"It Was A Hunger In The Back Of The Throat, Not The Belly, An Echoing Emptiness That Ached For The Release Of Screaming"

In these terrible, fucked up times, people use different forms of entertainment as escapism, often veering towards easy-going, light-hearted topics (see for example, the rise of musicals during the Great Depression). So my goal has been to tune out the world, shutter myself in, and read books. So maybe reading a book about child abuse was not the wisest selection as a means to that end. 

But in spite of the horrific topic of the novel, Bastard Out of Carolina was one of the most heart-wrenching, riveting, and well-written books I've read in a long time. I couldn't put it down and blew through it in a week and a half. 

Bone is a young girl growing up poor in South Carolina in the late 1950s with her mother (Anney), sister (Reese), and stepfather (Daddy Glen), as well as a large extended family on her mother's side (I lost track...3 uncles and 5 aunts I believe, and a boatload of cousins). She was born a bastard, without the name of a father on her birth certificate. Her younger sister's father dies in a car accident and then her mother marries their stepfather when she was only about 7 years old. Glen has a very obsessive love for her mother. Initially, he wants to be a good father for the 2 girls, but after her mother loses their son in childbirth and can no longer have children, his initial good intentions turn to scorn and hate, focused squarely on Bone. 

The book contains very explicit descriptions of the physical, sexual, and emotional abuse that Daddy Glen inflicts on Bone and the majority of the book details the trauma she exhibits as a result and all the ways she acts out as coping mechanisms. I took a class in college about psychology in literature (including works like Madame Bovary, The Trial, Notes From Underground, etc) and while I was reading this book, was continually thinking that this could totally be a portrait of the psychological repercussions of child abuse. Because Bone's behavior changes drastically after the abuse begins. She goes through a phase of religious fervor, she begins masturbating and having sexual fantasies that are often very violent and/or incestuous, and she continually makes up very violent, horrific stories that she shares with her cousins. All of these things are intertwined with her shame and self-loathing and she constantly has all of this repressed rage that she wants to take out on so many people who aren't necessarily the object of her fury (a friend, her stepfather's family, the owner of the local Woolworth's, etc). 

And her relationship with her mom is probably the most complicated of all. She loves her mom beyond words, and wants to do anything to not upset the balance of their family. She can't/won't tell any family members what is going on. When she's taken to the doctor for a broken collarbone, the doctor is furious at her mother after seeing many healed broken bones and injuries on Bone's x-rays, knowing that they are due to physical abuse. And even then, knowing that the doctor knows, she refuses to admit it to even him. Even though her mother loves her abusive stepfather more than her and doesn't do enough to keep her out of harm's way, all she wants is her mother's love, even if that means suffering the way she does. It's a horrible, fucked up dynamic that is enough to break your heart. But is probably the same story of so, so many children who experience the same thing.  Too young to fully understand what is happening to them or the complexities of the adult relationships, and all they want is to be loved, not hurt. 

In spite of all of this, the connections with her mom's extended family is also a huge contributor to who Bone is and who her mother is. While they are what would be considered "white trash," they are all so unconditionally there for each other. Whether it's in simple things like having each others' kids over for a night or two, to helping in more serious moments like Aunt Ruth dying of cancer, Aunt Alma having a mental breakdown, or the uncles vowing revenge on Daddy Glen when they find out he has been hurting Bone. There is nothing they won't do for each other and while they struggle with being poor, or marital troubles, or trouble with the law, their connections to each other are what ground them all and at least gives Bone some love and support to rely on. 

Dorothy Allison's writing in this book was also quite brilliant. You can tell that it is written from Bone's point of view after she has had time to process the things that happened to her, so there is more self-awareness as well as a very perceptive eye on who the adults really are as people. She sees things in peoples' eyes that tell her what kind of person they are, which helps her navigate their world. She is not naïve, but at the same time, there are often things that transpire among the adults that we as the reader understand, but that Bone as a young child does not. It's quite a remarkable way to tell the story that gives the reader a perfect view into what Bone is experiencing and also seeing so much more that is going on in the bigger picture.

