The Witch Elm

This is the best of Tana French's books and I have read them all. She is a wise writer and a deep thinker and I found the book hard to put down. French claims wanting to portray the effects on individuals who are impacted by a crime and its investigation -- and she does this -- but in addition she uncovers webs of connection. In particular, the main puzzle in this mystery lies in the narrator's knowledge of his own sense of identity and responsibility, knowledge which shifts and changes throughout the story. I not only recommend the book, but suggest that a reader take note of information from the very beginning. A friend of mine called it insanely brilliant.

After a very short interval, I re-read The Witch Elm, which I rarely do, and was astonished at how subtly French set up the story and its web of consequences. I only want to add to my original thoughts that I find this book a study in how privilege works. Toby, the narrator, claims he is "lucky" but he takes that to mean that he deserves his good fortune -- which exists only because he begins as one of patriarchy's favored children [male, well off, straight, and so on]. I am very sorry for those readers who missed the complexly imagined levels of meaning in this terrific novel.



Stone: Hawk's Eye

Thoughtless Usage

I would really like the current repetitive and essentially meaningless use of the term “tribal” to stop. It is used as shorthand to stand in for opposing political sides that are marked by thoughtless or automatic hostility. I would prefer to hear something like “mob” used to mean a group that is easily led and given to unpremeditated behavior. A mob, or mobbish behavior, would at least conjure up images of a group that is prone to violence and has a history of being irrationally driven such as a lynch mob. Using “mob” would also have the advantage of not distorting a reference to a group that has much worth admiring.

A loose dictionary definition of a tribe is “a division within a traditional society consisting of families or communities linked by social, economic, religious, or blood ties, with a common culture and dialect.” These affiliations of people can be more or less neutral or can be a chosen relationship rather than one that occurs automatically.

In the US, a tribe is most commonly conceived to be a traditional group of Native Americans, and in no small part this renders the current usage racist. Such intent may be far from a user’s mind but nevertheless political usage carries a reminder of the first European colonizers’ enmity with native peoples. There is no reason to rehearse that history here other than to point out that the deadly violence generated in succeeding centuries was made to seem inevitable, and this notion of inevitable hostility is still carried by the word in today’s political climate.

But tribe need not refer only to an ethnic origin. An accurate meaning of a tribal experience might refer to people who share a common history, or a common belief. People of a tribe join together, among many purposes, for mutual comfort and survival, to enact a common culture, to create a home.

Using the word “tribal” as a careless stand-in for automatic opposition in this current political time is not just a semantic error, but part of the danger that increases daily. When Hannah Arendt accused Adolph Eichmann of banality that permitted his capacity for evil, she was referring to just this sort of thoughtless language that maintains stereotypes while sliding past any real meaning. 

Gemstone: Blue topaz

We Have to Change

When I was very young I wanted to be an Indian. I wanted to ride horses and live out under the sun and stars. I wanted to learn how to live bravely. I wanted to learn how to track deer and catch rabbits and chase antelope. I’m decades older now and I understand that my early view of Indian life was primarily shaped by a genocidal colonialism's privileged sentimentality. I have worked to temper that view with real history, real stories, real understanding of current conditions as well as actual historical events. I never lost my early love and admiration and, now, so very much older, I find it shining bright again because of Standing Rock.

Why doesn’t President Obama do something about Standing Rock? I hear that from many places these days. Personally, I suspect he is doing something behind the scenes, and whatever else he can do to forestall the disasters that are coming after the January inauguration. But I wonder if some of us think that if the president only fixed it, we could go back to watching tv, reading our book, having a barbecue, going to a movie with friends. We could go on living the life we had before the election.

Do we believe that the ballot box is the end of responsibility? That we can turn away after turning over to public officials the need to fix what’s broken? That a government can legislate justice or love, kindness or caring, change greedy hearts, decide on honor, create generous spirits? The water protectors of Standing Rock know this is not true. They understood before the election that doing the right thing could not be left to the government. They already knew that they were facing a mighty power: a corporation allied to a government.

Those of us who are old enough…when did we forget Mario Savio? “There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part! You can’t even passively take part! And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels…upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop! And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!”

