casino floor, and back. I lose track of how getting charged for attempting to cheat a casino is a significant period of their life. More than that, I don’t get the sense they realize how significant this event could have been. It seems they chalk it up to an experience, a warning to fellow academics. While they do eventually stop gambling, it is, according to them, because the magic is gone. There is no warning: don’t risk more than you can lose; don’t lose more than you can risk. Instead, there is the warning: don’t expect too much of your kids. God forbid they live up to your expectations. I am disappointed because I have a suspicion that the memoir is not complete. Double Day does not live up to its ambitious beginning.

I haven’t given up on the idea of starting a memoir at the moment before the experience unfolds. No matter where I enter, I need to be sure to fill in relevant information and to return to the narrative. Most importantly, I need to decide where my memoir begins.

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Despite what I know as a reader and a writer, when I think of memoir I think of revealing journals, reflective diaries, intimate letters and scandalizing intimacy: no more, no less. I think of memoir as a label as necessary as “scrapbooking”: both are terms used to define something as simple and as complex as our primal need to understand and to be understood. But as far as labels go, when I hear them I tend to dismiss them reflexively. Like other memoirs introduced this semester, The Tender Bar refuses to be dismissed. On the surface, in The Tender Bar, Moehringer blends the story of his attempts to replace his absent, alcoholic father with his attempts to plant himself among the ever-present alcoholics of Publicans (formerly Dickens) bar. But it doesn’t stop there. Within the pages of Moehringer’s cocktail, the search for identity mixes with thick layers of responsibility, love, success and defeat. The combination is intoxicating.

With a distinctive voice, Moehringer introduces the hand he is dealt: a struggling, single mother; an emotionally and financially stingy grandfather; a loving, verbally abused grandmother; a gaggle of cousins led by a harpy of an aunt; and an alcoholic, gambling somewhat neurotic uncle. He offers no visions of grandeur, few explanations and even fewer excuses. Yet, in this reflective essay, Moehringer offers the reader the wonderful gift of humor. Humor laces his struggle to protect his mother; his attempts to forge an identity among the men of his life; his challenges at Yale; his first attempt at seduction and his first entanglement with love. While an underdog worthy of Uncle Charlie’s infatuation, JR’s humor is what hooks me. I wince when JR’s father stands him up, the first time. I laugh through his bookstore education. I understand Dorothy’s intricate relationship with poverty. I exhale as JR finally reads Yale’s acceptance letter (though I know it will come). I cheer when JR finally frees himself from Sidney (though I am quite surprised he gets her at all). And when he seemingly breaks the New York Times tradition of not promoting copyboys, I exalt: that is until they don’t offer him a reporter job (yet). I celebrate his every triumph. Of course, his descent in to alcoholism is disturbing, but he reveals it with humor and I know Moehringer will be just fine.

Moehringer’s humor is not self-deprecating. He laughs at himself and at others, he laughs at his choices and at his actions, and he laughs at his expectations and illusions. I’m so busy laughing along with him that I don’t feel myself reeled in completely until he presents his mother with the Yale ring. I am so proud of this kid until he, as his coworker says, “fucks up” again. Moehringer keeps few secrets from his readers. While I am not surprised that he gets in to Yale; gets Sidney (ok I’m surprised that it happens at all not by the presentation of it); gets his heart broken; and gets an eventual position at the Times, I don’t doubt them in the way I might if they had not been carefully set up. There seems to be no haphazard occurrence, Moehringer leaves nothing to chance. By the time a more mature, sober Moehringer revisits Publican’s, I recognize what he has paid to come back: he has shown me.

Moehringer’s realization that he has in his mother what he has been searching to recreate in others, is one of the greatest gifts I receive from his memoir. I appreciate the tying of loose ends, the sense of closure. I recognize that my reading his memoir is as important to Moehringer as his writing it. So, as a writer I receive two lessons from The Tender Bar. First, it is important to be able to approach myself and the characters in my life with humor. Humor adds my tone, my voice to my experience. If what I put on the page doesn’t sound like me, it isn’t worth saying it. Secondly, I learn that lessons, like experiences, are to be shared. So perhaps through this memoir, I have learned to define memoir, and by extension my need for it. More than a collection of snapshots and experiences, memoir is the sharing of lessons. It is the chronicle of where emotionally, mentally and physically I am and of what I paid to get here.

