The Sense of An Ending by Julian Barnes

Irene Latham and I have an ongoing conversation about memory…the unreliability of it, the collectiveness of it, the malleability of it.  We can hammer and add to a memory until it is dented or formed into a totally different shape, but I believe that we cannot break it completely.  Somewhere, the actual truth is out there.  It may not look like the truth we want it to look like, and we may prefer the story truth to the actual truth (dang you, Tim O’Brien!), but it is out there.

This all started back in March when Irene was visiting for our GPL Book Arts Project Writers Residency.  I had a copy of O’Brien’s The Things They Carried on my desk (I am on the committee for Gadsden Reads, Things was our choice this year), which Irene picked up as she came in and sat down.  We began talking about the truth of memories, the truth as it seemed to the person doing the remembering, and the use of the unreliable narrator who is forthcoming in admitting that their memories are not to be trusted…we talked off and on between school visits and lunch and school visits, but we never finished the conversation.  Such is the nature of that type of topic.

But, Irene threw the gauntlet down again last week by sending me an email that contained the following: “Just picked up THE SENSE OF AN ENDING by Julian Barnes. Very slim, won the Booker. First page: ‘This last isn't something I actually saw, but what you end up remembering isn't always the same as what you have witnessed.’”

So, I have to give kudos to Irene for knowing exactly which line of text would be the carrot to dangle in front of me.   I immediately found the book on our shelves and checked it out.  And then I read the book in two morning sittings because it was/is indeed a slim volume, and it is an intense and fast read.  It made me think long and hard about how we reshape our memory to fit the way we want our past, or ourselves, to be.  We make it so by telling and retelling certain anecdotes or narratives about ourselves, leaving out the parts that we don’t want others to know, especially the parts that would reveal us in a not so flattering light.  And if there is no one there to contradict us when we are telling/retelling our modified version of our life story, then all the better.  That would explain a lot about why we tear out certain pages of our old journals…or conveniently lose some journals altogether.  

“How often do we tell our own life story?  How often do we adjust, embellish, make sly cuts?  And the longer life goes on, the fewer are those around to challenge our account, to remind us that our life is not our life, merely the story we have told about our life.  Told to others, but-mainly-to ourselves” (Barnes, 2011, page 104).

“My younger self had come back to shock my older self with what that self had been, or was, or was sometimes capable of being.  And only recently I’d been going on about how the witnesses to our lives decrease, and with them our essential corroboration.  Now I had some all too unwelcome corroboration of what I was, or had been” (Barnes, 2011, page 107). 

“For years you survive with the same loops, the same facts and the same emotions…The events reconfirm the emotions-resentment, a sense of injustice, relief-and vice versa.  There seems no way of accessing anything else; the case is closed.  Which is why you seek corroboration, even if it turns out to be contradiction” (Barnes, 2011, page 131).

Well, dang it.  That was not a mirror I was expecting to look into.

So, read Julian Barnes’ The Sense of An Ending.  And, although I failed to reference her in this post but have in past blog posts on memory, read this interview withNatasha Trethewey on the Smartish Pace website.  Natasha has some interesting things to say about collective and contested memory.

Thank you, Irene.

"The Truth As It Seemed"

Since we are finishing up our 2011 Gadsden Reads, I decided last week that I would go ahead and get a jump on next year’s community read by skimming through the text of the book we chose for 2012. I was unable to skim. I read the entire book, because I couldn’t put it down. But I’m not sure that I was prepared to read Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried. I had heard amazing things about the book. That it was one of the most important pieces of fiction written about the Vietnam War. That it was a powerful account of what actually happened during the war. And that it was a statement to the nightmare of war.

While The Things They Carried is all those things, it is far more. O’Brian’s collection of short stories is possibly one of the truest statements to the chaos of the Vietnam War, the psychological struggles that our soldiers went through during the war, the psychological AND social struggles that they went through when they returned stateside. These soldiers had their morals and their lives jeopardized daily....no, hourly. It was a torturous existence they lived while fighting in Vietnam. Fighting an enemy that they could not accurately identify (How do you tell a North Vietnamese person from a South Vietnamese person? It would be like trying to identify a north Alabamian from a south Alabamian based upon looks…it is impossible to tell the differences in a split second, and through appearances alone), on a front that may or may not have really existed (guess it depends upon who you ask). I’m not saying that soldiers in other wars didn’t suffer the same kinds of atrocities during combat. They did. And they still do. But, I’ve just always felt that the Vietnam War was such a stinking unpopular war, such a stinking long war, such a stinking un-winnable war, that the veterans from that particular war got blamed for all of the badness, badness that they couldn’t really control. And that’s no way to treat somebody who fought for our country. But that’s just my opinion.