So while it may not have been wise to read a novel of such heavy subject material in the middle of a pandemic and the middle of unprecedented political drama, I can't say enough about what a formidable, exceptional book this was. And somehow, I didn't finish the book feeling depleted or overwhelmingly sad (even though it didn't end on a hopeful note in any way). It just seemed like a powerful statement that reminded me of what a remarkable emotional impact books can have when done well. 

After that, I'm taking a change of pace and heading into The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway. I haven't read Hemingway since high school, and while I'm only about 35 pages into it, I don't know if I'm all that impressed yet. But I'll reserve judgement until I get through the entire thing (which should be relatively quick since it's pretty short and not dense reading). So I'm off. 213 to go. 

 

"Had She Actually Believed That She Could Plant A Seed Of Liberalism In The Blank Wall Of Mediocrity? How Had She Fallen Into The Folly Of Trying To Plant Anything Whatever In A Wall So Smooth And Sun-Glazed, And So Satisfying To The Happy Sleepers Within?"

Main Street was published in 1920 and quickly became one of the best-selling novels of its time, so much so, that it was often one of few books that rural folks from small towns with little money or access to books would buy for themselves. Maybe they didn't quite get that this book was a satire and didn't exalt the small-town life but parodied small-town life as small-minded, shallow, and stagnant. And oh so much worse. 

There were DOZENS of times while reading this book that I was just startled at how little has changed in 100 years. There were sentences in this book that could have been plucked out and dropped in a modern-day conservative news site and not even know the difference (see below). And it was quite alarming and nauseating. 

The book is about Carol Kennicott, a young college graduate who spent her time in larger cities like Minneapolis/St Paul and Chicago, but meets and decides to marry a doctor from a small town in Minnesota. He paints for her a glorious picture of idyllic prairie town living in Gopher Prairie, and oh boy, did he steer her wrong. The town is dumpy and ramshackled, and everything looks the same with no beauty or style or even effort to have any kind of aesthetic nicety. But somehow, everyone who lives there thinks the town is the most beautiful thing to ever grace any country anywhere (even though the vast majority of them haven't ventured  much beyond Minnesota). All Carol hopes for, is to find some kind of intelligent conversation about art, politics, and big ideas and to try to make some kind of positive change to encourage the other townspeople to aspire to something more interesting, different, and thoughtful. 

But despite her many many many best efforts (joining a couple different local social clubs geared towards "intelligentsia", organizing a play, joining the library board, having a very atypical party), the town is not havin' it. And she becomes a bit of a pariah who the town relentlessly gossips about and looks down upon for thinking that she's so uppity and better than everyone else. And the worst part is that Carol buys into it. She is so overwhelmingly concerned with what everyone thinks of her and worries about her reputation. She vacillates manically between throwing herself into trying to do something to enlighten the town and then being miserable and despising everything about it. 

After a while, this constant back and forth that Carol goes through gets a little frustrating and redundant (if I've ever wanted to reach into a book and shake the shit out of a character and say, "Just shit or get off the pot sister!", I would have). But more than that, I wanted to scream at all of the small-mindedness of the townspeople. And as previously noted, the fact that things HAVE NOT CHANGED in this country in 100 years is just astonishing. 

Let's take a little sample of some quotes as examples of this, shall we?

"We're all in it, ten million women, young married women with good prosperous husbands, and business women in linen collars, and grandmothers that gad out to teas, and wives of underpaid miners, and farmwives who really like to make butter and go to church. What is it we want - and need? Will Kennicott there would say that we need lots of children and hard work. But it isn't that. There's the same discontent in women with eight children and one more coming - always one more coming! And you find it in stenographers and wives who scrub, just as much as in girl college-graduates who wonder how they can escape their kind parents. What do we want?...I believe all of us want the same things - we're all together, the industrial workers and the women and the farmers and the Negro race and the Asiatic colonies, and even a few of the Respectables. It's all the same revolt, in all the classes that have waited and taken advice. I think perhaps we want a more conscious life. We're tired of drudging and sleeping and dying. We're tired of seeing just a few people able to be individualists. We tired of always deferring hope until the next generation. We're tired of hearing the politicians and priests and cautious reformers (and the husbands!) coax us, 'Be calm! Be patient! Wait! We have the plans for a Utopia already made; just give us a bit more time and we'll produce it; trust us; we're wiser than you.'"

