12 War, what is it good for and why this is and should be a banned book

Reading Log Twelve: The Red Badge Of Courage
by Stephen Crane

I skipped the introduction by Carl Van Doren in this old copy I found from 1972 the public library during Banned Books Week. This particular copy had a bright and intriguing wrap on it like some kind of gift from the dusty shelves that was removed at checkout. Surprisingly, the novel begins with a very poetic first chapter with its image of hostile campfires and the low brows of distant hills. Henry Fleming ponders war in his own country compared with the fantasy of the battles from history and literature. He had been bound for seminary school but wanted to fight for the cause instead. Ma—I’ve enlisted. (5) With Red Badge, I sense in the early chapters that the men appear to be less barbaric in regards to war. At least that is young Henry’s fantasy. Was this book banned for its sexual imagery of war and its giggle factor?

Author Crane’s depiction of Henry’s youthful naiveté to manhood reads like a James Joyce or Franz Kafka description of war. With beautiful craft, sometimes Shakespearean in its dialogue, poetic language, male entanglements, grisly battle sequences, apparitions and hallucinations, the pages provoked me to understand why this book was banned. Through the third person singular, Crane refers to Henry in earnest portrayal as the youth who stands for all male youth, figuratively, during a period of wartime. He has decisions to make regarding valor and self-respect.

The illustrations by John Steuart Curry appear like unfinished renderings, obscured by the smoke of battle in the darkness of the forest and capture the obscurity witnessed by the youth.

As this book has neither inside front nor back cover notation and taking the narrative at face value, the time period must have been the Revolutionary War or the Civil War, as Henry was on the blue side and they were fighting the grays. (I’m not going to Google the words blue, gray.)

The story reminds me of military school training after decades of making men and soldiers with the intelligence to fight and to govern themselves and others. Obviously, these schools have created a superior philosophical product in the field of battle. The young men demonstrate more intelligence and ethics than their captains and generals.

One morning, however… loomed like the gigantic figure of the colonel on a gigantic horse. (16) The colonel and the horseman seem to be betting with a box of cigars as reward.

The adventuresome observations of a young man lead him to his role in battle in the war and figuratively to his world and life. He never questions himself as to “what am I doing here” for this youth is in third person singular. The language of this story reflects the battle through a young person’s eyes and begs the eternal question.

There is room for detailed character analysis on this short novel as the blatant soldier often convulsed whole files by his biting sarcasm “aimed at the tall one” and the misery in the ranks as they march through the woods, sometimes grinning, and laughing about politics. When one comrade tries to steal a horse from a girl’s house, the comrades cheered when she fought him off. Besides Henry’s mother, the girl is the only female in the novel.

What is its cultural significance to Red Badge? This book might mark a divide in philosophy of battle. The game of war evolved from direct confrontations in combat to the camouflage of guerilla fighting. The youthful troops had an advantage over the machine-like rebels. They had cunning and learned to fight their own way without a captain, a common theme to dystopian literature.

More out of curiosity than fear, Henry emerges as a hero after the confrontation. The landscape gave him assurance. (58) And he was but an ordinary squirrel, too—doubtless no philosopher of his race (59) This is like Thoreau’s Walden, Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, or Emerson’s Self Reliance in its transcendentalist view of the youthful mind. She (Nature) re-enforces the youth’s argument with proofs that lived where the sun shone. (59)

One overarching theme of this novel is the youth looking at death and suffering and understanding what this means in service to his country. The fantasy of war was evil so real for Henry as he watches his friend Jim Conklin, the tall soldier, go through the stages of death as a wounded on the battlefield.

With effective, magical, explicit imaginative gore, Crane details a youth discovering a corpse resting, seated, against a tree and an the exchanged look of fear between the dead and the undead.

At time he regarded the wounded soldiers in an envious way. He conceived persons with torn bodies to be peculiarly happy. He wished that he, too, had a wound, a red badge of courage. (68)

Henry seeks the moral vindication of salve; he needs a wound. His hallucinations from sleeplessness or hunger, help define what victory or defeat means to his life, primal ego, and success. He realizes that his education had been the success for that mighty blue machine was certain. Still, he felt to be a slang phrase for running from the combat.

With simple foreshadowing, we know his comrade is going down fast as the battered soldier makes light of the circumstance, that they have to move on, and that “there’s too much dependin’ me for me t’die yit.” The youth glances at his comrade and could see by his shadow of a smile that he was making some kind of fun. (76)

Henry is struck over the head with the butt of a rifle, bringing dark warm memories of home and then led back to his regiment by a kind and faceless soldier. The youth, with his manner of dog like obedience, got carefully down like a crone stooping. The young men lay down next to each other by the fire with symbolic language, euphemisms, innuendo and suggestive language. But this was published in 1944 when gay still meant happy.

In the end, the youth gets the respect of the general on horseback. But what was the climax and how would a teacher discuss this? Did the climax have something to do with carrying the flag or vindication from the general? That is where I see the satire in this literature—the Kafka, the Joyce. Romantically, in the final reflection for the youth in this short novel, he finds comfort. He has turned away from the sin of battle and now with a lover’s thirst to images of tranquil skies, fresh meadows, cool brooks—an existence of soft and eternal peace. (170)

Symbolisms

Blue

Red

A single desire

Laurels

The furnace roar of battle (red)

A blue desperate figure leading lurid charges with one knee forward and a broken blade high (82)

War, the red animal, war, the blood swollen god (88)

A blue determined figure standing before a crimson and steel assault. (82)

Men who lectured and jabbered gesticulating against the blue and somber sky (92)

Vocab

Pickets (foes) were suntanned, philosophical who shot at the blue pickets.

Dexterously (11)

Vigilance / Henry’s internal struggle

Crone: an old woman who is thin and ugly / got carefully down like a crone stooping

Charnel: house of the dead

mêlée: mêlée of musketry and yells.

In its description of war with upheavals and lost innocence, this novel implies fear through darkly sexual or homoerotic overtones. Although on the banned book list, it appeared through a list of recommended Young Adult literature. In this timeless literature, I think author Crane wanted to remind us of what the youth experienced, what they saw in fear and what they never want to see again, without the details and statistics that champion the war machine from a general’s memoir:

His disordered mind interpreted the hell of the forest as a charnel place (103) (house of the dead)

He had performed his mistakes in the dark, so he was still a man (110)

The lessons of yesterday had been that retribution was laggard and blind. (111)

Faith in himself, a man of experience. Laurels (112)

Erect, aroused, ejaculated, guns, men cuddling at war, groped, fighting harder, submission.

Over some foliage, they could see the roof of a house, one window, glowing a deep murder red, shone squarely through the leaves.

Many pairs of glinting eyes peered from the grimy faces toward the curtains of the deeper woods.

Mean-spirited, sarcastic lieutenant treated the troops like beasts, like mule drivers.

The rebel uniforms were gray in contrast to the blue of the youth brigade.

 The youth kept from intercourse with his companions as much as circumstances would allow him … the many faces… black forms of men passing… before crimson rays… made weird and satanic effects. (?)

There was an appalling imprint upon these faces. The struggle in the smoke had pictured an exaggeration of itself on the bleached cheeks and the eyes wild with one desire. (39)

A rifle that can only be used against one life at a time. In combat, with soldiers down Captain dead… (the aghast look on his face) as if he thought some friend had done him an ill turn. (43)

Graphic paragraph, brass tacks, the ugly side of war is not fun at all. But the youth was unscathed, but grimy and dripping like a laborer in a foundry. (46)

Molested, unmolested used often as terms for bothered and unbothered.

He stood there, erect and tranquil.