O’Brian’s style is approachable. He uses lists in the title story, something that reminds me of Whitman, and he uses a poetic style of repetition that keeps you from forgetting small details, details that make the stories more believable (or maybe the repetition is from the shock that he perhaps still suffers from all these years later). But O’Brian also employs the technique of the unreliable narrator. He reminds us over and over to be skeptical of war stories, thereby reminding us that he, the author, is not to be trusted either.

“In any war story, but especially a true one, it’s difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen. What seems to happen becomes its own happening and has to be told that way…The picture gets jumbled; you tend to miss a lot. And then afterward, when you go to tell about it, there is always that surreal seemingness, which makes the story seem untrue, but which in fact represents the hard and exact truth as it seemed.” (pg. 78 from the Penguin Books paperback version). “In many cases a true war story cannot be believed.”

The book is labeled fiction, but one cannot help but get the sense that it is not. The Things They Carried is similar to, but different from my other all-time-favorite, gut-wrenching war books (Johnny Got His Gun, All Quiet on the Western Front, and Song for Night). The details are a little more raw in Things, a little too real. O’Brian sets us up, and then rips the rug out from underneath us. Not that we didn’t expect it, ‘cause we did. Who wouldn’t expect something like that from a war novel? We find ourselves lying on the floor with the wind knocked out of us, feeling a little sick to our stomachs, wondering if the passage we have just read is real, or if it is an altered version of what happened somewhere. Doesn’t matter. O’Brien got it right. So we find ourselves staring at the blurb on the back of the book, a statement from the Milwaukee Journal stating, “This writing is so powerful that it steals your breath.” Damn straight, it does.

One of my dearest friends was a Vietnam Vet. A hell of a guy by the name of Randy Dover. He was a friend of my Daddy’s through the VFW Post 8600, so I met him when I was tagging along with dad one night. Once I turned twenty-one, I became a Ladies Auxiliary member, and although I didn’t have to tag along with Dad anymore, I still did ‘cause he had a knack for attracting storytellers. Randy was just one of many storytellers there. Daddy had warned me to not believe all the stories I heard there at the VFW, and for the most part, I heeded his warning. But still, I enjoyed listening. Just as long as the story was good, I didn’t care if it was true or not.

Randy had some stories. And they were good, too. He possessed a voice that was soft and Southern, that drew you in. He also possessed an astounding ability to talk a blue streak. Told stories all the time. Simple stories with the sort of exact and crucial details that made you lean closer, so you wouldn’t miss any of them. Some of the stories were real believable, like his story about the one time he flew a small private plane under the Broad Street Bridge without being found out by the police. Other stories were maybe a little less believable (but I suppose believable nonetheless, cause with Randy, there was always the possibility that it could’ve happened), like the story he told about the song he said he wrote while he was over in Nam, a song that he said he tried to sell back in the States, but lost the rights to through his own naiveté and through an unscrupulous music industry. The song, Without You (credited to Pete Ham and Tom Evans, and made into a huge Grammy-winning hit in 1971 by Harry Nilsson), was something that Randy would on occasion play at the VFW. To this day, I can’t hear that song without thinking of Randy strumming on his acoustic guitar, singing with his eyes closed (maybe because he didn’t want us to see how everything about that song hurt him)…

Then there were the times when Randy didn’t have a lot to say, but he spoke in volumes. I remember the one night I arrived at the 8600 a little later than I usually did. The place was buzzing about a fight that had just been broken up out in the parking lot. See, a fella and his date had shared some heated words in the bar, and once they stepped outside, the fella took a swing at the lady. Now, being the gentleman that he was, Randy evidently stepped in to defend the woman’s honor. Some more punches were thrown, as well as some fine words of negotiation on Randy’s part, and then the fight ended with all parties agreeing to not hit anybody anymore (at least for that night, and in that parking lot). I went looking for Randy to congratulate him on his persuasive mediating skills, and I found him shaken-up and pale, with blood on his white shirt.

