The foundational fiction of this book is that Frank is both living his life and at the same time engaged in a conversation upon his experience. This is an internal conversation. Ford doesn't imply or try to weave the reader in as a character, an unspeaking ear to whom Frank is addressing himself.
Of course, this is hardly rare in fiction. Yet, Frank's conversation is distinctive in it's obsessive quality: nothing goes unremarked and all must be made sense of. Furthermore, I refer to what is technically a monologue or soliloquy as a conversation because I think the latter term more accurate. His soliloquy is a conversation in that it involves one aspect of Frank's self addressing another aspect, or version, of that same self.
Also, Frank is often, when not arguing, trying to entertaining so as to divert. To his father's chagrin, Frank's son Paul whiled away many hours of his adolescence with a ventriloquists dummy. As with many things his son does and is, Frank is ashamed of this hobby. Perhaps it is too telling. The desire to hide behind a persona seems something they share.
Again, Frank's argumentative monologue hardly marks him as unusual. I suspect many of us harbor an idealized picture of ourselves, a thoughtful person that speaks the voice of reason and virtue; most likely, this is the person we wish to be seen as but are unable to pull of. Alongside the ideal, is the self we pull off so to speak, the self that manifests itself via experience, a self that often falls sort of the cool, ideal, rational person we aim for. This failed, real self that is forever explaining, justifying and resolving itself anew to the better, wished for self. That self is silent but speaking. We know what it says; it doesn't actually have to say anything. Or, perhaps to put it another way, everyday, fallen, human self is engaged in a conversation with his conscience, with the truth.
It almost seems at points as if Frank just keeps talking/thinking in hopes that he'll somehow, perhaps by sheer dent of words, somehow dwarf, silence or outlast his conscience, his authentic self. But, to no avail. It comes to him at last, and at a time and place he thought safe, far removed from his world: a lesbian bar he chances into on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Yet, it is here that the reality he's assiduously evaded forcefully finds him.
His Wednesday's been a mixed one. While Frank estimates that three "occurrences" in his Wednesday have been of a "positive nature...versus only two and a half of a low quality," prone to exaggeration and self pity, Frank maintains that "any of the latter events would be enough to set a man driving to North Dakota, ending up at a stranger's farmhouse...pleading amnesia and letting himself be sheltered for the day"(338). The events he recounts aren't especially out-of-the-ordinary, but...
In an attempt to escape, seeking anonymous, undemanding company, Frank repairs to a bar, The Manasquan. span style="font-style:italic;">The Manasquan almost fifteen years prior as a part of a group of newly divorced men. The bar has changed in the interval. It is now a lesbian bar, a dive, renamed The Old Squatters. Shortly after entering, the bartender ("she...is entirely in black-jeans, boots, tee-shirt, eyeshadow-everything but her silver flat-top, ear decor and TERMITE tattoo" and featuring an "enormous Jim Bowie sheath knife" on her belt(331))asks Frank if "you sure you wuz meetin' your friends in de right place here"(330). Without saying it aloud, far from feeling misplaced, "he couldn't be happier than to be here amidst fellow refugees"(330). By Frank's lights, The Manasquan is perfect: "the light's murky, the smells are congenial, the world's held at bay"(330).
The scene serves as one of many instances where Frank seeks/hides out in places or positions of detachment. Frank is continually trying to find ways to keep the world at bay. Far from simply chasing it away, he seems to welcome some level of contact with other human beings. However, he insists on a certain distance and on some ground rules. Whenever anybody grows to close, or a relationship is in danger of developing, he begins to retreat. Frank fears the responsibility and self-exposure real relationship impose. He fears the feelings involved. He fears the fact that despite those feelings, we have little control over the decisions and fates of those we grow close to. He seeks a middle ground relationship, one that delivers the comfort of human relationship without incurring any of the potential costs.
In pursuit of this middle-ground, Frank attempts all sorts of quasi-relationships, situations involving sincere but disengaged contact. At one point in the novel, his first wife, Anne, recalls how Frank visited her second husband when he was dying of cancer. Ann praises Frank for doing so. Frank doesn't find it a feat; in fact, "it didn't bother me....I could imagine someone having to do it to me-a total stranger- and how nice it would be to have someone there you didn't have to 'relate' to"(152-153).
