Patchwork And So Forth, a memoir

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"Shelve it under navel-gazing, By Jonathan Yardley

Sunday, November 29, 2009

MEMOIR

A History By Ben Yagoda Riverhead. 291 pp. $25.95 Back in the 1960s and '70s, when my career as a book reviewer was young, I was elated by a sudden and wholly unexpected literary development: the publication of memoirs by people who were not much older than I was -- memoirs, that is, of lives not near completion but still very much in progress. Three led the way: "Stop-Time" (1967) by Frank Conroy, "North Toward Home" (1967) by Willie Morris and "A Fan's Notes" (1968) by Frederick Exley. This last, a true monument of American literature, was presented as a work of fiction for legal reasons, but it was memoir to the core and in hindsight can be seen as the book that opened the floodgates to the Age of Memoir we now inhabit, by no means entirely happily.

This is because, unlike the books by Conroy and Morris, which were immensely skillful and revealing but emotionally guarded, Exley's was raw, self-lacerating and unrelievedly confessional. Oddly enough, it is mentioned only in a footnote in Ben Yagoda's excellent "Memoir: A History" -- evidently because it was passed off as fiction -- but it soon became a model, if not the model, for all those men and women, most of them relatively young, who now pour forth their confessions in book after book after book.

Never mind that few of these confessions can be of interest to anyone except the people writing them, never mind that few of these people know how to tell a story or write literate prose, never mind that the market is now so thoroughly saturated that it is just about impossible to separate what little wheat there may be from the vast ocean of chaff. What matters is that, as Yagoda says, we live in an age of "more narcissism overall, less concern for privacy, a strong interest in victimhood, and a therapeutic culture." He quotes Carolyn See: "Those people in [Alcoholics Anonymous] in the late 40's and early 50's can be said to have reinvented American narrative style. All the terrible, terrible things that had ever happened to them just made for a great pitch."

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Patchwork And So Forth, from YankeeJim's Memoir

Introduction

I was destined to have a simple life to be lived normally without making waves. How do I know this? My parents could have had modest expectations as life was comfortable in Mt. Gilead Ohio, a sleepy farm-town in Morrow County located smack in the middle of the state. Taking an uncomplicated path would have been easy for all of us. Yet, from the beginning, fueled with anticipation, I was rarely comfortable. I did not want to take naps, or to be left in a room alone. I wanted to be in the midst of the action, and would climb from my crib to find it.

"He's out again. Where's Jimmy?" Mother would announce. "There you are, and just where do you think you are going? Too early to say words, I believe that I was formulating a reply that included my intent to pursue the location of the scene I saw from the bedroom window, just out of reach. Growing up as a child, I yearned to explore what I imagined lay beyond. "Beyond" began out of the yard, down Elm Street hill to the Whetstone Creek, the dam at the state park, and the natural spring where people watered horses in the buggy days. I lived at a time and place where I could touch old American history with one hand and feel the new modern America tugging forward with the other. The slowness of the farm town preserved many older qualities, giving me the opportunity to revel in the way things might have been. Yet, with lightening speed, along one man's lifecycle, I would feel the cold war get hot, and would witness tragedies that broke the pristine images that I first had of my home and country. My fellow Americans share the same backdrop of time and history, yet how often do we take time to contemplate details that are intimate reflections about "truth, justice, and the American way?"
How does the weight of my experience and tragedies compare with that of my parents and their parents, and ancestors before them?  I think about this a lot; no, more, it is an obsession. Researching about some ancestors of the 1800s who were Ohio pioneers, I observe from descriptions their struggles to make farms from the woods that were occupied by nomadic Native Americans and by bears and wolves that posed very real danger to their existence. I recall a story about the young boy of a George family settler who mocked howling wolves, only to discover that his mocking brought a pack to their remaining pigs that were lost in the slaughter as a result.  The consequence was no food for the winter, and that was tragic.
Life is a moving target.  My premise is that discovering and experiencing things is that for which humankind is made. Experience is everything, though there are distinctions.
Experiences are gauged along a continuum of fortune and tragedy measured by the potential for value and propensity for reward, versus the intensity of pain and void from loss. Everything must be taken in context. The challenge is that context changes with viewpoint, perspective, scope, scale, and time. 

This is a story from my viewpoint as a boy from the country who became an urban man. Surely it is autobiographical, but is much more. It is told from the perspective of one who uses all that he can muster to share contrasts in values, ideas, and beliefs with words, poetry, prose, painting and musings. Believe me when I tell you that as confident and determined as I might be inclined, I was not prepared for all that I would find.

"Jim is an individual who moves with great confidence though at times may be lacking in needed competence," says Maureen my brutally honest wife and lifelong companion. I believe courage and refinement are products from this challenge and constant guidance. From this life is dicey and spicy.

While I tell stories in a very rough chronology, beginning with boyhood, be certain that I will eventually get to such things as my wedding in 1971 that featured my folk band and fourteen bridesmaids in red pant suits. I sometimes go back and forth in time as that is how memory works, a patchwork of ideas and experiences. By the time that I conclude, we all may all be exhausted from curiosity.

I am a commoner, and my kind is best at struggling. Probably most of we Americans are commoners, people in the middle, motivated by hope to advance our station in life. My grandparents struggled as did my parents. Against the odds, we discovered and created an existence that for many allowed more happiness than sadness.