The people of Standing Rock are teaching the country, and indeed beyond borders, that people must commit themselves to right action in service to the greater good despite any prospect of victory. They are teaching everyone that victory is not necessarily winning. Life as we know it must change because life as we know it brought us to this crossroads. Our hearts must change, what we think we need must change.

I wish I could be at Standing Rock, but that would be foolish. I would take more than I could give by my presence, but I am filled with so much pride in being a human being by what is happening there. I see an indigenous people who have not lost their memory of the generations from whom they’ve come, I see a native people whose understanding of their land has been made wise by the very earth and water they protect. I see brave young people whose spirit is strengthened by their honor for their ancestors and their elders. I see allies of the tribal peoples who are capable of divesting themselves of colonial attitudes and asking only how they may help. I see such awesome beauty of courage, of intent, of spirit.

Gem Stone: Agate and Obsidian

                    

IN THESE DARK TIMES

 THE BRIGHTEST LIGHTS SHINE 
FROM THE
CAMPFIRES OF STANDING ROCK

REVALUING THE PRICE OF SALT

The Price of Salt

It is a truism that people will see only what they are expecting, and reading The Price of Salt as a lesbian novel almost guarantees that its other dimensions will be overlooked. The novel should instead be viewed as an enduring portrait of an era that valued stereotyped gender roles as well as heterosexual conformity, and the progress of a woman who struggled against these obstacles. The desire that animates the novel’s heroine, Therese Belivet, is not simply erotic; rather, she longs for a full self-actualization. Love for another woman, creative expression, the freedom to define her own purpose—the tangled strands of Therese’s desires can never truly be separated. 

A prolific author of psychological thrillers such as Strangers on a Train and The Talented Mr. Ripley, Patricia Highsmith was regarded during her lifetime as a brilliant writer and, to say the least, a very difficult human being: her publisher, Otto Penzler, once referred to her as “a mean, cruel, hard, unlovable and unloving human being.” One novel, to my mind her most remarkable, stands aside from her usual subjects of violence and murder. In 1952, she wrote a story about the relationship of two women, but wishing to avoid being labeled a lesbian writer, she published The Price of Salt under the pseudonym of Claire Morgan, and did not acknowledge authorship until 1990, when the book was republished as Carol.

Highsmith claimed that the story was substantially written while she was ill with a high fever, and indeed there is a thematic unity to the novel that supports thinking of it as the product of a fever dream. Applauded as unique for describing lesbians in a positive light in the 1950s, The Price of Salt is now considered primarily a curiosity in a culture assumed to have overcome its anti-gay bias. While most reviewers present the book as a lesbian novel, a coming out romance, this narrow interpretation obscures the importance of what ought to be read as a classic of the American canon.

Therese Belivet is a young woman with dreams of artistic accomplishment, specifically of becoming a set designer. Richard, to whom she is almost engaged, also has artistic aspirations but Therese suspects that he lacks commitment to his painting, and she suspects that, in the end, he will join his family’s bottled gas business. The novel opens with Therese working a temporary Christmas job in a New York department store where, in the person of an aging coworker, she is confronted by her worst fears for her future:

It was the hopelessness of Mrs. Robichek’s ailing body…the hopelessness of which the end of her life was entirely composed. And the hopelessness of herself [Therese], of ever being the person she wanted to be and doing the things that person wanted to do…. It was the terror of this hopelessness that made her want to...flee before it was too late, before the chains fell around her and locked. ^[p.12]

By placing Therese’s feelings regarding Mrs. Robichek at the forefront of the novel, Highsmith serves notice of their importance. The inability to escape her existential condition—indeed to imagine an escape—adds anger to terror and is reflected in Therese’s identification with a toy train in the department store:

It was not a big fine train like the one that ran on the floor at the back of the toy department but there was a fury in its pumping pistons that the bigger trains did not possess. Its wrath and frustration on the closed oval track held Therese spellbound.” ^[p.5]

Highsmith continues to intensify this extraordinary image:

[Therese] felt it cursed the hand that threw its switch each day…. It was like something gone mad in imprisonment, something already dead that would never wear out, like the dainty, springy-footed foxes in the Central Park Zoo, whose complex footwork repeated and repeated as they circled their cages. ^[p.6]

Therese has no remedy for the dissatisfaction that stalks her. Captive to a peculiar enervation, she allows others to make decisions for her, particularly Richard but also, later, Carol. Yet this same inertia masks her resistance and protects her from actual compliance that would lock her into conventional expectations. In a few years, the century will popularize the concept of alienation to describe Therese’s predicament, but for the meantime her only ally is her stubborn desire for something real.