Back and forth they battled with machine-like action as the smoke rose and unfolded into the universe. His final and absolute revenge would be his dead body: lying, torn, and gluttering, up on the field. (158)

The men gesticulated and bellowed in an ecstasy. (163)

Crane, Stephen. Curry, John Steuart, illustration. The Red Badge Of Courage. 1944, 1972. Heritage Press. Norwalk, Connecticut. 170 pages.

11 For the kids at Halloween!

Reading Log Eleven: Goosebumps: Wanted, The Haunted Mask
by R.L. Stine

In Goosebumps, only zombies get hurt. This novel uses dogs and cats to either lead a protagonist from danger or to danger. The word hallucinate appears in italics as Stine introduces it to the reader in describing the form that the pumpkin vines weave, when, in reality, someone had sneaked into Devin’s room. Just like he used snuck or someone had snuck, I thought this was effective correct use of that verb in this context.

Part I is in the third person and sets up the suspense to follow. Both Parts II and III from a teen’s perspective are in the first person.

The chapters in this novel break like scenes from a screenplay, where the commercial would be. Short chapters with small words accessible to readers of any age of independent reading, Stine’s Goosebumps series introduces hair-raising terror and horror to the younger generation, for these types of tales must be passed down. The value of them comes that when young people uncover urban legends, they might know how to better react. Is there any truth to the legend? Is it physically possible?

One mask is haunted with the evil of centuries… “Go ahead, try it on. I dare you.” (18) Randolph puts the evil mask over William’s head and it fixes itself, gives him anger, steals his happiness with misery of the mask and the terrifying legend is born. William tears his face off removing the mask. Now he is forever hideously ugly.

Devin says to Lu-Ann “Do you know how to spell tragic?” He foreshadows the tale of which he will be part as the boy from legend and his family had been buried under the farmland where eager to scare pumpkins would sprout from his family and ancestors.

In part two, Lu-Ann wants to escape a boring Halloween party with two boys who are her friends. They go to the attic to find the something like a pirate’s chest full of masks, one of which is a sickly green.

Lu-Ann is astonished that what they would found in the attic was just like her story to her little brother, Mitch, one night before bed. She had scared him horribly. And now she must pay by being stuck in this hideous mask, strangely soft and warm like human skin. This mask won’t come off and brings out the crazy in Lu-Ann until she makes good through an act of kindness. Her behavior becomes destructive while she is still mostly innocent on the inside. “I loved it.” (89) What is the lesson here? She is prisoner to the haunted mask, acting all crazy but underneath she is still a frightened, terrified Lu-Ann who acts out because she has a mask on.

Lu-Ann will have two blown chances at an act of kindness and then Stine introduces Part III, the story of Devin O’Bannon (age 12) and the pumpkin field. Devin’s father runs a farm for the season with the assumption that his son will help him pick and sell pumpkins. Devin’s fearless twin little sisters (ages 6) are part of the magic and mystique of the pumpkin farm under which lays a civil war era burial site. Devin does not appreciate the work and would rather spend his time with Lu-Ann. He would have to miss beautiful green-eyed Polly’s party because he had to work on this farm out in the country.

Haywood Barnes, the farmhand of legend and zombie boy will call the Zeus the cat as the Grave-Master so Devin will not suspect and fear Haywood for the spooky supernatural events that occur in the barn in the presence of the leprechaun twin sisters with the jack-o-lantern song.

Another farmhand, Hayward’s mother Mrs. Barnes, appears always with surprise to help Devin through a situation and ultimately luring him into a grave in the pumpkin patch that she has opened for Halloween.

The Goosebumps series has evolved over the years in terms of the pop culture of young people and how Stine uses references to their stable of knowledge. Devin reads from a dystopian novel about the last family on earth at the end of the day in his fantasy world. (183)

Of course, crazy Lu-Ann flees to the country and the pumpkin patch where Devin works out of fear of the police catching her and being stuck in the mask forever. Through this, the two characters save each other and transform from their horrible, unimaginable, unforeseeable situations. As readers, we assume that there was then a nice, reasonable explanation for all the things that occurred and created new urban legend. That is design by R.L. Stine.

Notes:

Part One: The Haunted Mask

William Stone, Manager, 10years old, energy of a younger man

An old german shepherd

William’s Mask Emporium, makes them himself, craftsman

clichés: foggy night outside. Dog growls at the fog, sound of footsteps within

forgiveness: for what?

temptation: Touch one, go ahead

These are faces no one wanted, Randolph says. The unwanted faces of the world. Randolph wants William to sell his masks. “These will make you famous.” These aren’t masks but human faces. (4)

Bullying: Coward

Stine, R.L. Goosebumps: Wanted The Haunted Mask. 2012. Scholastic, Inc. New York, New York. 231 pages.

10 Just because I need me some Hemingway, and a fable perhaps

Reading Log Ten: The Old Man And The Sea
by Ernest Hemingway

Humility is a virtue. Do not to talk while at sea. Be kind to your elders for they are wise most of the time. But it’s ok to talk to yourself while alone if you are poor with no radio to listen “to the baseball.” (39) This Hemingway narrative flows with historic, brief, well-crafted sentences that demonstrate his usual disciplined use of the prepositional phrase like a technical writer. The reader knows he is in for a whopper and a lesson in this tale. Like a mythical being, age is the alarm clock for the old man, Santiago, with his simple straw hat and a small skiff for the fishing expedition. According to Hemingway, his shack is made of guano, presumably the type of palm trees and leaves. A simple man, Santiago dreams more than once of the African coast with the lions on the beach or visualizes Joe Dimaggio and his integrity in this novel that takes place off the coast of Havana, Cuba.

The rising action is out there somewhere, but no hurricane looms on the horizon this day—just some tall cumulus and a cramped and soon to be bloodied hand, for which Santiago says a Hail Mary. He needs to unseize his injured hand. The boy, Manolin, was his hand literally and figuratively. He even makes some stew for the old man early in this tale, before the old man goes out to sea to fish. But Manolin also wonders how much of what Santiago says is fiction.

The art of fishing and sensing how the fish feeds in the depths of the sea. “Eat that hook. Eat a little more… eat it well.” (44) The old man has the touch. He knows the behaviors of all the big species of the sea. Dolphins, flying fish, porpoises, marlins, male and female, how they feed, and how they react to the hook-and-line.

What is the point of this story and why was it reprinted? The old man is stuck in a boat being towed around by a giant fish. He is powerless to the sea. This story introduces Spanish words and phrases. Dimaggio has a bone spur in his foot—un es puella de hueso—yet still he does things perfectly. At one point, the old man tries to get baseball off his mind so he can focus on the fishing. He doesn’t have a radio to listen to the baseball game anyway for he is poor. But he talks to himself and the birds that visit him. He would have talked to the boy if he were there, but only a little for fishing is a silent exercise.

While on his boat, the old man does not sleep for one and a half days. At midnight, he cleans a dolphin that contains two flying fish that he eats raw. Today we call this sushi. For our protagonist, dolphin is miserable to eat raw. “I will never go in a boat again without salt or limes.” (80)

He wishes often that he had the boy’s help, but might the boat have been too small? Santiago risks his life to catch this fish. What is his reward—payment, respect, legend, intrinsic value, feed the people, or a trophy? How will he get his giant catch into the shore anyway?

The logical rising action surfaces as his lined fish circles the boat, closer and closer as the trade winds pick up that will take Santiago in through the bay. And what are the trade winds? This classic tale offers the teacher an opportunity to fill in those blanks.

With a 1500 pound catch to dress out, Santiago now has more than he can handle out at sea. The fish must be dressed immediately upon the kill. “I have killed this fish which is my brother and now I must do the slave work,” he says. (95) Cleaning fish is dangerous, dirty work, especially after the Santiago’s hands have been battered by the fishing line. Lessons abound in this tale: be careful what you dip in the sea, like a bloody hand. For even though the dark water of the true gulf is the greatest healer for his bloodied hands, the sharks always lurk beneath the surface. (99) Bring on the sharks. The first shark bites off about 40 lbs., mutilating Santiago’s prize catch.

