Summer Times: Colson Whitehead's "Sag Harbor"

NOTE: Some of the cited passages are NSFW.

I'm participating in a new book club, organized by one of my co-workers. I volunteered to host the July session, with the selection being Colson Whitehead's 2009 novel Sag Harbor. Before I get into the book itself, the book club meeting gently reinforced the fact that literary critics, whether of the armchair or professional variety, can stumble on intentions and do the occasional misreading. The most recent example is Janet Maslin's misreading of Patrick Somerville's This Bright River, which led the author to pen his own response, the much-shared "Thank You For Killing My Novel." When I was in college, I wrote several pages' worth of criticism on a short story (I've forgotten which one), only to be called to my professor's office to be told I had missed a key element of the plot, one so big that it rendered my paper completely wrong. As my stomach clenched, the professor smiled and offered me a chance to rewrite it. He told me a story about his first year of teaching: he was explaining a text to a full lecture hall, and a student raised his hand and said "I hate to interrupt, but that's not what happened in the book." The professor told me how embarrassed he was when he realized his student was right, that he had truly gaffed on the plot. So where am I going with this? I'll explain in more detail as I get into Sag Harbor's intricacies, but my opening statement to the book club was eventually proven to be the opposite of Whitehead's most likely intentions.

The novel tells the story of Benji, a black teenager who spends his summers at his family's home in Sag Harbor. His parents normally come on the weekends, giving him and his brother free reign during the week. It's 1985, Benji is fifteen years old, and he's determined to reinvent his image and personality. During the school year, he's one of the few black students at his prep school, but during the summer, he's part of a larger group of well-to-do black vacationers in the area. His friends are a cast of characters with unique personalities, but with traits that anyone can remember from their high school days: Marcus tends to get left behind on group outings; Randy calls shots based on the fact that he has a car; NP (with a hilarious nickname origin that would be too much to spoil here) grandly exaggerates his exploits; and so on. Benji observes the (mis)adventures and monotony of a long summer, but what seems like the foundation for a typical coming of age novel is rather a platform for careful details of personalities and teenage yearnings without any true dramatic climaxes or "payoffs." However, Whitehead's writing turns the mundane into fascinating studies of interactions. Through Benji's narration, the stories behind the actions and personalities of him and his friends become compelling. A good example is the youthful obsession with complex ritual handshakes:

"Yes, the handshakes were out, shaming me with their permutations and slippery routines. Slam, grip, flutter, snap. Or was it slam, flutter, grip, snap? I was all thumbs when it came to shakes. Devised in the underground soul laboratories of Harlem, pounded out in the blacker-than-thou sweatshops of the South Bronx, the new handshakes always had me faltering in embarrassment. Like this? No, you didn't stick to the landing: the judges give it 4.6 (Whitehead 43)."

Experimentation with language is also carefully, hilariously rendered:

"I said 'Shut up, bitch.' I'd been experimenting with 'bitch,' trying it out every couple of days. Going well so far, from the response (Whitehead 93)."

"You could also preface things with a throat-clearing 'You fuckin',' as in 'You fuckin' Cha-Ka from Land Of the Lost-lookin' motherfucker,' directed at Bobby, for example, who had light brown skin, light brown hair, and indeed shared these characteristics with the hominid sidekick on the Saturday morning adventure show Land Of the Lost. 'You fuckin'' acted as a rhetorical pause, allowing the speaker a few extra seconds to pluck some splendid modifier out of the invective ether, and giving the listener a chance to gird himself for the top-notch put-down/splendid imagery to follow (Whitehead 41-42)."

Benji and his brother Reggie survive during the week by working at an ice cream parlor and Burger King, respectively (Whitehead is spot-on in his descriptions of the drudgery and nastiness of summertime food counter work). The rest of the time is spent awaiting the parental visits on the weekends and trying to cram as much activity into the end of the week as possible. Some of these are specific (Benji accidentally gets shot in the eye during a BB gun war), and sometimes these are general. Throughout, Whitehead never wanes in at least a succinct sociological overview of the happenings, and even with mentions of The Cosby Show and New Coke, the events aren't exclusive to Benji's 1985. The teenage male dynamics can apply to almost any era or demographic.

"Summers we brawled. We were hungry for slight, for provocations big and small, and when one didn't appear, we trumped up charges. Turf. The more whole you were, the more turf you had. You could tolerate the occasional trespass. But if you had so little turf that you felt like you barely had any air? You told someone they had crossed a line they didn't know existed. Then you punched them in the face.
The first equations of manhood. Generally you punched someone younger and smaller. Common sense. A more even match was sometimes unavoidable. The standard fight was brief and awkward. A quick blow to the face sent you into your favorite stance, one that cannot be found in any boxing primer in the land, or sent you searching after a cherished martial-arts movie pose, Praying Mantis, Turtle Position (Whitehead 136)."

So where did my book club steer me in the right direction? Based on the other Whitehead novels I've read (The Intuitionist and John Henry Days), I was expecting, either metaphorically or explicitly, more explorations on racial issues, and Whitehead does touch upon these, but not in a way that makes them the driving forces of the novel. My original complaint was that Whitehead would present a racial or sociological issue, and then move on to another plot point. However, as I've come to realize: Benji is fifteen years old. Almost no fifteen year old has the capacity to ruminate on issues except on a surface level. Therefore, Whitehead has made Benji one of the most realistic teen characters in recent fiction. As a black citizen, he's obviously aware and sensitive to cultural issues, but his main fascinations are with sex, avoiding boredom, and how he's perceived to others. That's not to say that Benji's narration isn't touching or without complexities. His relationship with his father is fraught with tension. His father is tough, teaching Benji how to stand up for himself in the face of racism, but also excessively intense, getting into fierce arguments with his wife about, of all things, the purchase of the wrong kind of paper plates. Benji has a chance encounter with his older sister, a beautifully rendered scene that, while fleeting, is Benji's biggest "coming of age" moment, when he realizes his sister has no plans to visit the house while she's in town. Even followed up later by Benji's first experience being alone with a girl, the meeting with Elena holds the most emotional weight.