Then Carol Aird enters the toy department looking for a Christmas doll for her daughter. Her appearance startles Therese into taking the first faltering steps along a path toward her own desire that will be discouragingly long as well as beset by risks, misunderstandings, and retreats. In the conventions of a coming out romance, such obstacles are meant to secure a reader’s interest by postponing the inevitable consummation of the characters’ affair, and some reviewers fault The Price of Salt for overplaying the game, but this narrow reading misses the realistically calibrated movement by which Therese becomes her own person.

Therese begins the story in search of mothering. An orphan in effect if not in reality, she comforts herself by whispering the name of a nun, Sister Alicia, who cared for her as a child. She is reluctantly grateful for the attentions of Mrs. Robichek and Richard’s mother, Mrs. Semco, despite fearing their fate may be hers. She prays to “[t]he one beautiful thing in her apartment, the wooden Madonna she had bought the first month she had been in New York.” ^{[p. 16]} On her first visit to Carol’s home, Therese lies down for a nap and asks for a glass of warm milk. But even on this first visit, and despite being almost engaged to Richard, Therese realizes she “had never loved anyone before Carol, not even Sister Alicia.” ^{[p. 50]}   

In Letters to a Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke says of love that “it is the most difficult task that has been entrusted to us, the ultimate task, the final test and proof, the work for which all other work is merely preparation.” ^{[pp. 48 & 49]} We all know this, in the core of our souls, which is why stories of love, well told or not, will always find an audience. To succeed at love, Therese will need to ignore the constricting cultural assumptions that hamstring her gender just as she will need to resist the lies that condemn homosexuality.

Love as the catalyst for changing a life is not uncommon in reality or in fiction, and Highsmith delivers a portrait of evolving feeling that never shifts out of Therese’s viewpoint. Jealous of Carol’s daughter and her best friend, Therese can plummet from confidence to the shattering depths of insecurity in the space of seconds. Her growing affection increases a longing to be known that exists simultaneously with the need to remain hidden. Therese longs for Carol’s company only to find it impossible to speak in her presence, so she resorts to writing letters she will never send. In Carol’s presence, Therese manages only awkward attempts at revelation. Both women speak a kind of code that disguises true exposure and allows them to sidestep risky admissions. “Was life, were human relations like this always, Therese wondered. Never solid ground under foot. Always like gravel….” ^{[p. 142]} Therese has only her stubborn habit of resistance to protect her need to love.

When Carol suggests that she and Therese drive across the country, Highsmith places the two women in the archetypal American metaphor of a journey toward freedom:

[Therese] thought suddenly of the people working in Frankenberg’s, penned in there at a quarter of ten in the morning, this morning and tomorrow morning and the next, the hands of clocks controlling every move they made. But the hands of the clock on the dashboard meant nothing now to her and Carol. ^{[p. 149]}

At first the trip only intensifies their inability to connect. Carol grows irritated and Therese grows fearful. They pause to look in the window of a restaurant at a miniature Dutch scene, and while Carol dismisses the small carvings, Therese appreciates how much work has gone into the making of such models. Therese starts to tell Carol about the toy train from the department store, only to suddenly find it impossible to say aloud how deeply it had affected her.

“I wonder if you’ll really enjoy this trip,” Carol said. “You so prefer things reflected in a glass don’t you? You have your private conception of everything. Like that windmill. It’s practically as good as being in Holland to you. I wonder if you’ll even like seeing real mountains and real people.”

Therese felt crushed as if Carol had accused her of lying. She felt Carol meant, too, that she had a private conception of her, and that Carol resented it. ^{[pp. 157 & 152]}

The pressure of everything unspoken mounts and finally forces Therese to speak. When she does say out loud, “I love you,” Carol responds immediately. Highsmith’s description of their loving is among the best ever written; she neither shies away from the physical nor does she become distracted by body parts. By staying within Therese’s emotional response, a reader witnesses how thoroughly her life is transformed. The powerful confirmation of her desire becomes an undeniable wellspring of self-confidence. Therese asks Carol why she waited so long, and learns that Carol feared taking advantage of the younger woman, a realistic fear considering the canard of the era: younger women were seduced into lesbianism by experienced older women.