Besides, he thought everything kills everything else in some way. Fishing kills me exactly as it keeps me alive. The boy keeps me alive he thought. I must not deceive myself too much. (106) The book ends as the old man dreams after his adventure about the lions that feast in a pride and devour their prey.

vocabulary

salao / the worst form of unlucky. 84 days without a fish.

bodega

dentuso (106)

galanos (107)

shovelnose

Tiburon

Eshark

Dorado (dolphin)

Bonita

guano

La mar-fenne (sea)

El mar   (he) when man takes from it

The sea is a she because the moon affects her.

Looking in to the sun in the morning has painful blackness, like the cancer on the neck of Santiago, perhaps.

Hemingway, Ernest. The Old Man And The Sea. 1952, 1980, 1985. Scribner Parperback Fiction, Simon & Schuster, Inc. New York, New York. 127 pages.

9 Loved this, like an X-file

Reading Log Nine: I Am The Cheese
by Robert Cormier

The first-person chapters during which Adam Farmer rides his bike while carrying a package, guarding it with his life to give it to his father in Ruttenberg, Vermont, are a dream. The chapters that contain the tape-recorded conversations with Blint are Paul Delmonte’s psychotherapy following the horrible accident in which his mother was killed, are medicated post dream. His father, Anthony Delmonte, is most likely on the run.

Adam (Paul), another shy boy and a common character in YA literature, must overcome his whimpishness that he is bound to beyond his own choosing. He longs to be a famous writer like Thomas Wolfe. Amy Hertz feeds him laughter and mischief and Adam is in love with her. She is the lightning to his gray cloud. The color gray will have significant thematic significance in this novel.

This is a story of changing one’s identity for survival. Federal agent Mr. Gray from the U.S. Department of Re-Identification had saved David Farmer’s (Anthony Delmonte) life. Mr. Delmonte had testified against organized crime and had to the identities of his wife and child.

The book contains fifteen tape-recorded conversations between Dr. Dupont and Paul. In each of these conversations, when Paul isn’t speaking, author Cormier creates these conversations in third person.

After the last tape-recorded conversation in simplicity for the younger audience, all the mysteries of this novel are neatly unfolded in the final narrative chapter. Paul, (first person Adam) makes it to Ruttenburg on his bike with some adventure.   But when he arrives, there is not a soul in sight. He is rehabilitating or just being kept in a large white hospital building for study and observation, tapped for his conscience and secrets. In this hospital are Whipper, Bobie, and Lewis who appeared in Paul’s dream as troublemakers. A fragrance of lilac wafts through the hallway (Paul’s mother) in this haven for troubled people with a German shepherd named Silver on the grounds. In the box for his father (from the dream) is Pokey the Pig, his father’s old army jacket, and a hat. The book’s last line and device for the book’s title, the rat takes the cheese, is part of the nursery rhyme that Adam’s family sings while on a driving trip, but only in a dream. In reality, Adam’s (Paul) parents and he are in a horrible crash.

Cormier’s effective narrative will meet with psychological interrogation in climactic manner. The motel is on the outskirts of town and I pedal toward the place. (202) . In his dreams, darkness gathers Adam like a shadow. At the gas station where Adam tries to call Amy Hertz from a pay phone only to find that the attendant and the customer in the car have blank, soulless stares like Ping-Pong balls or the moons of Orphan Annie’s eyes, we realize that Adam might be dead or dreaming and Amy Hertz might not exist at all.

Another device is first and third dimension. In many instances, Paul feels flat or nonexistent to his father, because he had to change identity and doesn’t really know who his father truly is (or was). The connections don’t add up. Adam feels fake, paranoid perhaps, like a facsimile without real value. Adam looked at the Ping-Pong ball. It was no longer a moon just a ball. (129)

This masterful tale crafted by Cormier has all the elements of psychodrama and horror and ends as it begins in perfect dreamlike fashion. But it leaves unanswered questions about the future of Paul, even his exact age in this tale that reads like a John Grisham novel.

Cormier, Robert. I Am The Cheese. 1977. Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. New York, New York, and Random House of Canada Limited. Toronto, Canada. 213 pages.

8 Delightful read, Charlie

Reading Log Eight: The Perks Of Being A Wallflower
by Stephen Chbosky

            Stephen Chbosky’s fun novel of letters from Charlie to an anonymous friend describe the believable experiences of a sixteen year old young man in his attempt to reach out to friends and family following the suicide of a very good friend. Charlie has friends that are seniors in high school, the same age as his sister. Oddly, (I never saw the movie) the cover depiction of he with his friends, the pretty girl Sam and the gay Patrick, lends me to believe that the handsome guy would be much more popular in his school than the novel makes him out to be. Apparently, Charlie is “a fucking freak” to those who don’t get to know him. But he is also an introvert and gifted writer at sharing his feelings:

At first, I thought her blank expression was the result of surprise, but after it didn’t go away for a long while, I knew that it wasn’t. It suddenly dawned on me that if Michael were still around, Susan probably wouldn’t be “going out” with him anymore. Not because she’s a bad person or shallow or mean. But because things change. And friends leave. And life doesn’t stop for anybody. (145)

One of the key ingredients to this story is Charlie’s relationship with an advanced English teacher, Bill, who lends him a spectacular range of good reads and encourages him to write essays that help cope with the loss of both his friend Michael and aunt Helen and feeling outcast. To Kill a Mockingbird, The Great Gatzby, A Separate Peace, On the Road, Naked Lunch, Walden, The Stranger and films including The Graduate, Harold and Maude, My Life as a Dog, Dead Poets Society, and The Unbelievable Truth. Before he lends The Fountainhead to Charlie, Bill reminds him to try to be a filter, not a sponge.” (165) From Fountainhead, Charlie realizes the notion of ‘I would die for you. But I wouldn’t live for you.’ (169)

Every letter begins with ‘Dear Friend’ and ends with ‘Love Always, Charlie’. He writes about his new experiences—seemingly all of them—over the course of the 1992-93 school year. Charlie adores his older friends who introduce him to senior level experiences. His brother is in college and a football star at Penn State. His sister is number two academically at the high school but has very little time for Charlie, until that day he drives her to her abortion. Charlie is in love with Sam with all of his being, and she loves him but not in that way. In age and maturity, they are two to three years apart. Sam and Patrick are step-siblings. Patrick is in love with the quarterback of the football team, or vice versa.

Part of being friends with this older group is their connection to artistic subculture, pot smoking and LSD, the good music and the harmless people who go and see and enact The Rocky Horror Picture Show on a regular basis. Rocky is a symbol for acceptance of androgenic circumstances in the novel. Punk Rocky is also a cultural publication that Charlie works on with Mary Elizabeth. She is the publisher/editor and he is her assistant. The two have relations, she gives him a Billie Holiday record as a seductive maneuver and he doesn’t quite know what to get her, for Mary Elizabeth does all of the talking and Charlie’s sister claims that she has self-esteem issues. Several characters in the Wallflower, boys and girls (young adults) question their sexuality or cover their confusion over the course of a year in the lives of these interesting people. But Charlie knows that Sam is the most beautiful girl in the world.

I’m guessing by geographical clues that the story takes place near the Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania borders, somewhere with a tunnel under a mountain, somewhere with Big Boy restaurants that the story’s members often enjoy. Big Boy, with its iconic boy upholding the beef patties to the interstate drivers that pass by the edge of town.