Posted by Yvonne Battle-Felton at 11:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

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If I had to sum up A Gathering of Old Men in 65 words or less, I’d say: Charming, seemingly simple, straight forward, unflinching, direct language used to describe, relate, show, tell, lead and allow readers to glimpse racism through the eyes, hearts and souls of fifteen narrators struggling to escape a point in time that so happens to be in Louisiana in the 70’s but is so widespread as to have been almost any where decades, years, months or weeks before.

Several things strike me as being notable about Gaines’ A Gathering of Old Men, mainly the narration, the dialogue, and the subject. A few weeks ago, a classmate mentioned they felt writers cheated by writing about emotionally charged issues like racism, but I have to disagree. Topics like racism have been written about from almost every imaginable angle in both fiction and nonfiction so the idea is not necessarily to right a wrong or write a wrong; but to make people care, to touch them so that they can learn something from it, feel something from it: that’s writing, and with A Gathering of Old Men, Gaines has done it. I have to admit being intrigued by the subject matter made me eager to read the book; racism and oppression always stir emotions in me so I expected the book to be easy enough to read through. Yet I wasn’t quite planted in the book from page one. There were a lot of characters for me to get to know and not a lot of time to get to know them, the rhythm of the book, perhaps helped by the short chapters, simple (yet complex to duplicate) dialect and short sentences with very little poetic imagery and even less metaphor kept me whirling and interested, but not emotionally vested. That came much later.

The way Gaines presents characters is astounding. Take Janey, when I meet her through Snookum and Miss Merle, one of the first things I know about her is that she has pride in her work, “But I knowed Janey woula killed me if she even thought I was thining ‘bout coming in that yard,” (p.8) I know this because Snookum tells me and because Gaines shows Jack and Bea as being removed from the present, would they know if Snookum was in the yard? She also has respect for other people and their titles and expects children to be respectful: she expects Snookum to call Candy, Miss Candy and Lou, Mr. Lou. This is a bit sketchier than it appears on the surface. As I am writing I find myself wondering if she doesn’t correct Snookum when he says Mathu and Beau because they are black and Cajun or because she is in shock, and her composition is rapidly deteriorating. Through her own eyes I learn that she is spiritual or at least that she calls on the Lord an awful lot in times of trouble, and I didn’t get the impression that those are the only times he hears from her. I also learn that she is persistent and responsible, at any moment she could have stopped trying to call Lou and Miss Merle, but she doesn’t give up. Despite the strength of her religion, Miss Merle shows Janey’s faith as faltering when she orders her to give her the names of people who don’t like Fix, but to me that also shows her intelligence. She knows she can trust Miss Merle, but she knows her well enough to know that trust has a point.

I learn much more about Janey and the other characters through their eyes and through the eyes of the characters around them but more importantly I learn a lot about them from what they don’t see, and that’s when I learn to care about them: after knowing their wants and needs, their limitations and dreams, their mannerisms and actions, all of a sudden and all at once I know them. Gaines shows characters through their dialogue, their motivations (not just motives), through their triumphs and losses, revealing them from the inside out and thus humanizing them, planting them firmly in their world.

I was interested in the subject matter from page one, but I cared about the characters from page 29, while watching Mat and Chimley decide to risk life for the possibility of LIFE, and I cared not just for the overall outcome of the story but for the outcome of each character. I imagine Gaines has a chart listing each character with their wants, needs, motivations, desires, history, skin color, tragedies and triumphs so that at any point I believe he knows more than he is sharing with the readers, as if there is more behind the curtain, and as a reader I appreciate that and as a writer I strive for it. I realize a story flows more fluidly when I know more about my characters, when I take time to chart their motivations, I have their guidelines and I can place them in situations and have them act based on their character, or in spite of it. I realize I need to work on distinguishing my characters from one another, as Gaines does, with dialogue, tone and attitude. I want to create stories people can care about, can get vested in and a good place to start will be my chart of characteristics. The first step for building a believable character, is believing in them myself, from there I can take them anywhere.