Earlier, I referred to Rilke in what may seem a nice reference but not particularly related to the novel. In fact I was reminded several times of the German poet during The Price of Salt. I can find no explicit evidence that Patricia Highsmith ever commented on or even read Rilke, but it is not farfetched to assume an acquaintance since her attraction to German culture is well documented. His implicit presence in the novel adds to its spiritual depth and the importance of Therese’s transformation. When Therese feels herself expanding in “widening circles” it echoes his poem: “I live my life in widening rings.” In the earlier reference to the trapped toy train, Highsmith also added an image of pacing foxes in a zoo, and Rilke’s vision of the “The Panther” looms like a larger shadow in the background:

As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,

the movement of his powerful soft strides

is like a ritual dance around a center

in which a mighty will stands paralyzed.

  

I find Rilke again as the women continue driving west. In the ninth Duino Elegy, he writes: “Perhaps we are here in order to say: house,/ bridge, fountain, gate, pitcher…” Love gives Therese the sensitivity perceive the countryside infused with a joyful singularity that the poet claims is our reason for existing.

The West unfolded like a magic carpet, dotted with the neat, tight units of farmhouse, barn, and silo that they could see for half an hour before they came abreast of them…. The house smelled like fresh cold cheese…. [T]here was a picture of a rooster on the wall, made of colored patches of cloth sewn on a black ground….” ^[p.172]  

This is not the only place where Highsmith creates emotion by listing objects almost as if she were cataloging them. Here, perhaps, is the reason she made set design the occupation that Therese chooses for her life’s work: to highlight the value of the objects among which our dramas take place.

The Price of Salt does not end on a road toward the sunset, although Therese and Carol do reach Colorado. Carol’s husband discovers the nature of his wife’s relationship with Therese, and Carol returns to New York to face a legal battle for her daughter while Therese stays in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. In this unlikely little city, Therese reaches a new stage in her journey toward the woman she yearns to be. Slowly she becomes aware that Carol will not rejoin her, but being devastated is not the same as being destroyed, and Therese can make her own choices now, even change her mind and remake them.

Highsmith takes pains to underscore that what Therese gains from her progress through the novel is not a relationship with another woman but a vital understanding and acceptance of herself. She takes a temporary office job in Sioux Falls, and works on model sets for a New York director in the evenings. She writes “a deliberately cheerful message” to Mrs. Robichek:

It seemed false as she wrote it, but walking away from the box where she had dropped it, she was conscious suddenly of the energy in her body, the spring in her toes, the youth in her blood that warmed her cheeks as she walked faster, and she knew she was free and blessed compared to Mrs. Robichek, and what she had written was not false, because she could so well afford it. ^{[p. 227]}

When Therese does return to New York and keeps an appointment with Carol in a restaurant, the two women meet on new ground:

Carol lifted her head, smiling. “My little big shot. Now you look like you might do something good. Do you know, even your voice is different?” ^{[p. 242]} 

The Price of Salt is so unlike Patricia Highsmith’s other novels that I wonder if she was ever surprised by the remarkable quality of her creation; perhaps a clue is her choice of nom de plume: Claire Morgan, a “clear morning.” As I reread the story, I found myself reliving a time that I remember primarily as a grim, dismal, embarrassing wasteland. I was impressed by how accurately Highsmith described the tongue-tied torture of being attracted to another woman, but I was astonished at how vividly she reminded me that I once dreaded facing a future as a female. The sea change wrought by the movements of the 1960s brought along numerous works of fiction but none surpasses the story of Therese Belivet, whose stubborn courage to pursue what she desired sustained her without the support of a movement. The Price of Salt deserves a place in American literature alongside works like Catcher in the Rye and To Kill a Mockingbird, not as a coming out story but as a coming of age novel. Soon, living memories will be gone and only the books will testify to a suffocating era that valued conformity over truth, public custom over individual suffering, bland ignorance over painful honesty.