The novel’s epilogue is a letter from Charlie describing what happened from mid-June to mid-August, after his older friends left for college. Such smart artistic kids! He was hospitalized for psychiatric evaluation, the end of another theme to the story. This is a vital element to the novel: to get treatment when grieving and really talk it out so one can move on. We know that his parents are significant in his life and, although they understand his loss, and the novel does not overtly address parental concerns and little is said about his friend Michael. The point of these letters addresses how the teenage mind works through its innocence and questioning ability. It helps that Chbosky paints an articulate character in Charlie and his supportive friends.

Chbosky, Stephen. The Perks Of Being A Wallflower. 1999. Gallery Books. New York, New York. 213 pages.

7 Awesome stuff from the reservation

Reading Log Seven: The Absolutely True Diary Of A Part-Time Indian
A Novel by Sherman Alexie
Art by Ellen Forney

Junior is a budding cartoonist from the Spokane Indian reservation in Washington. Diary is an account of this young man’s transformation from goofy kid born with water on his brain who looked like a capital L, was susceptible to siezure activity, had a stutter and a lisp, was called a retard at age 14, and got beat up once a month on the res. He draws because words are too unpredictable to him. Not everyone can understand Junior. He knows that famous brown people are artists of one kind or another.

His family is poor, too poor to save the dog. His father puts the dog down: “A bullet only costs about two cents, and anybody can afford one of those.” (14) Junior’s best friend is Rowdy and over a school year this would be the measure of the novel. The illustrations are effective like a boy’s renderings on the back of his brown bag protected science book or the college-ruled spiral bound notebook. They accentuate the narrative and depict an ornery imagination of a teenage boy on Indian reservation. There is freedom here.

Although Alexie can paint a character in an oft-humorous light to which an attentive reader can relate, this book is not funny. Junior’s sister, Basement Mary, finally leaves the house but only after Junior leaves the res boarding school to seek a bigger experience at the predominantly white high school at nearby Reardon. Of course, part of this tale includes Junior’s, well Arnold Spirit’s, journey everyday back and forth to school, twenty-two miles from the edge of the res. His father loves him, reminding him that he is a warrior for doing this.

“They stared hard… like I was bad weather.” (59) Part of this tale is finding acceptance when you are a new kid in a strange place and making new friends while losing old ones. In this instance, Rowdy is no longer Junior’s friend and thus, no longer his protector. As Indians are prone to fighting in Alexie novels, Junior has a five and 112 record as a fighter. He learns to hold his own and even let his weakness of being poor show to the aptly named female interest Penelope. She is bulimic. Junior calls her on this when he hears her barfing in the school library bathroom after lunch one day.

This book has a fair amount of barfing. Junior vomits before his basketball games from nerves. Basketball is symbolic to the Alexie novel and Indian culture for they are generally good players with the height, athletic ability, merciless attitude, and plenty of time for this free entertainment on the res. Sadly, less nourishment keeps them at a level below their white competition. In two different chapters, the res team has a showdown with Reardon high and both Rowdy and Junior are star point guards. In the first game, the res team and the fans turn on Junior for being a traitor. In the second game, Junior will lead his team to a sweet victory by 40 points.

Alexie provides the history of the reservation back to 1881 and the confinement of natives for generations. His parents live within two miles of their birthplace, trapped without choice, but married with little in assets.

His sister, who had dreamed of becoming a romance novelist, gets married one day and runs off to Montana with a poker-playing Flathead Indian. They live in his RV, or camper if you will, until one day it catches on fire and they perish. There is great tragedy in Diary—sister, dad’s best friend, grandma (the only sober adult Indian)—and through it all Junior becomes a man and grows into his name, Arnold Spirit, who finds joy in his grieving by list-making and drawing what brings him joy.

Alexie, Sherman. Forney, Ellen illus. The Absolutely True Diary Of A Part-Time Indian. 2007. Little, Brown and Company. New York, New York.

6 Boys, drummers, girls, bummers

Reading Log Six: Drums, Girls & Dangerous Pie
by Jordan Sonnenblick

The novel flows in first person and Miss Palma’s advice is that form follows function. People speak in italics. This book reminds me of Diary Of A Wimpy Kid series but without the illustrations and the roles are reversed. This is the story of older brother lamenting about his younger brother. I believe from the acknowledgements that this story takes place somewhere near New York City as that district is noted in the acknowledgments section.

Renee Albert, the hottest girl in the eighth grade, is the subject of Steven’s longest English journal ever. The prewriting assignment is a list of truly annoying things. The most annoying thing to fourteen-year-old Steven is his four- and five-year-old brother, Jeffrey, whose idolatry for the older will create some compromising circumstances.

Jeffrey may NOT play Steven’s drums. Steven idolizes Carter Beauford who plays for the Dave Matthews Band. Steven’s proficiency at the double stroke roll gets him in the All-City Jazz Band where he earns the nickname Pez, short for ‘the peasant’ because he, along with his friend Annette Wilson on piano are the only eighth-graders playing at the high school level.

Chapter one concludes with Miss Palma gives Steven an “A” on his journal entry, describing it as droll.

Jeffrey is oddly imaginative and articulate for a four-year-old. When we first meet him he is requesting that Steven make the special moatmeal for him that would “re-fix” his boy “parts”. Yes, this is that kind of YA novel. He slips off his chair when Steven’s back is turned and of course bumps his face on the kitchen breakfast counter as this is one of those novels in which the worst will happen to the protagonist so that he can evolve into a more mature self.   Jeffrey is a bloodied mess needing to go to the ER and so begins the drama with little brother’s embattlement with leukemia.

Meanwhile, Renee Albert’s locker is right next to Steven’s and, on this particular day and it’s surprise accident, he has forgotten to brush his teeth. Why is it that in YA/teen literature, the sought after boy or girl or even the bully is referred to by a full name, like Renee Albert.

This feeds Steven’s journal for the day elaborating on “how many minutes must I wait between tic-tacs.” (17) He was supposed to have written about whether or not foreign languages should be taught in school.

This book often has its characters speaking in capital letters to show inflection. Miss Palma wants him to read his journal entry out loud, and when he declines she says “PRIVATE, Steven?” … “Yes, private.” (18)

The band teacher, Mr. Watras, provides Steven with individual drum lessons. Throughout the book, playing helps Steven cope with his trials.

In his journal entry for October 8, Steven remembers the day Jeffery was born when his grandfather calls him “Muscles”—that’s what it means to be a big brother. With a touch of irony, this will play into what it means to be stricken with leukemia as Steven will witness his brother bruising consistently with every little bump. Steven is the protector and suddenly Jeffrey has cancer. His journal topic for that day was supposed to have been “Discuss your favorite character in Huckleberry Finn”. That’s a flaw with this novel as the topics are completely out of left field and don’t necessarily have anything to do with the English class. Do eighth-graders read Huckleberry Finn? What kind of writing prompt is that?

Steven’s humor, the author’s humor, though not always funny, does diffuse tense situations. Jeffrey has swollen nose and black eyes. The brothers look in the mirror together.

The preschools would fill up with strange ring-eyed children. Soon the raccoons would be taking over our streets, stealing from our garbage cans, leaving eerie trails of Dinty Moore beef stew cans in their wake. Gangs of them would haunt the malls, burying up all the black and gray striped sportswear. THE RIVERS WOULD RISE! THE VALLEYS WOULD RUN WITH… (32)

This and a Brady Bunch reference on the following page make me question the audience of this book. Effectively and back to reality, Sonnenblick gives us the silent ride the boy will take periodically with his father the accountant. Steven and his father have a fragmented relationship complicated by his brother’s illness and his English teacher taking leave to care for him. Yes, the dad lesson in this novel is very bottom line driven.