"'What are you doing here? When did you get out?'
'I just popped in for the weekend,' she said. 'I'm visiting Derek.'
Bobby checked out her friend, raising a skeptical eyebrow.
I said, 'Oh, I didn't know.'
'It was a last-minute thing.'
'When are you coming over? 'Cause I work--' I began to say. Because I didn't want to miss her.
'I'm probably not going to have time to make it over there,' she said. 'Probably. It's just a quick visit.'
'Oh. (Whitehead 237)'"

Being a series of small and less-small moments, Sag Harbor is a challenge to discuss and write about without resorting to the basic recaps of the various scenes. However, its simplicity is very deceptive, since every action has a direct link to either Benji's emotions and makeup or Sag Harbor's citizens and demographics. Its creation doesn't have the complicated setups of Whitehead's first two novels, but that doesn't mean its lacking; the novel asks some of the same questions in a different format. I tend to be wary of books or films that have a "coming of age" angle, since this is normally a fancy way of saying a given character loses his or her innocence/virginity/combination of the two. However, Benji remains relatively untouched by the end of the summer, despite some new understandings and experiences. Whitehead is smart enough to show that a single summer, despite its literary potential, isn't enough to truly change someone. Benji still has a lot of teen years left, as well as adulthood, and his keen observations are more for the reader's sake than his own. Sag Harbor also continues with what Whitehead occasionally did in John Henry Days, blending a literary work with genuine hilarity. That's a very rare balance, since comical writing is not an easy task. However, this work manages to combine hilarity, genuinely moving discoveries, and breezy summertime happenings into a work with fascinating cultural depictions. Whitehead is one of the most fantastically diverse writers working today, not out of a need to reinvent himself, but out of his ability to explore a myriad of topics in wildly different formats.

Work Cited:
Whitehead, Colson. Sag Harbor. Copyright 2009 by Colson Whitehead.

Ninth Inning Town: Nelson Algren's "Chicago: City On the Make"

For the last several weeks, I was mentally plotting an essay about Chicago's collective psychology in relation to the views on the professional sports teams and athletes. While this could very well be a piece I return to, a random reading and thoughts on other strains of civic psychology turned me in a different direction. Back in May, when Chicago hosted the NATO Summit, Mayor Rahm Emanuel made a telling remark that was supported and repeated by local media outlets. Despite the protesters and general apathy about the magnitude of the meeting, Emanuel stated that he wanted to show off Chicago as a "world-class city." This isn't the first time that this idea has circulated, and it always strikes me as odd and pointless, since Chicago is the third-largest city in the country, yet local politicians and boosters maintain a mentality of Chicago being a small town looking to make good.

More recently, Chicago was beset by a nasty heatwave and a rash of gang shootings (which seem to be always ongoing, sadly). A local news channel conducted interviews with tourists vacationing downtown, with some of them stating they would have had reservations about visiting had they been aware of the rise in violent activity. While violence can happen anywhere at any time, part of me was incredulous, since a lot of upper-class visitors remain in the confines of the downtown shopping districts and would never come close to venturing to the areas with concentrations of violence. Media outlets often conduct interviews with the people living in the dangerous neighborhoods, yet I found it strange to watch interviews with people who have only heard of the less-savory parts of Chicago. These thoughts were in my head as I recently read Nelson Algren's poetic 1951 exploration, Chicago: City On the Make. The slim volume contains a wealth of sociological views and assessments, and while not all of them still apply today, it's still an excellent example of how Chicago's image, from both the outside and the inside, maintains a distinctly unique veneer unlike other major metropolitan areas.

Algren shares stories of his own childhood and tells Chicago's tale from the points of view of the drunks, the working class, and the hustlers, the nameless folks who oftentimes share the same personal qualities as the powerful in the city's hierarchy. The working class people represent the majority in numbers, yet are more likely to be disciplined and reviled for doing on a small scale what the elite minority do on a bigger scale. This is Algren's take on Chicago's beginnings:

"They hustled the land, they hustled the Indian, they hustled by night and they hustled by day. They hustled guns and furs and peltries, grog and the blood-red whiskey-dye; they hustled with dice or a deck or a derringer. And decided the Indians were wasting every good hustler's time.
Slept till noon and scolded the Indians for being lazy.
Paid the Pottawattomies off in cash in the cool of the Indian evening: and had the cash back to the dime by the break of the Indian dawn.
They'd do anything under the sun except work for a living, and we remember them reverently, with Balaban and Katz, under such subtitles as 'Founding Fathers,' 'Dauntless Pioneers,' 'or 'Far-Visioned Conquerors (Algren 11-12).'"

Some of Algren's passages are deftly comic and still timely, providing an early, hip assessment of how to handle Chicago's citizens and outlook. A paragraph about the suburbs might appear to be an insult, and in today's Chicago, residents of the city will likely smile, at least inside, at this take:

"So if you're entirely square yourself, bypass the forest of furnished rooms behind The Loop and stay on the Outer Drive till you swing through Lincoln Park. Then move, with the lake still on your square right hand, into those suburbs where the lawns are always wide, the sky is always smokeless, the trees are forever leafy, the churches are always tidy, gardens are always landscaped, streets are freshly swept, homes are pictures out of Town and Country (Algren 26)."

To reference my opening paragraph, Algren writes about his youthful attachment to the Chicago White Sox, especially in the aftermath of the 1919 Black Sox scandal. What led me to ponder Chicago's attitude toward athletes came about after Kerry Wood's retirement from the Chicago Cubs. After years of brilliant flashes and too many injuries, I couldn't help but wonder if Cubs fans still clung too tightly to Wood's 1998 game against the Houston Astros. In that game, Wood's fifth as a major-leaguer, he tied a baseball record with twenty strikeouts in a 1-hit shutout. His arm was constantly injured by the sheer force of his pitches, and for years, Cubs fans kept hoping for a resurgence, with that single game defining Wood for the duration of his on and off tenure with the team. Algren makes a reference to White Sox pitcher Charlie Robertson, who, coincidentally, threw a perfect game in his fifth major league game and never made any true progress afterward.

"(And what became of No-Hit Charley Robertson, who stepped off a sandlot one afternoon to pitch that perfect game for the White Sox? What ever became of No-Hit Charley, who put twenty-seven men down on strikeouts and infield popups--and then stepped back to his sandlot and left nothing behind but that perfect afternoon when nobody in the world could get a hit?) (Algren 54-55)."

Dozens of other writers have made names for themselves by exploring the lives of the downtrodden and blue-collar. The difference with Algren, at least through the lens of Chicago: City On the Make, is that, in addition to seeming like one of the people, is his deft understanding of how Chicago reflects its citizens. While the same claim can be made for Bukowski's Los Angeles, Algren was a much stronger writer. His prose is poetic without being forced or obvious, and while the work is a creative rambling, there are no obvious embellishments or romanticizing. Algren's Chicago was a tough place, and much like today, while solutions for the problems are needed, it's much easier to put a positive spin on the good qualities, even with serious problems in the background. One can only imagine how Algren would have responded to Emanuel, who welcomed the NATO summit with only passing nods to the protesters and the need to call attention to the myriad of problems in the world. Much like today's world, some of the issues in Algren's time were best represented in creative acts. As he states in his 1961 Afterword:

"When the city clerk of Terre Haute refused to issue warrents [sic] for arrest of streetwalkers in spite of his sworn legal duty to issue warrants for arrest of streetwalkers, and instead demanded of the Terre Haute police, 'Why don't you make war on people in high life instead of upon these penniless girls?' the little sport performed an act of literature (Algren 81)."