Posted by Yvonne Battle-Felton at 11:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

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My intention was to write about Shawn’s choice of structure. But, I can’t. To discuss the structure, I would have to discuss my aversion to it, my inability to concentrate on anything more than a superficial level on topics of medical intimacy. It is a response that overcomes me often in conversation and to my surprise when breached in text. I tend to “tune out” during conversations pertaining to medical ailments, recovery, accidents, and treatments. I find it impossible to focus; impossible to choose to engage in these conversations. Only for my children will I actively experience the discomfort of such discussions. For all others, I listen, or appear to, while concentrating on something, anything, else. I do not endure the enclosure: their despair confines me. It is not a phobia. I do not require, like Shawn’s father, a shroud of protection from all things yucky. I acknowledge broken bones, reset noses, cancer. But something about these brushes with medical imperfection or mortality causes my mental retreat. Unlike Shawn, I do not seek to analyze this. It is something that limits neither my enjoyment of the world nor the world’s enjoyment of me. It is merely something that is.

Yet, because of my aversion to all things medically intimate, I find I cannot engage on a meaningful level with those portions of Shawn’s text that are not narrative. In the narrative I see Shawn and his parents interact (or not) and I know my judgments are skewed. I am taking the information Shawn chooses to show (dialogue, responses, actions) and not fully acknowledging the information he chooses to tell (medical evaluations, hypotheses, analysis). The psychological and physiological citations, explanations and justifications are meant to provide access in to the Shawn’s psyche, to provide causality. I find this dissection painful. Through narrative, I visit and revisit Shawn at certain experiences in varying perceptions. I then revisit (or feel as if I do) the same situations psychologically or biologically. So that I am repeatedly thrust uncomfortably close and my mind rejects it and retreats.

Shawn’s choice to infuse his memoir with the analysis and theories of others seems a way, as he claims, to present his life abstractly so readers can identify but not blame him for choices. It also feels, as he also admits, to be an incomplete account. Because of language, voice and the limited amount of events actually covered, this account, which he likens to the overlapping sections of the brain, is complete with many sections of grey. But, I wonder if there isn’t more to it. I don’t get a sense of the writer on the page. I get a sense of his humor, his struggle with his phobias and the accomplishments he makes through his narration but not throughout the text.

Perhaps I would find it comforting if he had reached a point where he actively takes charge of his own life. Still, I have to appreciate Shawn’s honesty in admitting the scope of the text. In the foreword, I am able to appreciate the painful process of subjecting yourself to textual analysis and the courage it takes to do it. As a writer, from this text I take away the need for courage and for strength. If I was able to face (though not overcome) my aversion to medical intimacy by reading Wish I Could Be There, I’d like to think he at least came to terms with his phobias by writing it.

Posted by Yvonne Battle-Felton at 11:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

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The first word that comes to mind when considering Beattie is chatty.
I have encountered few characters who consider themselves and their surroundings, circumstances and pasts so completely and as often as those entombed in a Beattie short story.

In The Women of This World, a short story in Beattie’s “Perfect Recall” collection, we learn about Dale, her thoughts about her medical condition, her talent for cooking food she can not consume and for selecting drink for others that she can not indulge in. She considers everyone: her neighbor who ends up dying, her would-have-been father in law, her mother in law, her would-have-been-father-in-law’s soon-to-be-ex wife and her own soon-to-be-ex-husband. What she does not consider is her marriage, which is ironic because her husband (who seems to have very little going for himself) is considering leaving her.

I find some of the short stories of Beattie’s collections difficult, narratively, to follow. Beattie has a talent for, or an addiction to, slipping from character to character within the same paragraph. I find I appreciate knowing what different characters are doing, or why. I like the different angles of a story—I just prefer them in different paragraphs or chapters.