Inside the school and unbeknownst to her, Renee helps Steven forget about everything. But unlike Renee, Annette, Jeffrey’s babysitter before the novel’s timeframe, has genuine empathy for Steven. During one particular week, Steven is absorbed in his brother’s predicament and won’t share it, just like his father will not fully share Jeffrey’s full prognosis.

Through this, Steven becomes expert at drumming, but has stopped doing his homework. His mom is at the hospital with Jeffrey and his father is silently grieving. Steven has two roles in eight grade: funny guy and drum guy. His journals now reflect that he feels sorry for himself and needs a new kind of attention.

He finds the zone at All-City Jazz Band rehearsal playing all of the percussion parts while his overstudy, Brian, was at home sick. Mr. Watras grins with pride at his prodigious student’s ability to groove on autopilot. Meanwhile the band’s lead guitar player is high-schooler Biff, Renee’s boyfriend. At this particular rehearsal when Steven is grooving Renee enters straight from varsity cheering practice in her outfit of small amounts of Lycra and Spandex, “and looking right at me, knocked me out of the zone. Far out of the zone. The rehearsal falls apart. Renee had won. Annette was snorting and giggling.” (42)

Steven and his two girlfriends are all three gifted in that they perform with high schoolers. This is not a 5–12 secondary as the book notes that they bus ride for this band rehearsal. I suppose anything is possible to an eighth grader or to an author pretending to be an eighth grader.

Jeffrey returns home from the hospital and we will discover that his speaking style is much more like a second grader with so much to say with each breath. He has ALL, acute lymphoblastic leukemia, a blood cancer with a 50 percent survival rate.

I like this illustrative thought of Steven on his father the accountant. It’s quite visual and telling from an eighth grade boy’s perspective:

…On the other hand, his coworkers would have had to be blind and deaf not to have noticed the sudden changes in what was now passing for his personality. (51)

Steven gives his mother sarcasm when she is trying to help and then he busts out crying. Poor guy, so conflicted and he just needs someone to really talk to. He becomes superstitious that he can make Jeffrey better. On a trip to the restroom at school one day, like moth to a flame he hears the sound of piano and peeks into the band room to see Annette playing Chopin, practicing for an audition at Juilliard. (This reinforces that the story takes place near New York City). Annette blushes when she realizes that Steven was watching. Steven thinks to himself “Smooth Annette” as she quits playing. (56) But then, after conversation, this girl breaks into Brubeck’s Take Five, explaining its 5/4 nature to Steven.

The “dangerous pie” suggested by the title comes from the game played by Steven and Jeffrey when caring visitors would come with gifts or food. Steven also thought that his father the accountant would have been amused by such a game.

Jeffrey develops a fever connected to an ear-infection forcing the mother’s getting Steven from the school dance. As both of them are in pajamas in this emergency, any embarrassment Steven would feel comes from the simple fact that he still hasn’t shared his brother’s condition with anyone. This lands Jeffrey in long stay at Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia, and forces Steven to meet these issues with his father square on. After a silent breakfast back at home, Steven proceeds to jam out on his drums while wearing his headphones. (It must have been a Saturday) His father comes down and watches until he has Steven’s attention and asks what they should pack for Jeffrey’s stay Children’s. They bond. There are tears. They have a laugh together for the first time in weeks. The irony here is the Matt Medic toy doll that Steven had given to Jeffrey for his stay reminding him that there will be no trouble… but there was to be.

Steven meets with Mrs. Galley, school counselor. He is smart with her. I don’t particularly care for Sonnenblick’s method of using Steven’s sarcasm to show his despondence. Galley rewards with candy hearts, but only if the student will talk. Because Renee had leaked this information to Galley, soon there is intervention with Steven, the counselor, Mr. Watras, and Miss Palma. Good. The boy needs to heal—and fast!

One day Renee takes Annette’s empty seat on the bus:

Hi, Steven.

Uhhh… hi, Renee. Can I… umm … help you with something?

You might notice what a smooth talker I was. I’d lived around the corner from this girl since we were, like, embryos, but that was the best response I could come up with. Amazing. (86)

Critical information about their relationship. Renee has a lip-biting thing that makes Steven think about kissing her. He has to turn away because of his attraction to her. Fourteen.

His cred at school increases with the release of his brother’s condition. His dad continues to speak very little to him but, after his Jeffrey’s return home, spends considerable time with Jeffrey while mom sleeps. Meanwhile Jeffrey loses his golden hair and wants Steven’s attention every evening after school.

Steven gets the flu and must go stay with Grandma and Grandpa across town. (What does across town mean in the context of this book?) They have no amenities for kids. Steven eats bananas, rice, applesauce, and toast while the house smelled of pot roast. The torture! This was no vacation in a chapter named “Siberia”.

Included with the Matt Medic doll, Jeffrey sends his brother a letter. But there is no way a five year old could write this way, a flaw with this story:

Dear Steven,

I’m sorry you are so sick. I sent Matt Medic to help you get better. When he gives you a magic flu-blaster shot, make sure you think strong no-flu thoughts. Doctor Purow said it’s important.

Also, Mommy told Daddy you sound like you’re about to die. If you promise you will bet better instead of dying, I promise I will, too.

Your pal,
Jeffrey Alper (94)

Hearing from only a few friends, Miss Palma, and Mr. Watras, Steven wants attention. He even calls Annette.

After he gets home from his week, he plays his drums for a while, heads upstairs and his family is not having that good of a time. Jeffrey is vomiting, mom is trying to soothe him, and father is slumped and crying over a stack of papers. So Steven is depressed too. Annette becomes his tutor in all subjects—except for math. That’s Renee’s corner!   But the one time she comes over to tutor him on a winter’s day, she has a coughy sneezy virus and Steven must send her away as his brother can’t be close to any virus. What would have happened if Steven had gone to her house? They were neighbors in this saga. I don’t know. I’m not crazy about the ironies in this YA novel.

Steven has dreams that Jeffrey dies, provoking counseling at which he discovers focusing on things he CAN change. One thing he can do is save his family $80 per month by quitting the drum lessons. Of course Mr. Watras will provide them for free. Annette breaks her arm in three places. His one word to describe the universe for the English journal assignment is unfair.

A big moral to this story is to not keep things inside and to talk things out with family, teachers, friends, counselors and then better things will come.

The band decides to do a benefit concert to cover medical expenses for Jeffrey as its community service component. It’s Annette’s idea and Renee backs her up. Somehow, Renee is allowed to hang out at the rehearsals.

When mom gets sick, Steven and his father must escort Jeffrey to Children’s where Steven meets Samantha, his age with leukemia and they hit it off. Steven opens up with her. She dies without a sister by her side. The novel finishes with the benefit concert and graduation and little Jeffrey slapping a high five to his brother Steven who will always be there by his side.

Sonnenblick, Jordan. Drums, Girls & Dangerous Pie. 2004. Turning Tide Press, Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania. 182 pages.

5 One for the team and a new author

Charles A. Watson
ENG348
Reading Log Five
September 25, 2014

Reading Log Five: The Range of Light: A Sam Davis Sierra Adventure

by Lisa K. Miller

In the prologue to The Range of Light: A Sam Davis Sierra Adventure, author Lisa K. Miller gives reverence to that untamable, unpredictable force that draws us to the mountains over a rescue mission in a little more than another day another mountain.

Sam, fourteen, and his stepfather, Davis, who “couldn’t rescue a fishin’ net” are a duo of sorts in this national park with strict rules regarding campsites, fishing and fire starting. When we meet him, Davis is described as a desk clerk but he might just be park ranger with his leg in a cast. He seems knowledgeable enough anyway like his son, Sam.

Legs will be a common metaphor in this book. This story is told in the third person of a boy’s observation through a woman author’s mind. And will occur over a 48 hour time period.