In the Afterword, he also acknowledges the negative reception the book initially received, since people were more comfortable reading positive spins rather than grim realities. This is still represented in today's political world, when attempts to shed light on problems can be met with resistance or a desire to maintain the status quo. In the 1950s and today, higher ups would much rather put emphasis on Chicago as a tourist destination than thoughts like:

"The slums take their revenge. And you can take your pick of the avengers among the fast international set at any district-station lockup on any Saturday night. The lockups are always open and there are always new faces. Always someone you never met before, and where they all come from nobody knows and where they'll go from here nobody cares (Algren 67)."

Despite these sketches of the seamy sides of city life, there's never a question of Algren not living Chicago. Chicago: City On the Make isn't a tour guide, but in the midst of the stark honesty, there's a bustle and liveliness that Algren continually evokes, even in the saddest pages. It continually evokes the often-used phrase of "history being written by the winners," when in reality, there's much to be gained from accounts of the losers. Before mainstream activism, before Howard Zinn, and before the start of the Occupy movements, writers like Algren were doing their best to shed light on the masses, even if nobody (at the time) wanted to read or think about such things. This is where Algren's beautiful prose becomes most important. Look at the carefully plotted and detailed paragraph below. Again, it doesn't romanticize, but it genuinely sympathizes.

"The nameless, useless nobodies who sleep behind the taverns, who sleep beneath the El. Who sleep in burnt-out busses with the windows freshly curtained; in winterized chicken coops or patched-up truck bodies. The useless, helpless nobodies nobody knows: that go as the snow goes, where the wind blows, there and there and there, down any old cat-and-ashcan alley at all. There, unloved and lost forever, lost and unloved for keeps and a day, there far below the ceaseless flow of TV waves and FM waves, way way down there where no one has yet heard of phonevision nor considered the wonders of technicolor video--there, there below the miles and miles of high-tension wires servicing the miles and miles of low-pressure cookers, there, there where they sleep on someone else's pool table, in someone else's hall or someone else's jail, there where they chop kindling for heat, cook over coal stoves, still burn kerosene for light, there where they sleep the all-night movies through and wait for rain or peace or snow; there, there beats Chicago's heart (Algren 67-68)."

And finally, I'd like to offer cited remarks as a representation of the state of Chicago journalism. In a recent "revamp," The Chicago Sun-Times has started a terrible trend. Chicago "celebrities" are given a one page editorial to sound off on their pet projects and view of the city. While the money often goes to good charities, the paper lets it be known that they paid the writers an excellent sum for terrible writing. The first editorial was an awful, embarrassing op-ed by Jim Belushi, who commanded a $1,000 writing fee (again, donated to charity, which is noble, but I'm still shocked that he can command that kind of money from a supposedly struggling newspaper). Chicago is full of great, hungry writers who would do anything for that kind of platform. Instead of actively seeking out the thousands of voices in the city, the Sun-Times plays it safe with pointless celebrity ramblings. These Algren pieces are my way of protesting this.

"Therefore its poets pull the town one way while its tycoons' wives pull it another...(Algren 57)."

"It used to be a writer's town and it's always been a fighter's town (Algren 62)."

Work Cited:
Algren, Nelson. Chicago: City On the Make. Copyright 1951, renewed 1979 by Nelson Algren.

Moving Forward: "From the Back Of the Bus" by Dick Gregory

With the exception of some autographed titles and a few first editions, my book collection has little in the way of collector's items or fierce sentimental value. I'm big on margin notes, underlined passages, and freely lending books to friends with the full knowledge that it could be months until I have them returned. However, at last month's Printer's Row Lit Fest, I discovered a couple of vintage paperbacks published in the 1960s. They were encased in plastic and in pristine condition, and I spent a few weeks leaving them untouched. However, curiosity got the best of me, and my overriding belief in books being enjoyed rather than functioning as centerpieces won out. One of these titles was From the Back Of the Bus by comedian/social activist Dick Gregory.

I've been superficially familiar with his life and writings, and I was eager to read this particular work after I found it at the Lit Festival. My initial research shows that Gregory is still going strong as an activist, even with the occasional foray into conspiracy theories and sometimes outlandish ideas. The contents of From the Back Of the Bus weren't what I originally expected--the bulk of Gregory's writings are brief asides, jokes, and monologue samples, all grouped together by various subject headers (Ku Klux Klan, Miami, Hypocrisy, to give an idea of the mix). When discussing black writers, artists, and activists of the early twentieth century, the easy thing to mention is how revolutionary they were, and this is absolutely essential in regard to Gregory's work. He uses his humor to break barriers, but the overall atmosphere is one of an upfront challenge to the white audiences of the time. He mixes social commentary and says what a lot of people were likely thinking at the time, from both sides of the racial divide. The idea of comedic revolutions, especially in such a social context, is literally awesome, and considering the books publication in 1962, one can only imagine how shocking and ahead of the curve it really was. This is a fascinating artifact from the beginning of the Civil Rights decade.

The longest passage in the book is the introduction by Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, who gave Gregory his first break as a regular comedian at Chicago's Playboy Club. For all of Hefner's own criticisms and facets (spearheading the sexual revolution vs. Playboy continually objectifying women), he deserves credit for his early promotion of Gregory's material. Years ago, I remember a moving tribute from Gregory during the Comedy Central Roast of Hugh Hefner. In the midst of constant, tiring jokes about Hefner's age and sexual proclivity, Gregory moved him to tears by thanking him for giving him the chance and, most importantly, not censoring or asking him to tone down his material. As Hefner boldly states in his introduction:

"But more than this, Gregory has added a new dimension to the world of comedy. He is a black funnyman who does not get his laughs by fearing ghosts in B movies, rattling 'dem bones' or other such demeaning antics. He is another much-needed spokesman for his people, one who can reach the ear of the world in a way that makes it listen (18)."

This idea is important, especially in context. From a 1960s standpoint, one of the most vivid examples of breaking racial barriers in comedy was the banter between Sammy Davis, Jr. and the rest of the Rat Pack. According to writer Bill Zehme, the comedy, which was composed of seemingly racist jabs, was a way of calling attention to stupidity with stupidity. I find the Rat Pack comedy to be vastly overrated, and while Zehme has his points, I feel that Gregory's work was a much more authentic, real way of dealing with the views of that given era. From the Back Of the Bus isn't a work that lends itself to a capital-R "Review," but some of Gregory's passages are still very fresh and vivid fifty years later.

"Just for laughs, I've been thinking about buying one of those army rocket belts. You saw it in the papers--where you can jump fifteen feet up and land 120 feet away. Gonna take it down to Birmingham and tease Hell outta lynch mobs (Gregory 29)."

"All the record stores are playing that subversive song again...I'm Dreaming Of a White Christmas...It's kinda sad, but my little girl doesn't believe in Santa Claus. She sees that white cat with the whiskers--and even at two years old, she knows damn well ain't no white man coming into our neighborhood at midnight...be honest now. How many of you have ever seen a black Santa Claus? He ain't even black after he comes down the chimney--and he should be!...(Gregory 38)."