“Where’re you hurt?!” I demanded, getting up in his business. “Nowhere,” he responded. “At least not nowhere physical.” His hands shook so bad, I ordered him a liquor drink from the bar to steady them. He was not hurt at all, he claimed. He was just having a hard time with the sight of the blood. Sometimes, he said, seeing blood would take him back to Nam, and that just wasn’t a place he really wanted to go to ever again. Not wanting to pry, I didn’t question him any further. His hands kept shaking, and after awhile of things not improving for him, he asked me if I would just go on and drive him home. I wasn’t quite comfortable with the idea of leaving him alone for the night, and he didn’t seem quite comfortable with the idea either. So, we sat in the car in his driveway for the longest time, talking about the kind of stuff you talk about when you’re trying to avoid talking about tough stuff. He never did talk about the war that night, but he did eventually tell me about how he would sometimes sleep walk and dream that he was back in the jungle fighting. That was the reason why one of his wives had left him. Evidently she had her fill of him late one night when the neighbors woke her out of a dead sleep to come and get Randy out of the backyard. He had been sleepwalking, and dreaming that he was fighting. The problem for the neighbors was that Randy was naked as the day he was born, and was brandishing a broom like an M-16 assault rifle. It seemed that the good folks of downtown Gadsden, including Randy’s wife, did not appreciate the situation for what it was: a soldier suffering from PTSD (even after all those years). All they saw was a buck-naked man with an assault broom within city limits…

Eventually Randy got settled down enough that night for me to feel okay to leave him alone. When next I saw him, which was about a week later, he was back to his old easy-going self. I don’t recall ever having another opportunity to talk with him about his personal experiences in the war, nor to question him for more details about the other stories he shared with us. I did get to see him months later at a VFW dance function they had over at Post 2760, but we didn’t get to talk much cause Randy made the mistake of asking me to swing dance that night. He spent half of the night fussing at me because I wouldn’t let him lead (I fussed back, explaining to him that my momma taught me to dance that way, and that if he wanted to dance with me bad enough, then he was just going to have to get used to being led…and that maybe, if he REALLY didn’t like the way I danced, he could just take it up with my momma), and spent the rest of the night trying to avoid dancing with me. Even eleven years later, when I settled back into Gadsden after living in a bunch of different places, and I looked Randy back up to help me with a music program I was working on for the library, I still didn’t ask him about his past. His health wasn’t great by that time, but he assured me with a squeeze on my arm that he was doing well and could help me out. I wish I had asked him then about the time he spent in Vietnam instead of talking to him about library programming and his new Harley. And now, well it’s too late, because Randy passed away a couple of years ago. But I’ll tell you something, we wouldn’t have had the prizes that we had for our School of Rock finale that year if it hadn’t been for Randy. See, he used his persuasive skills on a Washburn rep to score us a beautiful new guitar to give away…

Human memory is a strange thing. I’m inclined to agree somewhat with Tim O’Brian in the truth of a story being the “truth as it seemed.” I’ve had many a conversation about storytelling, and how everyone’s perceptions and recollections are different. Even as an adult, I’ve written journal entries about things that I somehow have ended up altering somewhat in my mind later down the road. I have to go back and check my facts sometimes. Sometimes I just stick with the way I remember it happening. Perhaps it is a bit of the collective memory of which poet Natasha Trethewey has spoken. We, along with others, witness something. We recount our stories to each other, and we end up sharing and meshing our memories, but they become our own. My memory of incidents from my childhood are made up not only of what I remember, but also of bits and pieces of recollections given to me from my mother, father, sister, grandmother, grandfather…you get the picture. It all gets mixed up in the brain, and then it becomes one…

So, even though this post has been terribly long, I have one more thing to say. Although the song Without You is credited to Ham and Evans, I prefer to believe that my friend Randy Dover wrote it. Nobody will ever know the truth of whether or not it was swiped from a young soldier from Alabama who fought in the Vietnam War…And, as I’ve stated on more than one occasion, and about many different things, I prefer the not knowing to the knowing.