Shortly into the book to set up the harrowing drama, Sam remembers the moment succinctly the day his mother died. The description of climbing granite surfaces

His mother slipped to her death. The sound of the helicopters brought back this buried memory with clarity.

Sam, who works all over the park, is plotting a rescue mission himself and taunts his stepfather. They have tension just a couple of years after his mother’s death.

“You’re always afraid.”

“Cautious and afraid aren’t the same thing. When are you going to learn Sam?” That’s what this book is about, tension, and what better place to play it out then in the Sierra Mountains. Davis says to Sam “And if you’re really such a hot shot you’ll know enough to get the hell off the summit when you hear the thunder.” (10)

An illustration of boots ends the first chapter.

Radio dispatcher Betty had offered Sam some donuts and he regrets saying no; he had packed well but was now starving. Sam has a scientific mind and plans to major in biology. His real father was a geologist who never returned from South America. This lead to divorce and to Davis who would become Sam’s stepfather. But, really, his father.

This book is for fourth to sixth graders who have scientific, inquisitive, and adventurous minds. Boy scouts, summer readers—cautious, like scientists. Mother would tell Sam on their hikes, “How can we be lost? We’re right here aren’t we, and the mountains won’t allow a bad mood.” This time, he’s looking for a senator.

In wonderful allusion to the mythology of the Sierras, if there was to be, Mt. Whitney and Mt. Russell loom above the lake like two giants sitting down to a game of cards. Right after this written illustration, the following page 18 features a sketch of the mountains. Miller is effective at introducing a vision to the imagination and effectively treats her audience with imagery that answers any questions. Then, she introduces the word (rock) cairns. “It would pretty hard to pick out a little pile of rocks noting direction.” The author defines this new word with a complete sentence.

In the chapter, “Now What?”, we are introduced to a pudgy man who is camped illegally just 20 ft. from the water’s edge. He calls Sam “boy”. I run into a type-o, a missing beginning quote (“) at an important point in the novel:

Your friend, Mr. Wilson, thought you might be in trouble. He was afraid you guys might have gotten caught in that lightning storm goin’ over the top Friday.” (24)

He (Danny) is condescending to Sam … “you don’t look big enough to come up the Whitney Trail.” (25) One camper, Rick, shakes Sam’s hand. The senator, who had some Jack Daniels, is sleeping. Sam asks for a fishing license and Danny glares at him and calls him “a little snot”. This seems out of character coming from a burly man. He kind of comes off as a little bitch. In comical animated description, Sam and Rick talk while Sam watches “Danny’s bobbing shape disappear down the hill.” (28)

Sam Davis is introduced to Senator Frederic Brooks. Everyone’s called him the senator since he was three years old.      The second generation senator is a Mark Twain figure according to Sam’s mental image. The senator’s enjoys the mountains, and reminds Sam to enjoy it while he can before he’s an old man sitting in an office. “I hope that never happens, no offense, Sir.” Sam is respectful. “The old man smiled and stretched his legs out.” (34) Legs are a recurring theme in this novel. The senator invites Sam to camp with them. Sam’s thinks to himself that his mother always laughed at how little Sam ate when he was hiking as opposed to how he would chow while at home.

Sam’s worldy view of environmental protection comes from his stepfather’s influence.

“Huh?’ Asked the senator, painfully straightening his knees, the book of matches dangling between his thumb and forefinger.” Fires were illegal above 10,400 ft. (foreshadowing) Another type-o reminds the reader that the senator won’t make it through these mountains on foot: “… and I don’t eat much of an evening.” (39)

John Muir’s “The Range of Light” is introduced. Muir was an early Twentieth Century environmentalist writer. The phrase reminds me of Ansel Adams’ work Yosemite and The Range of Light. First published just a couple of decades after Muir, Adams photographed what his predecessor had documented.

Sam and the senator discuss bears and how to properly protect food at a campsite. But they probably wouldn’t find bears this high up the mountain as there are hardly any trees. Is this a foreshadowing? Of course it is! But it will be a nice bear unless you are the one with the pistol. Yes, there will be a pistol.

In a teaching moment Sam explains all the possible outcomes of a bear raiding a campers’ coolers. Through Sam to the senator, the author Miller reminds us that bears will develop a dependence on people food if it is not carefully hidden out of reach and the results can be fatal for the bear (unless it is an aggressive grizzly). Sam recounts his experience with a bear that he had chased off toward the valley. Sam knows a lot about bears. But there are no grizzlies in the Sierra:

“Only black bears usually won’t go after a person … In fact, they usually take off scared, like mine did, if you yell or bang pots together. (type-o, missing end-quote) (43)

After all this concern about bear preparation, Sam finally gets some rest at his private camp, only to awaken to a ransacked backpack and find his radio batteries missing.

The title of the following chapter is “The Visitor”. It might as well be called (“Do the Right Thing, Sam”). Danny, of course, has a pistol. The sky is dark as black, a bear is stirring their camp, and Danny shoots the senator in the shoulder. Sam knows first aid, of course. Sam gets the gun and three remaining bullets from Danny who had left it on the ground while he stared at the lake.

Danny had thrown the batteries in the lake. Sam confronts him. Danny is paranoid. Danny beats Sam to the punch regarding going for help. Sam and Rick stay with the senator. With Danny gone, the senator expresses his optimism but I hear no pain in this first statement from him. “Good. That won’t be too long.” He had been shot and he’s an older man. How can he remain stoic? That must be the qualities of a good senator.

“Sam nodded and stood up to stretch his legs. The senator could get around the camp. But Sam is certain the senator could not make the hike back.” (55) With the senator’s arm in a sling, Miller gives us a descriptive paragraph on the Sierra and their appeal to Sam. He has a moment to reflect as a young man should. The Sierra reminds Sam that he is small. Sam has a flashback to his mother’s death and the disagreement with Davis that followed this tragedy.

The challenges of the trek help him cope. “The ford at Wallace Creek wasn’t usually too bad this late in the season, but now all the rain made it trickier.” (61) What’s a ford? Miller’s illustration on the following page will show us the area at which a being can cross a creek using stones or bridge of limb.

Sam heads for help and does not trust Danny in the least. He finds Danny with a broken foot or severely sprained ankle.

How many books are in the series of Sam Davis Sierra Adventure?

On the trail back to the lodge, Sam finds Danny who has a good buzz and the flask of whiskey (Jack Daniels, anyone?). Sam chooses, against his primary instinct to just go ahead, to stop and help Danny who had brought a small group of people into a horrible situation. Sam reminds Danny to not go anywhere because he will be back for him in an hour. Danny’s reply to Sam’s integrity is a simple “Ha-Ha”. Miller expresses Sam’s thoughts at the close of the chapter that if he should be deceived, he would not be nice at all.

At the ranger’s station, Davis is now “Dad” when Sam reports the need for Airvac. Night had fallen and Sam has a flashlight with fresh batteries. It’s an eight-mile trek back to Wallace. In Sam’s night-time imagination when he can’t see the Sierra, Miller provides vivid description of actual fears for a young man.

Already his eyes were straining to see the trail, which was creepy at night. Old, dead trees made black silhouettes beyond the reach of the flashlight. Many times he thought he saw someone on the trail ahead of him. The figure would look monstrously big. Sometimes it carried a rifle. Was the person in front of him an escaped convict still in his prison clothes? No. It was just a boulder or a tree stump. Sam’s heart pounded. What’s the matter with me, he wondered? Why am I so jumpy? (72)

Danny gives sincere thanks as Sam goes on through the night waiting for the moonlight. He had only a crescent moon and his flashlight to see by:

Sam prepared his dinner and sat down on the ground and stretched his legs out in front of him. His feet ached and his right ankle was sore from his boot rubbing against it. He realized that he had been wearing those boots for a day and a half. (80)

Without the burden of caretaking and stressing over the safety and welfare of others, Sam reflects momentarily. There is no relaxation for Sam when he is on a mission like this.