"You gotta realize, my people have never known what job security is. For instance, comes another recession and the economy has to tighten its belt--who do you think's gonna be the first notch (Gregory 59)?"

"I'm really kidding. Florida happens to be one of the most liberal states in the South. Why I can go to any place I like--restaurants, nightclubs, theaters--and I only have to do one thing. Change my name to Ricardo (Gregory 89)."

While I'm sure From the Back Of the Bus has its own following and has received its own attention despite the fact that I'm new to its existence, I was also fascinated by its combination of text and photography. The photos are the work of Jerry Yulsman, and the images tie very carefully into Dick Gregory's texts. These are not random images, but rather carefully constructed placements that give the work a layered, multimedia atmosphere. The images I've included, combined with the texts and captions, are a combination of mild humor and intense juxtapositions. The above image of Gregory in a fancy tuxedo and top hat, accompanied with the remark "Whaddya mean--I depreciate your property..." is still striking and yet again takes on increased significance with its era. It's impossible to tell whether these images are more from the imagination of Gregory or Yulsman, but I can imagine the two men sharing ideas of how to place the man in context with his surroundings, and, in effect, place his ideas within a then-contemporary context. My favorite image is the last one included, featuring a suited Gregory standing in a building that is either under construction or hollowed out from neglect. The connotations take on so many meanings, reflecting success in the face of failure, as well as Gregory's own journey of personal success and early substandard living. Yulsman's photos are not just random accompaniments; his closeups and long shots of Gregory are stunning, unheralded examples of striking photographic art, challenging stereotypes as well as engaging in hip, self-aware conversations about black consciousness and the still-ongoing struggles of race in America.

In some cases, these assessments would be a stretch, but in today's world, there is still a struggle with bigotry and reflections on race relations. While Gregory's words and Yulsman's photographs are still meaningful today, I feel the importance comes from placing them in their original context. While America still has a long way to go with its race dialogues, it's stunning to see these groundbreaking works of art and realize how they shook up and subverted the mindset of the 1960s world. In short, and without any hyperbole, From the Back Of the Bus still maintains its groundbreaking emotions, and I'm hoping it eventually finds its way back in print, not only because of its sociological weight, but also because of its terrific comedy and willingness to start dialogues that are still needed.

"On the other hand, if you've liked the book--don't tell you friends. Just take me to lunch when it's not Brotherhood Week (Gregory 125)."

Work Cited:
Gregory, Dick. From the Back Of the Bus. Copyright 1962 by Dick Gregory Enterprises, Inc. Photography by Jerry Yulsman.

(Breaking) The Rules Of the Game: Spike Lee's "He Got Game"

As a teenager, I religiously watched the NBA Draft every June, even though it tended to hold the same interest level as the MLB All-Star Game: there's a lot of hype, pageantry, and breathless conversations by the hosts and announcers, and I'd enjoy the first hour and a half before being sidetracked by other activities. I haven't had cable for a few years now, so the time I devoted to this year's draft was limited to web previews and recaps. By sheer coincidence, I ended up watching Spike Lee's 1998 film He Got Game the same evening as this year's draft. In favorable hindsight, I feel that I got much more out of the film than I would have gotten out of the back-patting idolatry of the NBA showcase. Lee's film is presented with setups of conventional cinema, but almost gleefully tears down these conventions in one of the most unexpectedly artful films of the 1990s. Admittedly, there are large chunks of Lee's filmography that I still need to catch up on, but I've noticed that even his lesser acclaimed films have at least a touch of creativity not seen with a lot of filmmakers. He Got Game has a devoted following among basketball fans, and as always, Lee is unafraid of tackling even the most sensitive subjects head-on.

The film opens with a beautiful jazz soundtrack and footage of various youths--male, female, black, white, urban, rural--shooting baskets in a variety of ways, slowed down to showcase the art and physics of a ball arcing into a hoop. It then turns into a drama, with an established scenario that is both standard and slightly implausible, but done in a straightforward manner so the viewer doesn't get terribly caught up in the logistics. Jake Shuttlesworth (Denzel Washington) is summoned to meet with the prison warden, who offers him a deal. He's prepared to let Jake out of prison for a week to connect with his estranged son Jesus (now-NBA veteran Ray Allen). Jake is given a letter of intent to fictional Big State University: if he can convince Jesus, the nation's best prep basketball player, to accept a scholarship to the school (an idea proposed by the unseen governor, one of the school's biggest boosters), Jake will receive an early parole. Carefully monitored by an ankle bracelet and two police supervisors (including a terrific performance by Jim Brown), Jake is set up in a Coney Island motel and is generally free to come and go, with the seemingly insurmountable goal of a.) getting in his son's good graces, and b.) getting him to sign the letter of intent.

Jesus is rightfully angry at his father for the murder of his mother (this isn't a spoiler in a sense; when the scene plays out in a flashback, it makes the situation more complex, but not absolving Jake of wrongdoing) when he was a child. He rebuffs Jake's attempts at a connection, and is dealing with a serious amount of pressure. Everyone, from his high school coach to national commentators, are anxious to know which school Jesus plans to attend, assuming he doesn't jump straight to the NBA. He's the primary caretaker of his younger sister (a beautiful acting job by Zelda Harris), along with his ineffectual aunt and uncle. His girlfriend Lala (Rosario Dawson) is pressuring him to meet with an influential sports agent, whom she claims is a family friend. Jesus is continually claiming that he doesn't know where he wants to take his basketball career, and even in the face of corruption and pressure, he's steadfast in his resolve to (no pun intended) do the right thing.

His natural assumption is that his father wants money, not believing that he's out of prison on a "work-release program" (as Jake claims). As the film progresses, the idea of money becomes even more intense. In one of the film's best sequences, one of Jesus's associates asks him if he's ready for the people claiming to love him because of his wealth. A series of faces are projected on the screen, imploring Jesus for a handout in between claims of love and respect, until one of the faces goes even further: a young woman claims "my baby needs diapers, I need Dolce & Gabbana and Chanel." This idea, while relatively unexplored in 1998 (I could be wrong; I was fifteen years old when the film was released), has taken on more sociological meanings today. In 2005, the NBA established a rule that all eligible draftees had to complete at least one year of college ball, forbidding players from entering the NBA straight out of high school. There was rightful controversy over this, as expressed in the film in two different ways. Talented high school players, wanting to get their families out of the projects and poverty, now have to complete a year of college beforehand. The allure of money, as documented countless times since, leads a lot of young black players to be overcome by an influx of "friends" and estranged family members looking for security. Later in the film, Jesus pays a visit to another school, and is treated to lavish inducements to play for them, including sexual enticements and a ludicrous pitch from the school's religious coach (a hilarious cameo by John Turturro). Even before the 2005 rule, the idea of a student-athlete was fragile at best, and now, with players choosing colleges with an eye on getting to the pros after a year, it's even more laughable. Lee manages to make these two financial aspects both singular ideas as well as intertwined realities. Another wrinkle presents itself during a meeting between Jesus and a white sports agent. The agent does everything he can, from flattery to illegal bribes, to make Jesus sign a contract and turn professional. The agent knows nothing about Jesus's true personality, and the scene is shot to show how the man is doing his best to exploit the young man for his own financial gain. In a still prevalent world in which poor black men face limited options, the idea of exploitation is intense. If Jesus had no basketball skills whatsoever, he wouldn't be getting the kind of attention he does. This idea is meant to be obvious, but the claims of personal affection and respect are done not out of any true meaning, but because of dollar signs.

