The Beginning: a basically non-factual, semi-autobiographical account
Part I
I try not to think about the next episode too often—but, since it’s integral to the explanation of my beginning, I’ll start at the beginning; let me preface it by saying that it was all my father’s fault.
My mother was a very constant woman—her mind was a steel trap; you’ll be wondering soon how I have such a detailed account of that night—my mother didn’t spare the details. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
It was warm the February of 1987 and the normally snow-frozen tundra of the Midwest United States was melting at an alarming rate—the basement apartment my newly married parents were renting at the time began to slowly give way to the rising water outside; it started out as small leaks around the windowsills and moved quickly to squirting spouts of gutter-water.
My father liked to yell at the television; a confessed left-wing working man, he would intentionally watch the one notoriously conservative news station, just for something to bitch about. One afternoon, while my father was watching coverage of the flood in the Midwest from “those damn neocons,” he felt something cold hit him in the back of the head.
Now, to clarify, my father was an architect, and he was a snob about anything that he knew more about than you did; though, to be fair, he did know more than anyone I had ever met—unlike my mother’s steel trap, my father’s mind was more like a booby trap.
He was into eastern religion, and, being an architect, it only made sense that he was a snob about feng shui. After weeks of my father using terms like astro-cartography and bau biology, and calling himself the feng shui shien shang, to talk my mother into not moving his leather recliner beneath the window, because it disturbed the house’s fu wei on more than one level, my mother inevitably won the fight; my father came home from work one day, and, noticing the location of his chair, sat in it dejectedly all night without yelling a peep at the TV.
So, again, my father felt something cold hit him in the back of the head; turning around, he took a shot to the face and knew exactly what the problem was. He looked around quickly for something to plug up the, so far, small hole in the sill—maybe there was a piece of gum in his wallet that he could chew up quickly and stick into the wall.
Being a newlywed, my father still carried some remnants from his former bachelor’s life around with him—and laughed to himself when, thinking he had found gum in his wallet, he instead pulled out a *****—(as you know, it is a singular stroke of eloquence “not to mention the name of the thing, when you have the thing about you in petto, ready to be produced”)—he figured this would do the trick.
He fumbled with it—old habits die hard, he thought—and stuck the plastic into the hole between the wall and the sill; he quickly realized, however, that this would do him no good. The plastic rapidly filled up with water, making an obtrusion shaped like a water balloon stick out of the wall; he hastily removed it from the hole and shoved it in his back pocket—if my mother were to find it—what would she think?—he had to hide the evidence.
Eventually, my father found some construction putty to clog up the hole, and made no mention of the leak to my mother when she returned home that evening, in case it made her upset—because it was Saturday, and he could not have his plans being upset on Saturdays. You see, on Saturdays, my mother usually either went shopping—which put her instantly into a good mood—or paid bills—which put her instantly into a bad mood, considering her money had been spent shopping the Saturday before. This Saturday happened to be a Saturday that my mother shopped; if my father played his cards very carefully all day—well, let’s just say he could play his cards later that night.
A year or so earlier, on a Saturday night in November, my mother came home to her boyfriend of three years. She walked in to hear “Maggie May” on the turntable, my father serenading her; not only was my father a trained singer and a great cook, he was a hopeless romantic: in the words of Rod Stewart, “Maggie, I wish I’d never seen your face”—this is how I imagine my father’s speech would have gone if the words hadn’t already been stolen and put into a song. This is how their relationship was—oh, and she said yes.
My mother got home on that fateful night in February 1987 to my father singing, “All you did was wreck my bed and in the morning kick me in the head”—I think he could have chosen a better line from the song, but that’s just how these things work; and for my mother, that’s all it took—Stevie Wonder said it best: “signed, sealed, delivered, I’m yours;” and anyway, there’s nothing a little red wine can’t fix.
Predictably, red wine leads to other things, which lead to other things—and, long story short, and because I’d prefer not to get into specifics—for your safety and my sanity—the only insurance plan available was a slightly punctured water balloon; and everyone knows that anything leaky doesn’t have to travel far.
Thus was my beginning, on a Saturday night in February 1987—I was a mistake—but I don’t dwell on it.
Part II
Tita Chico, an Eighteenth-Century English Literature scholar, defines literary microscopy as “a dependence on the minute particular as well as an unresolved relationship between the particular example and the general principle it is said to prove.” This is one of the defining characteristics of Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy—the narrative is a maze of conscious wanderings, leading the reader along paths that, at the time, don’t seem to be leading anywhere, but which will eventually meet up and resolve. “The Beginning” explores these alleyways of consciousness in a modern setting, and sets itself up to share many of the same characteristics with its predecessor.
“Two questions,” Chico says, “haunt the text: how do the details of daily experience make up a life, and how can the novelist hope to include all the details that produce this life?” The details of daily experience that make up a life in Tristram Shandy are the little things—the most minute details that are generally disregarded but that make up the significance of the whole. The smallest divergences within the novel are meant to be able to stand alone, but come together to create the narrative plot. “The Beginning” takes all these cues, along with some of the predominant literary devices that Sterne uses, to create an imitation of the original.
The dashes and semi-colons that are used in the essay are completely reflections of Tristram—they give a sense of streaming consciousness, a lack of time to stop and think things through at the end of a sentence. This makes the narrative technique even more like a maze, a challenge to “learned wit.” In addition, digressions fill the essay and the book, leading the reader away from the conventionality of a book, and toward the divergences of everyday life.
Sexuality is not only present throughout the book, but is the driving force behind the main plot. H.W. Matalene says, “Tristram Shandy specifically ridicules our culture’s tendency to reduce all of life, metaphorically, to sex.” The essay, therefore, took the same elements of sexuality and used them to first create a basis for the plot, then continued to use minute references throughout the text; e.g., the “insurance plan.”
Hobby-horses can be considered a type of intercourse, while all of life is reduced to sex—in “The Beginning,” the father’s is feng shui and the mother’s is shopping. Each interacts with his or her own hobby as though it were a relationship. “If a hobbyhorse is a child's mock tool to be manipulated by the hand and body for a child's pleasure or diversion, then in Tristram Shandy, it becomes an adult's tool with a similar purpose (Mottolese).”
The minute, sometimes veiled details, in both the book and essay, work together to create a narrative that is stream-of-consciousness. The focus on sexuality and the “hobby-horse,” as well as the unconventional use of literary devices, create an attention to detail that is necessary for the writer to create a maze within the text. “The Beginning” is an imitation, in these specific ways, to the style and content of Tristram Shandy.
No comments:
Post a Comment