They Grow 'em Big In Calhoun County...

Met up with Rick Bragg last Friday. He was in town for our Gadsden Reads kickoff. We’re reading his book Prince of Frogtown, and we’ve gone about as crazy for his book as we did four years ago for Daniel Wallace’s Big Fish. Actually, we’ve gone crazier. You see, Rick is a local boy who done good. Came from tough Calhoun County stock (our neighboring county), went to college at Jacksonville State University (where I matriculated for my undergrad…Go, Gamecocks!), worked his way up through the newspaper world and became a New York Times best selling author…many times over. Oh, and I forgot to mention that he won this prize called the Pulitzer. That’s a big one, right? Just kiddin!’ Hah!

Anyway, the Gadsden Reads Committee picked Rick’s book The Prince of Frogtown because it was a book that spoke to our community, to the heart of our town. In Prince of Frogtown, Rick introduced us readers to his daddy, a charming, hard drinking, hard living man who grew up in the mill village of Jacksonville, AL. This was the same Daddy who, in All Over But the Shoutin’ ran out on his wife and kids, little Rick being one of those kids; a man we (and Rick), at times, didn’t trust. There's a whole lot more to the book than just Rick's daddy, but I think you should read the book rather than let me tell you about it.

So why did the book speak to us? In one word:

Memories.

Gadsden’s got a mill village, and our mayor, Sherman Guyton, came from over there. So did brother and sister Mike Goodson and Glenda Byars, and a host of other interesting characters. Mill villages are about the same all over. There’s good, and there’s bad in each one, depending upon whom you talk to. Some folks, like Glenda, remember their mill village of the 50s as a real sweet and innocent place, a place of starched crinolines, poodle skirts, surreptitious hand-holding with your sweetheart, Magic Burgers with malt shakes, and the Del-Vikings singin’ Come Go With Me. A place you’d never want to leave. Other folks remember their mill village in a less than innocent light. For them, their mill village was probably more like a place of tough and unhealthy work, practically owing your life to the mill, scraping and saving to have a (drink) life. I’d imagine that when they turned on the radio, they’d listen to songs like Hank Williams’ (big daddy, not junior) Your Cheatin’ Heart or Johnny Cash’s I Walk the Line. I suspect that they’d be looking for the closest exit out of their mill village…

Everybody there Friday night at the event was connected to Rick in some shape or form, or at least in their minds they were. “I used to live down the street from his momma.” “We went to the same high school…” “I used to pump gas for him…” I heard so many different stories as I made my way through the crowd, talking to folks, welcoming them, thanking them for being there. Everybody was real down home and friendly, just like Rick. I knew quite a few of them from the library. The others I didn’t know, but I can safely say that I know them now. That’s just the kind of night it was. Strangers huggin’ strangers, and folks makin’ friends.

Rick inspires familiarity, accessibility. Rick is of the people. He’s not a stuffy academic. But he sure as heck teaches Creative Writing at the University of Alabama. Rick’s got the stuff that writers, especially Southern ones, will go to the crossroads at midnight to bargain with the devil for. I know this for a fact. I’m not talking out of school when I say that I’ve personally watched at least one writer up close as they tried real hard to capture just that stuff. They got real close, maybe even finalized their own transaction with the devil (I didn’t stick around to find out, but I have my suspicions). But it’s not all about the fluff of barbecue sauce, preaching on the mount and the Civil War. I feel that you’ve either got it or you don’t. You can work at it as if it were a job, and hone that edge, but you can’t fake being a part of that public of which you write, especially the part of that public you call your people. Those people can smell insincerity and falseness like they can smell a pole-cat under the house. And when they’re done with you, they’re done. It’s true. You all know it is…you seen it before…