When not trying to coax a conversation with his son, Jake is primarily alone. However, he forms a bond with Dakota, an abused prostitute living in the motel room next to his (an early role by Milla Jovovich). Lee sets up the interactions between Jake and Dakota carefully, lulling the viewer into an expectation of a confrontation between Jake and the pimp. Instead, Jake manages to borrow money to get Dakota off the street for one night. They have sex, and while there's a definite connection between the two, Lee doesn't opt for the obvious solutions. There's no fight between Jake and the pimp, and there's no illusion that he and Dakota have magically found true love. Rather, it's the portrait of a bond between two very troubled people, and it's rendered as touchingly as can be. Jake, in agony over his son's hate, needs an interaction, and it shows his genuine goodness in the face of his previous actions. This notion of Jake's bad qualities being born out of his inner goodness (and the other way around) is also shown in the flashback to his wife's death. After riding young Jesus too hard during a practice session at a nearby court, their fight dominoes into an intense confrontation at home, leading to his wife's death. Jake is at fault, but his crime spiraled out of hand. In He Got Game's most wrenching scene, Jake tries to revive his wife and doesn't try to cover up or absolve himself from wrongdoing. Watch the scene, and look at Denzel Washington's eyes as Jake tells his son to call 911.

Jake and Jesus do end up having their conversations, culminating in their final interaction (more like a showdown). Jake gives his son an ultimatum, to be decided in a brief game of one-on-one. While the outcome is important, the scene is tied together by Jake's final instruction to his son, telling him to get rid of his hate, which will make him no different than anyone else on the street, talent be damned. Jesus makes his choice, and the film ends with alternating shots of Jake and Jesus shooting baskets alone, with a final shot that mirrors the film's opening (at least thematically) and hints to the act that spearheaded their biggest fight years ago and also leaves the window open for both men coming to terms with each other and themselves. Does this sound sappy and not unlike any other film ending? It sounds that way, but Lee pulls it off very carefully. It also shows the therapeutic benefits of shooting baskets by oneself. When I lived in Seattle, I dealt with my writing frustrations on my apartment's basketball court, and almost always came away from it refreshed and with renewed focus. Lee takes the tired cliche of "sports as more than just a game" and elevates it to a metaphysical level.

He Got Game has been on my "to-watch" list for years, and it's arguably one of the best sports films ever made. There are no cliches or easy answers provided, and Lee knows the game of basketball so well as to share its importance to the people who love it most, with the shady outside aspects leaving the game itself untarnished on a simple, pure level. Even with the standard cinematic conventions, it's an art film on many levels. The decision to cast NBA star Ray Allen as Jesus was a move of genius, since there are so few scenes showing him actually playing the game. He has the look and demeanor of a young man being exposed to too much at an early age, and Allen's stumbles with acting (in a few scenes, his voice barely rises above a monotone, flat delivery) make his role that much more believable, and everyone, from the main characters to the smaller supporting ones, are cast perfectly. Most importantly, Lee takes the ideas of race and opportunity in America and gives them a new sort of complexity. The business world of collegiate and professional basketball have always had a divide between predominantly black and poor players and white ownership and management, and fourteen years later, He Got Game can still be viewed as a contemporary sociological commentary.

Minding the Gaps: "Farther Away" by Jonathan Franzen

Whenever the works or opinions of Jonathan Franzen come up in my conversations, I have a ready reply that I've shared many, many times: I admire the man's writing and devotion to a sometimes old-fashioned view of literature, but I tend to agree with his critics more often than not (and on a side note, the Twitter parody @EmperorFranzen is consistently hilarious). However, with these admissions in mind, I believe it shows my own evolution as a reader, to be able to balance and assess my own enjoyment of a person's writings and my respect of his critics. It's a far cry from the almost crazed fanaticism of my early and late teens in which I'd latch on to a "favorite" author and be so captivated to not realize his or her shortcomings. When Freedom was published in 2009, my own review (and a couple of follow-up essays) made mention of the critiques, ideas that were not against Franzen directly, but necessary wonders of whether or not the novel would have been as highly acclaimed had it been written by a female or minority author and not someone eight years removed from the massive critical and commercial success of The Corrections. In that time, Franzen has published a handful of essays (included in his newest collection, Farther Away) that at best engage American sensibilities of technology and community, and at worst make him come off as more cantankerous than normal. However, this collection has its share of bright spots, notably his attempts to call more attention to environmental issues.

The opening essay is carefully placed, and upon getting into it, the reader finds the unexpected soul of Franzen's arguments. The essay, a reprint of a 2011 commencement speech, starts off as a rant against technological advances and how dangerously close people come to "loving" their devices and social media outlets. However, the meaning of the speech is important, a plea to engage the world for what it contains, rather than engaging it via filtered "likes," gadgetry, and consumerism.

"Let me suggest, finally, that the world of technoconsumerism is therefore troubled by real love, and that it has no choice but to trouble love in turn (Franzen 6)."

"But if you consider this in human terms, and you imagine a person defined by a desperation to be liked, what do you see? You see a person without integrity, without a center. In more pathological cases, you see a narcissist--a person who can't tolerate the tarnishing of his or her self-image that not being liked represents, and who therefore either withdraws from human contact or goes to extreme, integrity-sacrificing lengths to be likable (Franzen 7)."

These ideas are manifested in a more concrete manner in his widely circulated piece "I Just Called To Say I Love You." In this, he acknowledges his critics (a few self-references to himself as 'Grampaw'), and explores our cell-phone transfixed culture through the constant, powerful phrase "I love you," constantly yelled into phones in public spaces when the three words are meant to be private, sometimes little-used declarations. Again, he starts off with a tone that balances on deplorable pessimism, but then works itself into a touching look at his family connections and our post-9/11 world. To borrow a phrase of his from the 1990s, what looks like hate is actually tough love.

"The cell phone came of age on September 11, 2001. Imprinted that day on our collective consciousness was the image of cell phones as conduits of intimacy for the desperate. In every too-loud I-love-you that I hear nowadays, as in the more general national orgy of connectedness--the imperative for parents and children to connect by phone once or twice or five or ten times daily--it's difficult not to hear an echo of those terrible, entirely appropriate I-love-yous uttered on the four doomed planes and in the two doomed towers. And it's precisely this echo, the fact that it's an echo, the sentimentality of it, that so irritates me (Franzen 150)."