The next morning Rick and Sam tend to the Senator. “Rick reached down and pulled the senator’s legs out from beneath his twisted body. (to Sam) ‘Feel for a pulse. Is he breathing?’” (80)

It appears that the senator has passed and Sam carries guilt for this after attempting CPR for an apparent heart attack. He then realizes how his stepfather must have felt powerless when his mother passed. He wept for both of them. As this was going on, the senator came to and then promptly went to sleep.

Weeks later after the helicopter rescue, the senator returns to finish his camping trip and pay the fines for the lack of fishing licenses and for the fire they had started. He wanted to clear his name and do the right thing. The senator invites Sam and his dad to come to Washington. The Range of Light comes with a happy ending like a rainbow. Do we know what happened with Danny? Does it matter?   Done. Amends made with everyone.

Miller, Lisa K. The Range of Light: A Sam Davis Sierra Adventure. 2005. Elusive Press, Tucson, Arizona.

4 One of the best ghost stories I have ever read

Charles A. Watson
ENG348
Reading Log Four
September 20, 2014

Reading Log Four: Wild Fell

by Michael Rowe

I don’t always read a prologue, but when it engrosses with startling urban legend right out of microfilm with chilling ending and chapter one follows with an equal chill, I am apt to follow a story and swallow its 180 pages of ghosts and mirrors in less than one day.

I read this novel over the Fourth of July this past summer. I think one of those days was rainy and I stayed up late reading this in the safety of my own home with my daughters present. It was midsummer and they were staying up late too. This is the story of a boy, Jameson Browning, and the stormy relationship between his father and mother and how it affected his entire life.

The book opens with disappearing (drowned) teenagers out in the young man’s pickup truck on a late summer night. They had worked for the summer tourism industry of Alvina, a border community on a northern lake. That this novel would begin with a hard-hitting delightfully terrifying hair-raising tale was beautiful advertisement for the story that would follow, almost in first person memoir. The chapters read like stand alone stories but were so finely woven and believable that the whole novel was highly believable until… the showdown at the end.

He befriends a neighborhood girl in his upper elementary year. His mother disapproves of this friendship. However, she does approve of the antique mirror that stands in his room—one of those creepy pivoting mirrors in its own stand. The girl that appears one day in this mirror visits him and talks to him at critical points in his young life. She is ancient and represents a myth.

If he would disobey the girl in the mirror, she would curse him through deeply psychological means. In one bully bike-stealing incident, the bully went to the hospital covered with horrible bee stings, because the girl in the mirror was jealous of his friendship with the tomboy. It’s important to note that Jameson was thin, sensitive little boy.

Jameson’s mother sends him to an awful summer camp one year so he would make new friends instead of the neighbor girl whom he loved and trusted. As if the curse of the mirror ordered him, however, he would get even with another bully, smashing him in the nose on the bus ride home over a box turtle the boy took home against camp rules. He wanted to be rebellious.

Of course, he (and his mother) had to deal with it. His mother baits the mean ol’ neighborhood dog with a steak to come and eat the turtle and ravage the small pen that Jameson and his father had built together. She was jealous and that’s how mother dealt with it.

The parents split and Jameson continues his life with his father. We don’t hear much from the mother—gone but not forgotten. She was a little mental, and the girl in the mirror is her conscience.

Later in life, the boy would recall his father’s closeness one night as he drifted off to sleep with father at his side, consoling him from a harrowing experience. The father would develop dementia and be under the Jameson’s care, to a degree. Jerome would have a career as a writer, and teacher. He would lose loves for one reason or another, and this would take him back to memories of the mirror and his tomboy friend. The tomboy would remain his friend, happy in her same sex relationship.

The boy as a man would not find happiness in relationships because of the girl in the mirror. A car accident settlement later in midlife provides him with the means to purchase the summerhouse called Wild Fell on the shores of Blackmoor Island, where the teens had died in the prologue.

He finds her, the girl in the mirror. It gives me chills just to think about it again. The house—it is alive with her and needs him to survive. She owns him and in the climactic scene, magically beset with both candles and breeziness, he encounters her in the basement mirror of this house. Their stormy encounter will make or break the survival of Jameson and the legendary spirited, forbidden, and taboo house.

This tight ghost story is ideal for an older teen who has visited scary life situations through experiences, literature, and cinema. It’s a ghost story about power. And I will read it again.

Rowe, Michaeil. Wild Fell. 2013. Chizine Publications. 180 pages.

3 For all of the Shelleys I have ever known

Charles A. Watson
ENG348
Reading Log Three
September 18, 2014

 

 

Reading Log Three: Run Shelley Run

by Gertrude Samuels

 

The book begins at point of high drama when detention facility inmates Deedee Stanton and Shelley are escaping from the cottages at Rip Van Winkle detention center, a minimum security rehab school with an open gate and honors system. Jeffrey Olsen, a social worker who sincerely cares, but can’t be a true advocate because he is bound by the rules of the system. He is also a man, and Shelley does not trust men.

As opposed to the Extension, the RVW is run more like a prison. Samuels provides this point of view so the reader can understand Shelley’s fear, but also her curiosity as we watch her run for horrible situations of captivity for no crime other than that her alcoholic, non-functioning mother could not care for her. We will find out later that the Extension facility was more confining but also liberating for Shelley.

Most of the novel is in third person always foreshadowing: “She’d kill herself before going to the Extension” (15) Deedee would kill herself before she wound up there.

They ask a truck driver to give them a ride, an idea still possibly safe in 1974. He knows they are runaways and behaves in such a way that they must keep running. They wait for fashionably dressed woman driver who is headed to Brooklyn. Shelley can take the subway to Manhattan where mama lives on 84^th Street.

Shelley’s crime is that she is a PINS, a Person in Need of Supervision, a natural distinction for a teenager but also her captivity. Olsen says in this dramatic sequence setting up the narrative, “If Shelley can make it on her own, why should we bring her back here?” (21).

Shelley was named for Percy Shelley’s poem “To a Skylark.” She never knew her own father and was left to play on the street after school. Her mama was always an alcoholic.

As a little girl Stevie and Maureen were her brother and sister placed in foster homes.

She had four goals in her early dreams and one of them was to plant a tree in her concrete jungle. Her first planted tree died as her first attempt was in the dust of concrete. This early symbolism describes this need for Shelley to nurture.

Truanced to take care of her mama, Shelley was moved to a foster home in Queens until her mama wanted her home where she would meet Mrs. Andrews whose granddaughter, Martha calls Shelley stupid. Shelley ran from Martha and her partying friends back to her mama, who was at home when she arrived.

In a scene in which Mama is switching on with her man friend over, Shelley realizes it’s no use to try and change her mother. She can’t possibly as she’s just eleven years old at this point in the flashback.

When she was trying hard with her homework Shelley sees mother having sex in the living room and mama calls out “Hail to thee, blithe spirit” a Percy Shelley quote. What would this do to a an eleven year old girl who has a curious understanding of the relevance of this literary chunk to her self? How would this sour her very name? Whether true or not, this is very effective literary connection by Samuels.

Age 12, Shelley knew that marijuana would cure her headaches, and she began skipping school to hang out on West 84^th Street in Manhattan. This became a fascination for her and the latch-key friends. Tony was a fourteen-year-old boy that she felt safe with. He was respectful but he didn’t want to be alone with her because she was still two years younger.