Highsmith, Patricia. The Price of Salt. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, Inc. 2015 (1952).

Mitchell, Stephen, ed., trans. Ahead of all Parting: The Selected Prose and Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke. New York: The Modern Library. 1999.

Rilke, Rainer Maria. Letters to a Young Poem. Watchmaker Publishing. 2012.

Late-Life Crisis

Woke up this morning singing “The Lady Came from Baltimore” and then remembered how Joan Baez got oodles of dyke points for not changing genders so that she was a woman singing love lyrics to another woman. Then remembered how at the concert last year she had lost her range and could no longer hit the high notes and maybe should not have tried. I immediately felt this all too familiar wash of sadness I’ve lately become accustomed to.

I think I get it.

I’m having a Late-Life Crisis. A late-life crisis – something that once brought pleasure now opens the door to very much mixed emotions. What should be new becomes drenched in nostalgic hues.

Last Wednesday, I loaded the pickup and Rory and I set off for the GCLS Conference in New Orleans. My predictable pre-trip anxiety never gave way to excitement; instead it changed slowly to dread. It’s a long way from Chicago to New Orleans: Illinois, Missouri, Memphis into Mississippi, Louisiana. The only geology was a bit of road cut in southern Illinois. I like geology. I’d been dreading bad weather and it happened in Mississippi with a downpour that cut visibility to zero, but luckily it was short, just long enough to know how dangerous it was.

When it got dark I was too close to New Orleans not to keep going, but I got lost in the city. Everyone I asked help from was exceptionally nice. I got to my motel and I just wanted to be back in Chicago. Home. Realized that I was not the Gutsy Old Lady. Slept. Woke up. Felt worse. Cried. Haven’t had morning crying in a very long time. Called Sharon. Cried. She said that as long as I was there, I should just go to the conference and see what it was like, eat something, and then I could come home when I wanted.

TV said there was a brain-eating amoeba loose in St. Bernard Parish. I thought: figures. [I was in nearby Jefferson Parish. Parish in Louisiana is same as county.]

Took the bus from stop in front of the Travelodge in Metairie across the Mississippi to the bus stop across the parking lot from the Riverside Hilton – really easy. I was still feeling very sad but not hurting sad. Found GCLS, passed out Press Kits, met some people I have met or heard of on-line, was on time to go to 2-hour discussion/presentation of the History of Lesbian Literature.

Here follows a recap of what I thought was a valuable discussion:

The books were separated by decade, beginning of course with Well of Loneliness. Sitting there and thinking, I changed my usual assessment of Well. [This was me, not the speakers.] I usually consider it an annoying, apologetic, whiney book with an ending that sucks. But I remembered something an old friend once said re another topic: any advertising is good advertising. Well of L made the existence of two women together a reality and that was more important than any of its window dressing.

Other books were more familiar – Jane Rule is still my favorite [unless I remember someone else] – and I got great suggestions to read. For example, I just finished Hood by Emma Donoghue and if anyone else has read it please let me know because it is very amazing, brilliant, coruscating.

Went back to Travelodge, Rory had been perfect [as he was the whole trip], we watched back to back to back episodes of Law & Order: SVU. It was very soothing and I fell asleep. Woke up, turned off the tv and wrote a little mini-essay on a question from the panel discussion:

What is the future of lesbian literature? I side-stepped in order to say that since any story is allegorical/symbolic the meaning of lesbian as symbol has changed. Lesbian no longer automatically means reaching for an authentic identity; challenging convention or mediocrity; daring; seeing love as a well-spring for revolution, creativity, making meaning; for refusing to be tamed. A lesbian character may still be any or all or other of these things, of course. I thought that we probably don’t always know what we’re saying when we write. Romance tames the socially disruptive impulses of sexuality. Horror solidifies and makes manageable images of dread and fear. Fantasy reimagines the distant horns of Elfland in the traditional fairy tale structure. Every story either celebrates or challenges the major mythology of the culture. [By the way, does any lesbian author these days dare write about the lesbian couple who kidnapped Patty Hearst?]

I went back to the Hilton next morning, turned in my mini-essay – it was nicely accepted – cadged another sack lunch, went back to watch tv with Rory, slept, and left early Saturday morning. Here is a song from the last time we crossed the Mississippi at Cairo:

Me and Rory Boy

Are back in Illinois

Quoth the Raven: “Nevermore to roam

So far from Home.”