My favorite pieces in Farther Away are the essays documenting Franzen's travels abroad, sometimes for adventure and bird-watching, but more often for journalistic reportage of how the world, through its human oversight and carelessness, is creating dangerous conditions for birds and wildlife. His trip to Cyprus, documented in "The Ugly Mediterranean," is a firsthand look at rebellious conservationists who often find themselves the target of poachers and lax government regulations on bird poaching. But it also turns into a fascinating cultural report, showing how poaching is tied to generations of men in the country who view it as a birthright and a token of masculinity. The writing is carefully precise, and with the exception of the emphasis on birds, Franzen himself tends to disappear, and he becomes an impassioned journalist.

"The Republic of Malta, which consists of several densely populated chunks of limestone with collectively less than twice the area of the District of Columbia, is the most savagely bird-hostile place in Europe. There are twelve thousand registered hunters (about three percent of the country's population), a large number of whom consider it their birthright to shoot any bird unlucky enough to migrate over Malta, regardless of the season or the bird's protection status. The Maltese shoot bee-eaters, hoopoes, golden orioles, shearwaters, storks, and herons. They stand outside the fences of the international airport and shoot swallows for target practice. They shoot from urban rooftops and from the side of busy roads. They stand in closely spaced cliffside bunkers and mow down flocks of migrating hawks. They shoot endangered raptors, such as lesser spotted eagles and pallid harriers, that governments farther north in Europe are spending millions of euros to conserve. Rarities are stuffed and added to trophy collections; nonrarities are left on the ground or buried under rocks, as not to incriminate their shooters (Franzen 86-87)."

Like any work of non-fiction, some of the essays are enjoyable than others, and Franzen does stumble on occasion. "Interview With New York State" presents a rambling history of the state as told through a series of "interviews" with Franzen and the state's PR handlers. The idea is quite funny, but after awhile, it becomes tedious, even though there are the occasional nuggets of historical facts. I find Franzen to be at his most humorous when he deploys the occasional use of folly and hilarity, instead of attempting to sustain it for an entire piece. I enjoyed the book reviews scattered throughout, but I haven't read any of the books he mentions, so I'm withholding creative opinions, but based on his past reviews of works I'm familiar with, his literary criticism is almost always on the mark. At the very least, his references gave me some new titles to add to my list.

There are two pieces about the late David Foster Wallace, and it's impossible to explore them without making mention of some of Franzen's biggest critics. Some people feel he's getting a lot of mileage out of his friendship with Wallace, or that he has claimed Wallace's suicide was done out for legacy's sake. The writings presented here are beautifully touching, and from what I got from them, it's the case of a writer being completely open and honest about a troubled friend, taking every conceivable angle, but never downplaying the depression that led to Wallace's final act. There's love and anger mixed together, the only natural reactions to such a loss. Franzen never sugarcoats his emotions, and to some, that might be viewed as needlessly harsh.

"He was sick, yes, and in a sense the story of my friendship with him is simply that I loved a person who was mentally ill. The depressed person then killed himself, in a way calculated to inflict maximum pain on those he loved most, and we who loved him were left feeling angry and betrayed. Betrayed not merely by the failure of our investment of love but by the way in which his suicide took him away from us and made the person into a very public legend. People who had never read his fiction, or had never even heard of him, read his Kenyon College commencement address in The Wall Street Journal and mourned the loss of a great and gentle soul. A literary establishment that had never so much as short-listed one of his books for a national prize now united to declare him a lost national treasure. Of course, he was a national treasure, and, being a writer, he didn't 'belong' to his readers any less than to me (Franzen 38)."

Being such a public literary figure, Franzen will always have his share of detractors, especially when he talks or writes in the opinionated ways we all tend to do. However, none of his own pet peeves originate from spite or general crankiness--he attempts to share his view of the world with highlights of the solutions and reasons for his demeanor. My mention of sometimes agreeing with his critics is in no way an attempt to soften or apologize for my admiration of him, which goes back almost ten years, when I devoured his literary essays in How To Be Alone. Like any artist, he's not perfect, both creatively or personally, but the complexities make him that much more accessible to me. Farther Away is full of thought-provoking material and excellent nonfiction narratives, and he never asks the reader to share his passions or agree with him all the time, but rather to allow him his opinions and then judge for themselves. My own championing of his literary criticism and overall writings likely won't sway anyone who disagrees with him, but I'm hoping to keep this in mind the next time I encounter a writer or artist who rubs me the wrong way, and continue to separate the writings from the public opinions. Love Franzen or hate him, but it's almost impossible to not be at least partially drawn by his subjects and goals.

Work Cited:
Franzen, Jonathan. Farther Away: Essays. Copyright 2012 by Jonathan Franzen.

Half Broke, Half Full: Jeannette Walls's "Half Broke Horses"

Over dinner a few weeks ago, I was recapping the plot and style of Jeannette Walls's Half Broke Horses for my best friend. I explained the "Author's Note" at the end, in which Walls explains how the combination of oral family histories and the occasional loss of precise details led her to present the book as a novel instead of a straightforward history of her grandmother's life. My friend, half-jokingly, asked if that was thanks to James Frey, and I couldn't help but wonder if he was onto something. Granted, Walls is writing about deceased individuals, and there is really nothing scandalous about the adventures and exploits presented, but has this work (along with its subtitle "A True Life Novel") been embellished to the point of a written necessity? I'm not saying this is a bad thing--at no point, especially with recaps of word-for-word dialogue, will the reader assume that everything in the book is a cold, hard fact. And I'm not accusing Walls of any literary wrongdoing: it's a novel, and she is entitled to her artistic license. However, the book's themes and plotting lent themselves to the occasional misstep, and I couldn't help but wonder if Walls was doing too much or imagined too little.

"This book was originally meant to be about my mother's childhood growing up on a cattle ranch in Arizona. But as I talked to Mom about those years, she kept insisting that her mother was the one who had led the truly interesting life and that the book should be about Lily."

Lily Casey Smith, Walls's grandmother, is the narrator of her own life story, from her rural childhood to her adulthood, with the emphasis placed on her self-reliance, insistence on personal toughness, and a desire to do the right thing even in the face of adversity or the narrow-mindedness of the times. Lily's mother is a God-fearing, pious woman, and her father, beset by a faulty leg and a speech impediment, an armchair philosopher and a constant executor of his first amendment rights, with a life devoted to lawsuits, letters to newspaper editors, and a fascination with phonetics. Lily's own worldview is established early, and sets a foundation for the rest of her life.

"The way Mom saw it, women should let menfolk do the work because it made them feel more manly. That notion made sense only if you had a strong man willing to step up and get things done, and between Dad's gimp, Buster's elaborate excuses, and Apache's tendency to disappear, it was often up to me to keep the place from falling apart. But even when everyone was pitching in, we never got out from under all the work. I loved that ranch, though sometimes it did seem that instead of us owning the place, the place owned us (Walls 19)."