In Flechette Follies, a 100 page short story leading her 2005 collection “Follies,” my head begins to ache when Beattie introduces a police officer a page or two after the accident and by the next paragraph, “The driver of the car was Nancy Gregerson—Gregerson having been her married name. Her maiden name, not resumed after the divorce, was Shifflett. The town was full of Shiffletts…”

At this point, I am tempted to skip to the end. But, my curiosity leads me to read more. Why is Beattie significant and to whom? And, for whatever reason I like her, but while I’m reading her, I don’t know what it is I like, so I have to keep reading to figure it out.

Relationship conflicts seem to be a favorite theme for Beattie. In Cat People, a “Perfect Recall” short story, the narrator—who does not seem to have a job but does seem to have some sort of psychosis—is married to a painter who paints live models who according to the narrator: all “come to love” her husband,” (136). The couple is renting a house (transients seem to be another Beattie favorite). Next to the house they rent, there lives a couple for whatever reason trapped in a marriage of extreme compromises: she wants cats, he wants to kill cats. Love is never mentioned and neither is anything else that would make it likely that this couple would stay together—except her mental condition: Which is more pronounced than the narrator’s is. The narrator may not be insane, my proximity to all that she considers is.

In the stories I have read, very little is revealed through dialogue. The absurdities pile up in Cat People: brother and sister modeling in the pool while an old man paints them; fighting neighbors throwing things and cursing at cats; cat jumping through the hole in the fence over shooting the hole and landing in the pool; model acutely afraid of cats; cat circling the woman “like a shark” (138); woman getting hit in head with an apple; strings of her bathing suit breaking; police…it gets to feel like too much, too many hands in the pot, I mean plot.

I am thankful for the slim dialogue. It makes the stories feel genuine and less stifling. Her characters, like real people, say one thing and feel, think, experience another. But, in several of Beattie’s stories, the narrator, the omniscient third person or the talkative first person, knows and reveals what feels to be an exuberant amount of information, about everything.

Several of Beattie’s stories have paragraphs that span half the page, Flechette has one that spans the entire page (page 12) and another that spans the length of page 14. There are a lot of clues smashed into a Beattie paragraph, still, I stopped reading. But, while skimming the story, I begin to see the promises of psychology fulfilled. Wedged between Nancy’s reflections on her screwed up relationship with her drug-addict son, Nicky, and Lawrence aka George’s back story, there is a page and a half long paragraph that tells of Nancy’s brief marriage, miscarriage, potential annulment and eventual pregnancy (with the aforementioned loser): “She never slept with him again, though—as she suspected—she was already pregnant.” Lines like this, I think, continue to make Beattie formidable in contemporary fiction.

When skimmed, there is a tension in Beattie’s stories that is lost when read word for word. She seems to enjoy weaving her characters, bringing them close and then having them go their separate ways (but not, of course, before delving deeply into their circumstances) and bringing them close again: in that, it reminds me of Nevesky Prospect. I find the psychology most intriguing: the things her characters think, their motivations.

Other Beattieisms:
Unlikeable, self-absorbed characters—it’s almost refreshing to encounter stories where learning something about the human psyche, not liking the characters, is the motivation for reading—almost.

Avoids the obvious:

Beattie throws people together: the mother with the wayward and finally missing son with the spy/government operative…and while the obvious thing, at first, would be to have him find the son, by the time you finish digging deeply in their closets (they are both single) you imagine they will meet again for sex. But, no. They meet again to find the son. What is not obvious is that this professional, will be hit by a bus.

Influences:
Reading Beattie is similar to reading Mann, Roth, and (Sophie’s Choice): The narrative makes me textually claustrophobic. The experience of being too intimately acquainted with someone reminds me of the diaries—except, I liked those. Perhaps what is different is that since her characters are not necessarily going into mental descent, it feels cluttered. Not uncomfortably close because I learn their weaknesses, I expect that, but that there are so many weaknesses, so many external and internal conflicts within one short story that it feels outlandish, gothic and perhaps Gogolesque.

In a May 2005 Times review of “Follies,” David Means recognizes, “Beattie’s minimalist style, an extension of Hemingway’s technique of omission.” I didn’t quite see that. Means continues, “In her new collection, ”Follies,” Beattie struggles mightily to break out of a minimalist straitjacket she fashioned years ago. Sometimes she succeeds — a few of these stories are her strongest in years — and sometimes she does not.”