I will sing it anytime on request.

Did I make up Late Life Crisis or is it already out there? [Like a mid-Life Crisis it’s about not recognizing change and the need to change.]

I’m not sorry I went – not now that I’m home – but like Joan Baez I need to remember my range has changed.

Gemstone: Black Tourmaline in Quartz; Garnet

Lots of Little Squiggles

Writing Process Blog Tour:

 Angela Koenig, Rebellion in Ulster & Rendezvous in the Himalaya

I was tagged for the Tour by Renee MacKenzie whose wonderful new book Nesting is now available. Renee is a fellow writer with Blue Feather Books. Please check out her blog My Writing Process at: http://reneemackenzie.wordpress.com

I’m going to shift the questions around a bit, so bear with me.

Why do I write what I do?

Because I can. I always wanted to write. I remember, before I could read, lying on my bed in front of an open window and making writing-like squiggles on a paper with a pencil. For years – decades – I never made a decision without factoring in that I wanted to write. Just how I found my voice is still a bit of a mystery to me, but at last the Muse (in her avatar as an Apple computer?) relented. Sometimes it feels like having a huge reservoir of images, words, and feelings but they just stay dammed up until the story comes that can channel them. Recently I heard someone say that you don’t just wake up and say, "Today I’m going to write like Virginia Woolf or George Eliot." Instead, you have to find how you can write. I’m an English major and I read a lot so I have no illusions that my little books will outlive me, but the little books I have are a dream come true.

How does my work differ from others in the same genre?

If that genre is Lesbian Adventure/Romance, I don’t think I do differ. I aim for a kind of Lesbian Jason Bourne who gets into hair-raising situations where the outcome is important but on a local rather than a save-the-whole-world level. It’s also important to me to put Lesbians into the history where so often we’re invisible. You know we must have been there in all those other times and places, so if necessary, imagine us there. I was profoundly moved by the true story of Aimée and Jaguar, to hear their own voices emerging from the enshrouding depths of denial that we are indeed everywhere. My heart breaks to remember their tragedy while I also rejoice to know of their love. I'm also furious at the disrespect of so many people who felt compelled, speaking of either the biography or the movie, to say that Felice and Lilly would never have stayed together had Felice lived. Please show me one instance of this said of a straight couple who were ripped apart by the Holocaust.

But back to genre. I think all stories are pieces of myth, and mythology is what makes human lives possible and meaningful. So each time one of us adds to “our genre” we confirm our potential to live fuller and richer lives, and I like being part of that.

What am I working on?

I’m editing Requiem for Vukovar, the third book in the Refraction series, of which there are four books, and also working on an entirely new novel. The new book is proving difficult, but the story and character have a hold on me so I will try to ignore my doubts. I’ll just keep going, if not one page at a time, then one paragraph at a time.

How does my process work?

I was stuck a while back with a story that just wouldn’t move and someone suggested imagining the characters climbing a hill. That worked. Before they got to the top I had at least half the book. Sometimes there is a particular scene that is like a seed and whole pages, even chapters, germinate from that. In addition, I read a lot to get background facts and color to make my stories ring true. And I always carry a notebook because you never know when you’ll get a phrase or a piece of dialog that is just right and can make the story move ahead. I also go over and over a piece of writing because it's too easy to assume that everything in your imagination has turned into words, but going back after time can show what's missing. I try to be sure that what I've said is also really true or possible. And then I read to make sure that I have the most accurate word and the best sentence rhythm.

 If all else fails, I start cleaning house as a writing avoidance because you’ll either go back to writing as a cleaning avoidance or at least you’ll get the dusting or the dishes done. Win-win.

I have enjoyed thinking "outside the book" so thank you, Renee for tagging me. 

In turn I am tagging Goldie Award winner Anne Laughlin, the amazing author of Veritas and Runaway. Anne has a new book coming out this fall, Acquittal.

I would also like to tag Kelly Sinclair, another Blue Feather writer, and author of the wonderful Tantona Trilogy. Her latest novel is In the Now.

Gemstone: Sea-dark Sapphire