Lily engages in activities that occasionally defy early twentieth century notions of womanhood. She learns how to break horses. She eventually becomes a schoolteacher, but travels to her various outposts alone. She questions the existence of God and urges her students to think for themselves and envision the whole world beyond their small town. She learns to drive a car and takes airplane lessons. She marries her second husband (her first not being who he seems) and ends up raising her family in Arizona. This is a generally chronological plot summary, but within each of these activities, what is Walls trying to convey? I had a conversation with a co-worker of mine (I read this book for a book club meeting that I was unable to attend) who made a valid hypothesis: it's conceivable that Walls was trying to provide fictional examples of the feminist movement through the story of her grandmother. While this is an incredibly noble idea, the fictionalization makes it a stretch at times. My co-worker cited this example: While working in Chicago, one of Lily's roommates is killed when her long hair pulls her into a piece of machinery at a bottling plant. Lily cuts her own hair and offers this assessment:

"I didn't expect to like my new short hair, but I did. It took almost no time to wash and dry, and I didn't have to fuss with curling irons, hairpins, and bows. I went around the boardinghouse with the scissors, trying to talk the other girls into cutting their hair, pointing out that even if they didn't work in a factory, the world today was filled with all manner of machinery--with wheels and cogs and turbines--that their hair could get caught up in. Long curls were a thing of the past. For us modern women, short-cropped hair was the way to go (Walls 74)."

As my co-worker pointed out, the early twentieth century feminist movement, like any social move, didn't happen overnight. Again, this is a novel, but this theme (among others) is blatant to the point of being slightly insulting to the reader. These themes are fantastic, but I found myself, throughout the course of the reading, internalizing the history and wanting to do some non-fiction research on the fictionalized ideas.

Walls shows narrative acumen in other areas, though. The place descriptions are some of the more evocative, vivid scenes I've encountered in recent readings. Her attention to detail, creates American small towns and cities that would be right at home in the fictional worlds of John Dos Passos: they feel like a careful combination of the realistic and the cinematic. Despite my critique of the overall motivation of Half Broke Horses, I found myself caught up in the various places where Lily ends up.

"When the train pulled into Chicago, I took down my little suitcase and walked through the station into the street. I'd been in crowds before--county fairs, livestock auctions--but I'd never seen such a mass of people, all moving together like a herd, jostling and elbowing, nor had my ears been assaulted by such a ferocious din, with cars honking, trolleys clanging, and hydraulic jackhammers blasting away.
I walked around, gawking at the skyscrapers going up everywhere, then I made my way over to the lake--deep blue, flat, and as endless as the range, only it was water, fresh and flowing and cold even in the summer. Coming from a place where people measured water by the pailful, where they fought and sometimes killed each other over water, it was hard to imagine, even though I was looking at it, that billions of gallons of fresh water--I figured it had to be billions or even trillions--could be sitting there undrunk, unused, and uncontested (Walls 69)."

As Lily grows older and her children become the age she was when the novel opened, her actions become even more far-fetched. She maintains her independent spirit, but Walls's attempts at comedic, outrageous scenarios feel forced and implausible, especially in a novelized context. Fiction allows for things that don't normally happen in everyday life, but in Half Broke Horses, they're presented so casually that the folly becomes slightly ludicrous. For example, after the death of her father, Lily wants to bury him on his ranch, and ends up transporting the body herself.

"In no time we were out of Tuscon and flying through the desert, heading east into the morning sun. I was driving faster than I'd ever driven before--cars going the other way flashed past--since I wanted to make sure we got back to the ranch before the body started to turn. I figured if I did get pulled over by any police, they'd cut me some slack once they eyed the cargo.
I had to stop a couple of times to ask for gas. Seeing as how the drivers might notice the body when they came out to siphon me their gas, I varied the pitch. 'Gentlemen,' I said, 'I got my dad's dead body in the back of my car, and I'm trying to get him home to be buried as quick as possible in this heat (Walls 198).'"

This situation, while potentially a true story, is just written in far too different a tone than the rest of the work, and that's likely what gave me the biggest pauses during my reading. Walls is a natural storyteller, but the oddity at times, especially late in the novel, feels like part of a different work. I never doubt Lily's history and personality as a strong woman, but Walls seems too intent on stretching the fictionalized elements. Her afterword stresses her research into her grandmother's life and the happenings in the various places mentioned, and I'm sure that she made sure to present a chronologically accurate portrayal. However, I feel the work would have benefited from one of two different directions. The first one, however, goes against the whole point of Half Broke Horses: it would have succeeded for me as a strict novel without any mention of her grandmother, since I would have gone into the work expecting a fictionalized story of an early American woman. Then, I might have been more inclined to accept the sometimes exaggerated happenings. The second direction is perhaps more plausible. Given Walls's background in journalism, I would have been eager to read a history of the eras and places mentioned, with sketches of her grandmother's life explored as context. Even if Walls didn't have all of the information or knowledge of what really happened, the work could have been a fascinating American history sketch alongside a personal family portrait. But again, these are just my own ideas, and they intentionally go against what Walls had in mind.

I didn't completely dislike the book, but I had trouble with the presentation. Perhaps I would have been better off starting with her debut book The Glass Castle, the preceding memoir that garnered a lot of attention before Half Broke Horses. Walls has admirable writing talent, but the combination of fiction and a desire for a biographical sketch seemed to be at odds throughout the work. If she ever publishes an original novel, I'll gladly read it and hopefully enjoy the story on its own merit without being caught up in the wonder of how it potentially balances with real events.

Work Cited:
Walls, Jeannette. Half Broke Horses: A True Life Novel. Copyright 2009 by Jeannette Walls.

Scout's Honor: "Girlchild" by Tupelo Hassman

Unless it was promoted in journals or on websites that I haven't visited, Tupelo Hassman's debut novel Girlchild seems to have gained its recognition by classic means, specifically word-of-mouth recommendations and a strong number of reviews on independent blogs and review sites. Hassman has published her fiction widely, yet Girlchild has been her major source of recognition as of late, and for good reason. It hasn't topped any bestseller lists, but its appreciation in the literary community has been strong and consistent. I tend to have problems with works of art that can fall into the "coming of age" category, but this work quickly manages to be so much more than something to which an easy label can be affixed. I'll get to its various components soon, but the novel, first and foremost, is above all a testament to great storytelling. With this in place, and with Hassman never wavering from her story, the work manages to go off in a few directions without distraction or emphasis taken away from its narrator. Girlchild had been on my list since its publication, and I was fortunate enough to receive a copy from the people behind the excellent short fiction site FiveChapters.com.