In their author bio, Barnes and Nobles compares Beattie to Carver: “Her stories, like those of minimalism’s famous poster boy (and Beattie’s good friend) Raymond Carver, are composed of simple, declarative sentences teeming with irony and finely observed detail; also like Carver, she is a nonjudgmental narrator, completely detached from her characters and their actions and meting out contextual clues to be interpreted by the reader.” This is true, sort of.

Themes:

New York
Key West setting
Adult themes (examples…chains, bike…bad-girl boots)
Counter culture
Fate, psychics: destiny as motivation for characters or a mechanism to draw characters together and then have them acknowledge and act on it.
Current events (pauses, but does not reflect, on)
Sex and sexuality
Marriage
Relationships
Compromise
Indulgence
Irony

Reviews: Beattie is consistently reviewed in the Times, though I have to say I read her work without prejudice (without reading the reviews), so I was surprised that they reacted much the same.

In 1976, J.D. O’Hara declares Beattie, [regarding the New Yorker]:“the best new writer to come down that particular pike since Donald Barthelme.” Of her first collection of short stories, “Distortions” the Times reviewer calls Beattie, the “artist of situations, not plots,” (Times) praising her ability to “renew for us the commonplaces of the lonesome lover and the life of quiet desperation.” What, to me, feels chatty and cumbersome in some of her other works, is hailed by O’Hara—in regards to Beattie’s first novel “Chilly Scenes of Winter” as: “the quietly elegant shape of its reporting.” (August, 1976).

Just over a week later, in another Time’s review of both “Distortions” and “Chilly Scenes of Winter” Anatole Broyard delivers my sentiment completely: “I have been trying to decide whether Ann Beattie’s stories are good, or only fashionable. After some painful–it was painful–deliberation, I came to the conclusion that they are both, but that she could, and ought to, make them better.

A 1997 Times review of “MY LIFE, STARRING DARA FALCON by the infamous Michiko Kakutani, also seems to successfully peg Beattie’s writing:

About the memoir within the book:
“This pathetic memoir, called ”My Life,” is unfortunately an uncanny mirror of Ann Beattie’s own novel, ”My Life, Starring Dara Falcon,” which similarly alternates between eye-glazing trivia and mind-boggling melodrama. Indeed Ms. Beattie’s novel embodies the worst flaws of her early and later fiction: the meaningless chatter and anomic cataloguing of the mundane that could turn her weaker stories into formulaic exercises in alienation, and the schematic narrative pyrotechnics that have made her less successful novels awkward and contrived.”

After relating how tedious the characters and plot are Kakutani compares Beattie’s characters to the issues Updike deals with, the result: “The problem here is that Ms. Beattie treats this conflict with the subtlety of Jim Carrey, turning her characters into caricatures and her story into a joke.”

Although not talking about the ending, Kakutani says: “Halfway through the novel, Ms. Beattie is resorting to symbolism so heavy-handed that she might as well have spelled out everything in italics for the reader and appended footnotes.”

While Beattie credits Kakutani’s review as the reason she no longer reads them, there was good news to be found in this review, mainly that not all of her work is received this way. According to Kakutani:
“This unlucky character isn’t the only thing to have disappeared from this novel. Nowhere to be found are the maturity and melancholy wisdom that have distinguished Ms. Beattie’s finest recent work. Gone, too, is the bright, glittering dialogue she could spin off with one hand…An ill-conceived experiment, ”My Life, Starring Dara Falcon” must surely mark a low point in this gifted writer’s career.”

It should be noted that a later work received more favorable reviews.

Interviews:
In her Folio interview.

On what makes a short story successful: “What makes a story successful for the reader is not necessarily what makes it successful for the writer…I think a story is successful if you really appreciate the shape of it, the weight, the clarity .

On graduate writing programs: “I have mixed feelings about writing programs, as I think most professors and students do. On a good day, when I’ve explained more about a student’s work than she or he knew and also come up with a solution for how to fix whatever problem I see (the smart ones rarely listen to exact advice, which is entirely right)…

On Past and newer (1998) writing styles: “I think a lot of the difference between my newer work and the older work is that I would have tried to imply some of those things before.”