In a sentence, I just glossed over an intense period of life that includes recovering from wars, going into more wars, nuclear brinksmanship, and the push for equality, the anti-war and peace movement, flower children, rock and roll, etc. Enduring through all of this is a quest for tolerance as that is how I may find peace.

This story recalls many details. Some things grow faint with love and marriage, and eventual childbirth and parenthood. Responsibility becomes a filter and constraint. There are things about which we dreamed that we surely intended to try or to accomplish, though were put aside for more practical needs.

Oh sure, rock and roll came back when my daughter graduated from college and declared that she was going to London to become an artist and rock star. Sometimes our dreams are born again in our offspring.

We installed plush red carpet in our first apartment in Olentangy Village in Columbus Ohio. Our new vacuum cleaner couldn’t handle the plushness as it clogged the sweeper. Maureen suggested a solution. “Honey, why don’t you run out and get a broom?” she asked.

“Surely dear,” I replied.

“Is it going to be red?” she asked as I was leaving.

I pondered. The answer is in the question. The broom must have a red handle. I must listen carefully as the questions will most likely hold the correct responses. This lesson has served me well.

How important is one man's reflection? It could be significant because very few of us share what we are really thinking. Sharing is intimate and private, or it may be open and forthright, and like everything, it is self-regulating and it takes time. For me, living and loving relationships are essential. Our experience is measured in context. Our memories come and go in flashes, thunderstorms of observations, ideas, and perspective.

What is our capacity for change and improvement as individuals? How much elasticity lies within our systems to reach balance between extremes? Humankind is built to withstand an onslaught of various threats and conditions, though we are living organisms who need a reasonable opportunity to adapt. Adaptability determines our capacity to realize robustness from living, I think.

The World War II generation suffered not only a war that directly threatened the Nation and free world's existence; many were survivors of the Great Depression, and social policies that brought average people to their knees.

Not all were adaptable and some did not make it. I heard these things first hand, ad nauseum most of my life. I also heard echoes from the World Ward I generation. I have my own memories and experiences, many for which I am happy and proud, and some for which I reel in despair, not alone.

Since my beginning, there was talk about the big war just finished, and about the Korean War, and the pending war with Russia. One of the most frightening experiences in my life was the Cuban missile crisis. On a pivotal day we sang patriotic songs at a school assembly as if singing would buoy our spirits to recover from immanent attack. "Duck and cover; always duck and cover." 

I remember the lyrics from another song, "High towering mountains, and fields gold with grain, rich fertile farmlands, and flocks on the plain. Homes blessed with peace, contented and free. This is America, land of the free." The missile hatch was open and we were singing a Fred Waring arrangement.

I was terrified inside and there was no discussing it with my parents. Dad was a veteran, and I knew he thought we could win any war. We did not need a bomb shelter because our basement was adequately equipped.

It seems that it is always about winning and about surviving the process. Strugglers are more concerned about surviving than winning. Wars just keep on coming.

Our family went shopping at the Northern Lights Center the evening in 1962 when news reporters said that there may be no tomorrow. My parents were obviously aware of the news, yet, they were defiant. We ate Sandy's hamburgers at a chain resembling McDonald's before the "Golden Arches" appeared. My brother and I played a round of Putt-Putt golf. I thought to myself, why are we doing this? Should we not be saying prayers or something?

Were my parents any more frightened of Adolph Hitler and the Germans march on Europe and attacks on England? Were they as terrified when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor? These types of colossal threats and impending tragedies are relative. When I lost my best friend Mike McCandless to the Viet Nam conflict, how did this tragedy register on the scale of loss and importance? Personally it was a terrible loss. To his mother, father, brother, and two sisters, it was even a greater loss.

I am absorbed by a phrase by New Yorker poet, Alastair Reid-Curiosity

"And what cats have to tell

on each return from hell

is this: that dying is what the living do,

that dying is what the loving do,

and that dead dogs are those who do not know

that dying is what, to live, each has to do.”

Life is a slow roll, a mixed bag, and it is the ability to experience that makes it all worthwhile. I matured on Woody Allen, so where is the humor?

 

Skeptic

 

Life is hectic.

The one most ill at ease is the skeptic,

who thinks of nothing but what to criticize.

 

To Marvin Parrish, English Teacher, Brookhaven High School, James A. George 1965

 

Marvin Parrish was my 11th grade English teacher who inspired me to become a magazine publisher and to found my own publishing company. To him, long ago, I wrote the poem, Skeptic, a little thing that he posted on the bulletin board by the front door in his classroom. Marvin was a character one might typecast as an English teacher, a "Marvin Milquetoast" kind of guy. When my brother became a student of his a couple of years later, he asked Tim, "Are you related to Jim George?"

 

My brother replied, perhaps reluctantly, questioning my student reputation as he may very well should, "Yes. Where did my brother sit?"

 

Mr. Parrish responded as if waiting to answer this question for a long time, "He sat there, and there, and there, and over there. He sat in every seat in the classroom, never the same seat in succession." Mr. Parrish was astute, though little did he know that he had, in my brother, a person who would make long distance calls to J. B. Priestly in London to get help with his homework? We both loved Mr. Parrish.