The novel is narrated by its protagonist, a precocious, keen young girl named Rory Dawn Hendrix. She lives with her troubled but loving mother in a Nevada trailer park called the Calle (originally Calle De Las Flores in better times, before the remaining letters were punched or weathered off). The various citizens in their midst are a community of sorts, but painfully isolated; acts of goodwill are few and far between, and done with an understanding of necessary payback. And some of the residents are severely troubled. Rory is an excellent student, wise beyond her years, and while not officially a Girl Scout, she has checked out the Girl Scout Handbook multiple times and attempts to exemplify its code (and her own honor) despite crippling setbacks. Hassman's expression of Rory's point of view is carefully crafted, balancing her innocence, her loss of innocence, and her unique way of expressing various ideas. The book is full of single, nearly perfect sentences that gave me pause in the best of ways. An early example is Rory's explanation of her family situation and how she and her mother came to settle in the Calle.

"Mama says my brothers were the only reason she'd not followed Grandma to the Calle years before, so when the boys left home to free fish from the ocean with their delinquent dad, we left Santa Cruz and the man who was my father in the rearview. Mama had come to Reno the first time years before that, when she was getting divorced from my brothers' daddy. She'd had to stay here for six weeks to make it legal, and even in that short time was able to find a job, so she knew she could find work here again, running keno or making change, and Grandma Shirley agreed (Hassman 7)."

The town is described with a wealth of details, but the most important aspect is its citizens and their actions. There's an uneasy similarity and unspoken tradition as to how the people act and interact. The occasional lawlessness is necessary for survival, and the instincts and rituals are written as a sociological case study, as if they couldn't be understood by outsiders despite its universal tone of hard times and general malaise.

"Most other rituals concern the Calle bartenders and involve recovering lost souls who come to the Truck Stop or other local drinking establishments to be revived after their shifts downtown have ended. Bartenders serve the workers as well as listen to the much-repeated stories of those who no longer work, whose dimmed eyes suggest their souls are no longer recoverable, their mouths collecting stubborn white spit in the corners despite how much alcohol is poured into them. Alcohol is often considered the root cause of both the loss and the revival of Calle souls, but in some cases, usually those of young men whose eyes are still relatively bright and whose mouths don't need wiping, it is understood that the bartender, if female and 'a fox,' may be the one causing the mood swings and not the spirits (Hassman 14)."

The chapters are a mix of long, narrative passages, recounts of social worker visits, a Supreme Court case, and very small chapters that foreshadow and/or explain a given character's makeup. These small chapters are crafted so well that they could potentially stand on their own as pieces of flash fiction.

"The estimated burn time for the average mobile home, top to bottom, aerial antennae to cinder block, drywall to stucco, is sixty seconds, and I do mean flat, aluminum to ash in the space of a 'Brought to you by' or 'Tonight at eleven.' And those sixty seconds are up even faster in homes whose only source of heating are propane tanks and woodstoves, the easiest sources of heat, because nobody needs your social for a gallon of propane and nobody checks your credit for a truckload of wood. Propane and kindling mean it's a safe bet that nobody from the County is going to come down and see how your cables hook up. Nobody checks to see if you're living right if you don't try to do it official (Hassman 27)."

Rory's first major problem is the sexual abuse she receives at the hands of her babysitter's father, a character ominously known only as the Hardware Man. Hassman writes these scenes with a child's point of view, therefore making the actions feel even more hideous than they already are. Such a monumental crime and loss of innocence could be the main plot point of a novel, but the fact that it's explained and "resolved" (as much as it can be for Rory's sake) before the book's halfway point is stunning. A socially negative way to explain this would be to say that a pedophile is just one of many problems facing Rory and her mother. But despite its devastating consequences, Rory, despite the threats, is able to expose the Hardware Man and begin the act of healing. Before this happens, the reader is presented tense, uncomfortable passages from an agonizing angle.

"...I pretend not to hear the adult talk that passes across the counter between the men of the town about certain women of the town as they pay the Hardware Man for their wood screws and drill bits. I also pretend like I never have to go potty. Because I don't need help, but the Hardware Man will want to help me anyway. And when he helps me, the lights go out (Hassman 40)."

Joanne, Rory's mother, is a fascinating character in her own right. Though told through Rory's eyes (and the occasional case file), we get her complete picture with nothing left out. She's tough, no-nonsense, and absolutely devoted to her daughter, whom she knows is the smartest member of the family, even at such a young age. Joanne has made her share of mistakes, attracts the occasional unsavory man, and is haunted by her youth. However, she's a strong woman, and her survival instinct and years of hard living help her guide Rory through childhood to her teenage years. Her devotion to her daughter is touching and beautiful, and presented without any needless sentimentality. In one scene, Rory's best friend moves away, and her mother comforts her.

"On the way home, Mama asks me if I want to talk about anything, like she's been asking me every night, and I don't think I do but then I decide to tell her.

'Viv moved away.'

And Mama does something she's never done before. She reaches over and takes my hand and she holds it all the way to our driveway. Her hand is bigger than I think and stronger than it looks but her voice is gentle when she says, 'It's hard to let go of a friend, R.D., even when it's for the best. I bet you'll see her again (Hassman 113).'"



Girlchild is written with a full spectrum of emotions. I've predominantly cited some of the more intense ones, but Tupelo Hassman has a gift for comedic dialogue and scenes. These are sometimes explicitly funny, but more often than not weighed with underlying ideas and metaphors. In one terrific passage, Viv assesses Rory's mobile home:

"She swings her arms and legs fast, pushing like me but harder. 'Your house could go places!'

'Nope,' I say, finishing my wings and getting up, careful not to mess my angel's skirt. I help Viv up, and we brush twigs off each other and check our work, two angels flattening the sage. 'It just looks that way (Hassman 74).'"

This is a novel, but it works as a collage of sorts. Again, Hassman crafts a mix of longer chapters and brief ones, as well as sociological word problems, explanations of the Girl Scout Handbook, and further histories of Rory's mother and grandmother. Without spoiling the ending, Rory grows into a teenager and has to overcome another monumental setback, and the work ends with the right amount of closure and vagueness as to where Rory will end up. It's difficult to pick Girlchild's strongest trait, but what I kept coming back to was its honesty and realism. Literary depictions of trailer park residents and down on their luck citizens are sometimes rendered with underlying stereotypes, but Hassman creates very real people, and this is all the more magnified by the fact that it's her debut novel. Her knack for dialogue and expressions are beautiful, and as I mentioned before, there are so many single sentences hidden within longer paragraphs that work as their own pieces of art. Rory and Joanne are two of the most memorable female characters in contemporary literature, and their determination gives the work the feel of an older classic. Since Hassman is so grounded in honesty and craft, it's not hard to imagine her creating future works in different settings (an urban drama, a story set in a different country) that feel just as vibrant. For a story that could have easily fallen prey to the missteps of a young writer, I'm still amazed at how advanced Hassman's prose is, and how she manages to explore a variety of styles and formats without detracting from what is a generally standard plot. Girlchild is one of the highlights of 2012, and while there's no way to say this without resorting to cliche, it marks the debut and growing awareness of a very talented artist.

Work Cited:
Hassman, Tupelo. Girlchild. Copyright 2012 by Tupelo Hassman.