On the very problematic matter of details: I think that [these details] are slightly tedious, but to some extent they have to be included for verisimilitude.

Similarities:
I write about relationships but I tend to leave a lot to the imagination or to interpretation. I am interested in the psychology of relationships, but not in showing a lot through back story. I am trying to find the balance between what I need to know and what readers need to know to get something out of each story.

Writers she has influenced:
According to Kakutani (Times, April, 2005), her style has inspired other writers in that it has “resulted in elliptical narratives free of authorial comment but filled with fistfuls of contemporary details and bright shards of dialogue.”

Like Bobbi Ann Mason, Beattie has been categorized as writing “Kmart realism.”

On endings, Beattie says: “want the reader to be haunted by what’s already happened, not by the last-minute fireworks, as it were.” [Regarding Follies]. I find her endings often unsettling. In Talk, the summary ending: Marie and Brenda, both at different, yet similar points in their narratives, see one another. In what Marie thinks is shame, Brenda pretends not to see her. The ending, the final forcing together of these two extremes, one living youth, the other perhaps reliving it, feels plotted. The ending: “she looks at Jacob, who stands hands-on-hips, jaw set, gazing with narrowed eyes after the drunken fools who could easily have hurt themselves, while the people on William’s substantial boat would have remained unscathed.” The point perhaps is that they are not unscathed; they only appear to be so. It is a conclusion reached before the narrative reaches it.

In, Cat People, the parrot –which escaped during the fiasco around which the story revolves—returns on its own: “It looked well, and seemed to be enjoying its freedom…I would swear that it winked. The moment it said ‘fifteen’ it flew away, having a more distinct idea than most of us when it should leave and perhaps even where it should fly (146).

The story goes beyond what feels like the natural ending. It reaches the point of summary the “in case you missed it…” Kakutani accuses her of in other stories.

What I am impressed with:
Beattie is everywhere.

Bio:

Born in DC in 1947, first story published: A Rose for Judy Garland’s Casket” in the Western Humanities Review in 1972 (Weber)

In 1974 “A Platonic Relationship,” The New Yorker. According to Folio interview, they had rejected 22 of her stories before publishing that one, and after that one, they published a slew of them. Attended graduate writing program at University of Connecticut.

Chilly Scenes of Winter (Novel) 1976
Distortions (collection) 1976
Secrets and Surprises 1979
Fall in Place 1980
The Burning House, 1982
Love Always, 1985
Where You’ll find Me: And Other Stories, 1986
Picturing Will, 1989
What was Mine, 1991
Another You, 1995
My Life Starring Dora Falcon, 1997
Park City, New and Selected Stories, 1998
The Doctor’s House, 2000
Perfect Recall: New Stories, 2002
Follies: New Stories, 2005
Follies for the New York Times, (Anthology) 2008

Also, many stories in the New Yorker (many short stories published), and journals like Ploughshares and Glimmer Train, as well as many anthologies.

Ann Beattie has published 16 novels and short story collections.

She has been included in John Updike’s Best American Short Stories of the Century and has received the PEN/Bernard Malamud Award for lifetime achievement in the short story form. (Simon Says)

“Her awards include one in literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters (1980), Distinguished Alumnae Award (1980) and Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree (1983) from her alma mater, American University, and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1980” (Weber)

Beattie has had books adapted in to movies: Chilly Scenes

Makes a living as:
Writer and Creative Writing professor at University of Virginia (as of 06)

What I have learned:
Endings: I often wonder on what note to end the story, it’s quite simple once I think the story through verbally.

On endings: end it at the end.

References

Follies; Perfect Recall, Talk (Ploughshares) and below links plus:

NY Times Articles
http://www.american.edu/cas/lit/folio/2006winter_inter.html
http://weeklywire.com/ww/08-24-98/boston_books_2.htm
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/writers/writerdetails.asp?cid=575090#biol
http://weberstudies.weber.edu/archive/archive%20A%20%20Vol.%201-10.3/Vol.%207.1/7.1Beattie%20Interview%20.htm

Swapping Family Tedium for Ruthless Narcissism

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