My daddy was at the event Friday night, sitting in his folding chair, eating a free Chick-fil-a sandwich, having a coke (translation: soda of some sort), and waiting for Rick to show up. Dad’s read more of Rick’s books than I have. He thinks a lot of him. I have my suspicions that they may be cut from the same cloth. About the time Dad finished eating his sandwich and I had begun eating mine, I noticed a discernible change in the atmosphere. That could only mean one thing. My eyes scanned the crowd and, yes sir, there was the man himself. I leaned down to Dad and said, “He’s here.” Dad held real still like a hunter not wanting to scare a deer away and asked, “Who?” “Rick,” I replyed. “Where?” Dad’s eyes squinted a bit as he looked off through the throng of people. I leaned in further, “He’s that big fella over there with beige shirt, directly in front of you, but across the way.” Dad spotted the man of whom I spoke. “Him? He’s too big. You sure that’s him?” “Yep. Dad, he’s a farm boy. You know they grow ‘em big in Calhoun County.” “Well, I never thought he’d be that big.” We just watched as Rick ran a hand through his loose hair before folks started coming up to welcome him. He was on. He made his way to the gazebo to address the crowd…

Later, after Rick had spoken for about five minutes at the mic before turning it back over to our favorite blue grass band Foggy Hollow (which, for the evening, was called Froggy Hollow), Dad was packing up his folding chair and readying to go home. Rick was trying to seat himself at the table we had set up for him, and a hundred or more people were trying their hardest to NOT form a line in front of him. They wanted time with Rick, and by God they were going to get it, one way or the other. Rick knew that, that’s why he kept it short and sweet at the gazebo. He knew that he would give personal time to each and every person there that evening. And that’s exactly what he did. I can’t tell you how many hours the man spent there on that folding chair, smiling, talking, listening and signing, but it was nightfall before he got up to head out.

We had packed up all the tables, given away all the free Chick-fil-a sandwiches, and were just killing time near the courthouse when I saw Rick walking towards his car. He didn’t notice as I observed him. He looked beat and ready to go. I slipped away towards him with my right hand outstretched to thank him. The minute he saw me, he perked back up, and took my hand. He was back on. “How ya holdin’ up?” I queried. Realizing who I was, he shook my hand and then shook his head, “I’m wore slap out.” He was the real Rick. “You stayin’ in town, or are you headed somewhere tonight?” I asked. “Headed to Mobile, but just gonna try to get to Montgomery.” We chatted a bit more about traveling as we headed towards Bobby, who was trying to fit fifty-leven Chick-fil-a warming bags into his vehicle. It was time to say goodbye.

While we were standing there shooting the breeze, Bobby mentioned the fact that there had been a personal biographer there in the crowd, a fellow with a video camera trained on Rick at almost all times. Rick responded with an incredulous, “Yeah! They took a look at me a couple of years ago and said, ‘He don’t look so good!’ They musta been thinking ‘He’s gonna die soon, so we’d better start recording something now…’” Rick just half snorted and shook his head. About that time a slew of Rick’s cousins came walking out of the trees. The leader was a long-legged brunette beauty. She was followed by a thin, tough-looking fellow, and they were followed by what looked to be a passel of kids, all of them boys. One boy, an especially solid looking one, puffed up his chest at the others, looking to challenge them to a fight, or something. He was so cute and fierce looking, taking a stand like that, I started laughing at him. A long-legged older woman, probably the long-legged brunette’s momma, came walking up with a pack of cigarettes in one hand, a lighter in the other. She noticed me watching the little ones, the one in particular. “What’d he do?” she half-jokingly demanded (sounded like she’d had to say that on many occasions before). “Aw, he just come up so tough, like he was gonna clean house,” is all I said. “Yeah, he’d do that,” she affirmed. We stood around for a bit longer, listening to the cousins talking, then called it a night. Last I saw of Rick, he was standing there next to the parking lot, family gathered around him, a loving but tired king, holding court.

Speaking of frogs (isn’t that what we were really talking about?). We’ve got more frogs than you could shake a stick at around here at The Bungalow. Lots of little ones, small green tree frogs, and even smaller mottled brown original recipe frogs. I saw one the other day while I was digging in the pet cemetery. It was no bigger than the nail on my little finger. And while I was watering the sun-burned hydrangea (which is coming back, I may add), I spied a tiny little frog napping in the curl of a new leaf. He was as green as a Granny Smith Apple, and as unconcerned about big ole’ me as could be. I like the little guys. They are nice company. And they were certainly here before Slim and I, so I feel that they have the right of way. There are two of them on the back deck right now…one under the dusty blue aardvark, and one clinging to the edge of the bistro table…