"With such a small-town life a Kennicott or a Champ Perry is content, but there are also hundreds of thousands, particularly women and young men, who are not at all content. The more intelligent young people (and the fortunate widows!) flee to the cities with agility and, despite the fictional tradition, resolutely stay there, seldom returning even for holidays...The reason, Carol insisted, is not a whiskered rusticity. It is nothing so amusing! It is an unimaginatively standardized background, a sluggishness of speech and manners, a rigid ruling of the spirit by the desire to appear respectable. It is contentment...the contentment of the quiet dead, who are scornful of the living for their restless walking. It is negation canonized as the one positive virtue. It is the prohibition of happiness. It is slavery self-sought and self-defended. It is dullness made God."

"Such a society functions admirably in the large production of cheap automobiles, dollar watches, and safety razors. But it is not satisfied until the entire world also admits that the end and joyous purpose of living is to ride in flivvers, to make advertising-pictures of dollar watches, and in the twilight to sit talking not of love and courage but the convenience of safety razors."

"Though a Gopher Prairie regards itself as a part of the Great World, compares itself to Rome and Vienna, it will not acquire the scientific spirit, the international mind, which would make it great. It picks at information which will visibly procure money or social distinction. Its conception of a community ideal is not the grand manner, the noble aspiration, the fine aristocratic pride, but cheap labor for the kitchen and rapid increase in the price of land. It plays at cards on greasy oil-cloth in a shanty, and does not know that prophets are walking and talking on the terrace."

[Discussing the target of a labor organizer who had planned to speak in the town] "'So the whole thing was illegal - and led by the sheriff! Precisely how do you expect these aliens to obey your law if the officer of the law teaches him to break it? Is it a new kind of logic?' 'Maybe it wasn't exactly regular, but what's the odds? They knew this fellow would try to stir up trouble. Whenever it comes right down to a question of defending Americanism and our constitutional rights, it's justifiable to set aside ordinary procedure.'" (!!!!!!!!!)

[And a couple paragraphs after the above text] "Next thing, I suppose you'll be yapping about free speech and free gas and free beer and free love and all the rest of your damned mouthy freedom and if I had my way I'd make you folks live up to the established rules of decency..." (!!!!!!!)

"And was I more happy when I was drudging? I was not. I was just bedraggled and unhappy. It's work - but not my work. I could run an office or a library, or nurse and teach children. But solitary dish-washing isn't enough to satisfy me - or many other women. We're going to chuck it. We're going to wash 'em by machinery, and come out and play with you men in the offices and clubs and politics you've cleverly kept for yourselves! Oh we're hopeless, we dissatisfied women! Then why do you want to have us about the place to fret you?"

"She felt that she was no longer one-half of a marriage but the whole of a human being." (💓💓💓).

Sooooo, yeah, those were a little lengthy, but for reals? All this shit is happening exactly the same today and sometimes it was frustrating to see how little has changed and how determined the male characters in the story were to keep women as the proper wives that a conservative small town should expect them to be. But then I remember how fortunate I am to be in 2020 and not 1920, although sometimes it sure doesn't feel that way. But women have taken over the offices and clubs and politics that men cleverly kept for themselves and many younger women are intentionally eschewing motherhood, feeling their purpose is different than that (this girl's hand up way in the air here). So while I was often very frustrated reading Main Street, in a way, it felt a little like reading a time capsule when you already know the outcome and how things have changed for the better. So at least a smidge of a positive feeling by the end. 

Next up is Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison. 214 to go. And my 41st birthday is in 6 days. Nighty night!