build up, shift, break down?

When my travels with Holloway began, I found myself rather interested in her use of parentheses – why they are utilized, what their usage communicates about voice, what their usage communicates about the narrator. I paid pretty close attention to them, tracking them, highlighting, folding the corners of the page down to find again to write this post. In my attention to them I see them for what they are, how their usage shifts when the narrator does, and that, obviously, much more happens outside of the parentheses than inside of them, like the three sections I read: the build up (establishment), the shift, then the break down.

First a bit about the parentheses of my section one (I think them worthy of some space here because of their role in establishment).

We get the first one on page seven, after Monica slips into a daydreamscape, imagining attention the first dead of the book, Sarah Keeler, must have gotten. Monica fantasizes about her own death; she rides her bike, is hit from behind, and her dad drives by the scene “and stopped, not because he recognized my bike (my dad had no idea what color my bike was); he stopped because it was potentially gory” (8). What’s worth note about this instance is that, while in a fantasy, we are pulled out of it and get to know the father a bit through a seemingly minor detail, the color of a bike. A disconnect is established, a distant father, one obsessed with disaster, is revealed. The very next parenthetical statement functions in the opposite way – we are clued in to Monica’s budding obsession with death when she reveals her desire to go to Sarah’s funeral, and the parenthetical is an imagining: “I wanted to see [Sarah] on Saturday between four and eight p.m. lying in her pink (I imagined my favorite color) coffin, her freshly washed hands folded over her lap…” (9). There are plenty more and I’ve marked them all if anyone’s interested… : )

On the whole I point to these examples as connection to last week’s writing prompt, getting to know folks and their demeanors without dialogue, through silence. Some other examples of this come to us indirectly, through Monica’s interaction with other people. Like when Monica gets to spend time at the Kilner’s house and she spills her Coke. She “sat completely still, waiting for Dave to erupt in fury” (53). We all know he doesn’t which then allows opportunity for the narrator to provide an example of fury in Monica’s house. It takes this juxtaposition to get to know more about what her home is like (knowing what normal is by knowing what abnormal is).

Also established is a reminder on how “easier” cnf would be to write if it was all bad; that is, established are some of Monica’s father’s arguably redeemable qualities. Yes, he’s a “fucker” and he’s also humanized. Like when he lifts Monica into his bed after she’s had a bad dream. We know it doesn’t take long for Monica to realize the position she’s put herself in, one “too close to his hands” (31). We also witness her father with emotion after the passing of his brother Carl. Monica catches him post-cry: “When Dad came back to the house to change clothes, his eyes were swollen and red. I couldn’t believe it, he was actually crying. I didn’t know how to react. He hated me so much, I wouldn’t have tried to hug him or go within to feet of him, but he needed something from someone” (91). And at the funeral home, a space of Monica’s that was invaded by her bio family, Monica fantasizes that it was her own dad in the casket, not uncle Carl: “I gave myself a few minutes to fantasize that it was Dad and felt surprisingly unhappy, even sad. Dad was violent, but I didn’t want him in a casket” (93).

So we’re exposed to characters throughout, through the character and her reactions to her father, reminded at different junctures of Monica’s and her mother’s conditioned responses to Dad. It takes a shift in mother’s response for Monica to notice the shift, the turning point, both at the level of narrative and at the level of craft. At the narrative level, we’re told of the turning point, after Monica’s mother storms out of the house: “I knew nothing would ever be the same after that night, and it never was. My family, which was never much of a family anyway, was starting to fall apart” (118).

At the level of craft, something shifts regarding Monica’s voice: we get to hear it, through the narrator and directly. Just before Monica meets Jim for the first time: “Jim was handsome and loved good music. I didn’t care about any of that. He was screwing up my already shitty life” (141). When Monica sees Jim for the first time: “He didn’t look like an asshole. He had a sweet smile and a long straight nose. Still, I decided to hate him” (142). Other expletives during the Jim, Becky, Mom, Monica scene: “I was fucked…He could kiss my ass…What a loser” (142). What does such voice shift do to narrator authority? Do we trust her more? Like her more? Begin to like her? Begin to dislike?

After Dad comes home to pick up some clothes and calls Monica’s mom a slut, we hear Monica’s voice directly, she speaks back to her father: “‘Pot calling the kettle black, Dad,’ I said… ‘You caused all this!’ I was yelling. I couldn’t control myself anymore. All the fury and hate came out at once. ‘You’re the reason everything fell apart!’ … ‘I DON’T CARE WHAT HAPPENS TO ME! I DON’T CARE IF I’M OUT ON THE STREET! I DIDN’T ASK TO BE HERE!’ I screamed” (144). What does such directness do to character?

Monica even gets a bit funny. When responding to Mrs. McCormick’s question about Jim living with Monica’s mother: “‘They’re not really living together; they’re just fucking,’ I said. ‘Anything else?’” (148).

She’s her father’s daughter?

As the third section continues to follow the falling apart of the family that never really was one, as Monica says it, we see each character “fall apart.” We get to mourn who we thought the characters were (good/bad/other) during the establishment and we learn directly what’s been established all along: “Despite my immense sorrow for Dad and his own horrendous childhood and despite my rage that he had repeated his history on us, I would let him go without words. Somehow I knew this would be the last time I’d see him and he wouldn’t even know it was happening…I was relieved to be out the door. The problem was the next hour, the next day, the nest year, the next years. As screwy as it was, I did not know who I was without him. It was death without the body” (276).

But do we care? Are we invested?

michellelouise