Frank is always looking for disengaged, impermanent contact. In his former hometown of Haddam, he looks to lunch at the hospital where "restrained but understanding smiles are all that's ever shared...Nobody opens up or vents (you might complain to some poor soul worse off than you)"(78). Feeling the encroachment of family on Thanksgiving morning, Frank makes an impulsive and desperate trip to locate an old flame, Bernice, to bring home for dinner. Bernice is Frank's ideal woman. Around her, he feels witty, handsome, charming and loved. But, he also recognizes that relationships with such ideal women need to be of short duration. According to Frank, such ideal woman "drive him crazy with undeserved approval and excessive, unwanted validation"(427). In summary,
these women are...meant for sweetly intended, affectionate one-nighters (two at the max), after which you both manage to stay friends, conduct yourself even better than before...but never consider getting serious about, since everybody knows that serious ruins everything. (427)
Frank biggest attempt to find disengaged contact is his participation in "Sponsor Line." Modeled after AA, Sponsor Line is a service devised in response to syndicated article which ran in the local paper decrying the fact that a majority of folks polled revealed they had no friends. Sponsor Line attempts to remedy this by allowing Folk to call it at anytime and arrange to have another human being come by, listen to them, and offer them some "sound, generalized, disinterested advice"(92).
Explaining the appealing features of the program, Frank points out that "nothing technical's required to be a sponsor: a willingness to listen, a slice of common sense, an underdeveloped sense of irony, a liking for strangers and a capacity to be disengaged while staying sincerely focused on whatever question greets you when you walk in the door"(92). In addition, Frank claims "sponsoring has never actually produced a greater sense of connectedness in me, and probably not in others...It could happen. But the truth is, I feel connected enough already. And sponsorship is not about connectedness anyway. It"s about being consoled by connection's opposite"(96).
In his account of Sponsoring, Frank offers a varied, somewhat contradictory account of what he believes people who call "Sponsor Line" are after. Initially, he claims they are after a little bit of common sense advice on practical issues: what to do with a boat you impulsively bought without learning how to sail it; how do I handle a nice maid that shirks her work; how do I sharpen this hunting knife (pp. 12-13, 93). However, he mentions in passing that recently three different sponsorees (i.e., one of the folks requesting a sponsor) has been looking for something other than "plain, low-impact good counsel and assistance"(93). All three wanted to know whether Frank, a sponsor, a stranger of sorts, thought "he or she was an asshole." And, as would most compassionate folks sitting face-to-face with another human asking that question, Frank answers "[he] definitely didn't think so"(94). Those who know any of us might not be able to offer us a similarly unqualified and consoling answer.
Frank never calls "Sponsor Line" himself. Partly it's pride. Partly, despite all his dishonesty and efforts to evade the truth, Frank seems irresistibly drawn to it, to a rigorous if delayed self-assessment. His self, with all it's history of failure and pain, finds him despite all his efforts to hide from it. The process begins with his chancing upon a real estate ad in a free paper he picks up at Old Squatters. In the free weekly, he happens upon a real estate ad in which there is bio of an agent who lost a child. The ad triggers something in Frank. Suddenly, he finds himself "immobilized on my stool...heavy-armed...my highball glass...small and distant," and he finds "my [deceased] son Ralph Bascombe, age twenty-nine (or for accuracy's sake, age nine), comes seeking audience in my brain"(343). Protesting the inadequacies of language, Frank confesses "I am then truly immobilized. And with what? Fear? Love? Regret? Shame? Lethargy? Bewilderment? Heartsickness? Whimsy? Wonder? You never know for sure, no matter what the great novels tell you"(343).
Apparently, this moment is the moment that Frank acknowledges his son's death, truly accepts it, almost twenty years after the fact. Moments later, in his car and unable to find the keys, he experiences "the somberest of thoughts; the finality of one's self in defeat of all distractions put in the way"(349). Later, alone in his home, he admits that
"all [his] years and modes of accommodation, of coping, of living with, of negotiating the world in order to fit into it...now seem not to be forms of acceptance the way I thought, but forms of fearful nonacceptance [of]...the fact that my son...would never be again in this life we all come to know too well"(357)
At one point, Frank tells his friend Wade "There's been a lot of 'it's' this year,"(320), meaning testing personal disasters and catastrophes. Frank's had cancer, been left by his wife, had a confused daughter move-in, ect. While Frank's being self-deprecating in his comment to Wade, he is sort of a Job-lite figure. Yet, the it that truly littles him is the death of his son, that he can't face, proves to be the death of his son. Of course, early on, he lets on that this it is a part of the past. He mentions it. Speaks of the pain of it. Yet, he hasn't accepted it. Hasn't been able to process it. He now claims that he's reached an acceptance of it, the permanence of the death of his son. Yet, his eager desire to 'accept' it, to feel that he's reached the limit of the confusion and pain it causes him, may be just another in his attempts to negotiate, accommodate, an it that refuse to be negotiated, accommodated, made sense of.
No comments:
Post a Comment