She goes to a “gig” to find trouble and winds up in court where her Mama calls her incorrigible, a word put in her mouth by the welfare woman. Mama commits her to keep her off the street. Shelley doesn’t truly understand the proceedings for her own good and the refrain for the novel introduced by her mother: “you and your goddamn god and six cops.” (32)

Each chapter is labeled with family court proceedings or a legal snapshot of where Shelley is in her adventure. Family Court doesn’t sound like very family oriented, at least in the New York system. Decisions are made on broken family problems and lack of parental care.

Beyond the lawful control of her mother, Shelley is sent to the Juvenile Center with its dreary two-story buildings and many blacks and Puerto-Ricans from New York. Many were custody children while and some awaited trial for assaults with arms

35*      Sadly, to Shelley everything from her youth was faded and forgotten, like the sapling that died in the concrete dust. There was a prison/school in the basement. Her headaches had returned. The lesbians were to be feared and might assault the younger girls. Mama never came to visit her in two months and was continually drunk.

She got to go home on probation

She could stay with her mama and “Cal” the boarder but only on probation. Cal is the paying boarder and scumbag. Shelley is back at her school, was expected by other PINS kids to join them in problem behavior. She kept away. Tony was back in her life.

She keeps a knife under her pillow because Cal had his pervy eyes all over her and wanted more. She’s afraid of Cal inside her home and of the street outside. She had no grandparents or relatives to talk to. Needing her committed enabler, Mama marries Cal. And Shelley runs again, violating her probation.

Finding her way to Greenwich Village, she comes across a group of white and black boys and girls from high schools and colleges. These are student leaders from Minneapolis, Pittsburgh, Poughkeepsie. She’s invited in to a church party. Unsure, untrusting, she feels somehow safe enough inside the church to explore and encounters a wall with a listing of faceless, missing children. Half of the 200 notices are marked returned in red. This will come back at the end when Shelley will mark her own card. After a boy’s offer to help her, she rejects him. He had the same manners as Tony. She ran away again, refusing his offer.

She meets up with a well-dressed woman who calls herself “sister” in the park and is

asked if she would like a place to crash? Just Shelley. She lied, saying she was seventeen.

In her days with sister she begins to confide in Sister or at least cling knowing that sooner or later they will ask for her working papers.

After four nights Constance, a junkie, enters and Sister has good vibes for her. “How many girls you had good vibes for, Sister?” (65 ) (Shelley’s private thought) Samuels frequently uses soliloquy to express Shelley’s thoughts, as they would come from a frightened, yet trusting, teenager. Sister sends her to stay with Cowpoke a dealing drunkie in an abandoned building. Sister says it’s just for tonight… why, where did the trust go?

Shelley thinks to her self again that it would take God and six cops to help her out now.

Cowpoke hits her. “You can’t go now, you’ve seen our pad.” For days and nights Shelley stays there surviving on pizza and pepsi, coffee spiked with hallucinogens, Shelley remembered.

Eventually Shelley is taken in after they all ran, including Sister, and Mama wouldn’t talk with her. Mama is kind of a junkie too. Shelley begs her. The file on Shelley Clark was fattening onto Rip Van Winkle Center, a half-mile stretch of a training school for a period not to exceed 18 months where she would experience rejection and loneliness.

The director would say in this entrapment, “just as long as it takes you to show some change in attitude” (75)

“Numbly she watched…” is a recurring symbolism. (73-74) Shelley is powerless throughout most of this novel. When she makes a leap in power, she is most often thrust back in the system. She trusts no one.

She is provided lodging in a cottage with 25 girls age 12-16. The gate remains open and they are on their honor.       There is a ‘The Racket’, a clan of butches, but run by Billie-Jean. This is non pervasive family as the Butches dominate. Deedee was in the Racket to avoid loneliness. Shelley finds “To a Skylark” in an anthology and it was like finding a friend. She copies the 21 stanzas. Percey Shelley had lived only thirty years in his lonely life. Jeffrey Olsen would ask one of the girls  “Do you like it here Marilyn? Then you’ve been here too long.” Big Julia loved Shelley.

“Olsen had personal story that drew him to the Center. Shelley reminded him of his sister. He confides in his wife, Nedda, to develop trust in her. Shelley liked and trusted Olsen, but would never go to him for help.” (81)

Shelley adjusting past anti-social tendencies “cooperative family”

Model prisoner over three months.

Chores, chapels, group therapy—credits for privileges to go home or “honors” trip to the village. Offered the shopping tour on her honor.

 

[At this point I have to move on and can’t finish the editing process. I need to find a faster method for digesting books.]

84*      She dressed routinely   impulse red ribbon.

85*      No one gave her a damn.. The multicolored all seeing eye on top of the Sherriff’s car at the bust terminal. Returned with a year before parole. No mom at her hearing. But Mrs. Farber showed.

88        She had grown thin and withdrawn. Shelley goes to dinner at Olsen’s. Nedda and baby Priscilla are there. Astonished by a real family! Offered babysitting. But Shelley was planning to betray him. She hitched a ride to Connecicut, hitchedrides to New York City. Stayed with Mrs. Farber since Cal said Shelley was a tramp. Cal tried to seduce her while she was resting on her mama’s bed.

91 Mama looked desperate and old, her looks gone. Taken back to Rip Van Winkle in cuffs on wrists and ankles, given solitary in hospital wing until Jeffery Olsen came.

94*      She had learned one thing… She would run again. And people got worse in these places, not better. She ran with Deedee RESUMES (how the book began). Gambles against going to the Extension, the state’s toughest training school. Training for what??? DEedee’s sister there maximum security cells and bars, locked in. She fantasied that her mama needed her.

96*      … so she fantasied, with Deedee..

Chap 10

100      Discussion about she can’t stay and how she even got there. Mama is obtuse. Shelley finds out she was illegitimate (what they called it back then, fatherless, one of those things)

What a horrible word! But she can stay the night!

Deedee is going to go-go dance “They give you a room, back of the bar..” The New Image Bistro in West Village. Her mom can’t handle the stress either.. she’s sick.

102      Scene in which Cal orders her out and her mom pleads and he knows she’s lying and “nothing but trouble”. She stands up to Cal “I can’t turn her out” You’ve done it before. That’s … that’s why I can’t now.

103*    She could picture them from behind the bedroom door, the room where he tried to rape her. Rip Van Winkle calls and and Cal gives her away. Shelley reminds her mama what a filthy creep she married. She runs off to find Deedee.

Chap 11

Stepfather reports that Shelley ran from his home after threatening assault with deadly weapon (scissors). New Image Bistro with topless go-go girls. West Village far removed from East 2^nd and Sister and Cowpoke.

Side thought: The Runaways [Band with Joan Jett who would release song (“Don’t Give a Damn About My Bad Reputation)]

106*    A densely packed… she was slender… a hundred eyes followed every movement, a sex performance. She dances in a cage. Charlie the bar owner.

108      It was late, they went out for dinner

109      The rocked with laughter.. “Never going back, Deedee… I’ll kill myself first.”

110      Shelley becomes barmaid, self-schools herself until it was safe to register for formal schooling again. (when? When she’s 18?) Shelley went by Goldie at the bar. Deedee had swore to Charlie who had wife and three kidsthat she would sleep with no patrons.

111* “They kept to themselves”

Planned a boat trip to Bear Mountain. They’re like college girls!

111      Cal comes in the bar, to ogle at the dancer, Deedee.

112      and encounters Shelley, and the first thing he says brabbing her wrist, is “you little bitch! You been up there too!” What gives the right? How can he have this kind of control over her? Own her?

Cal has her sent back to RVW.

Chap 12

To Director of Extension Center: Difficulty relating to staff and peers. Psychiatric tests. New time added to old sentence in maximum security. The “Hard-Rock Hotel” director holds power for relase. Olsen said he wouldn’t give up. Safer there somehow, fewer butches. Therapists and teachers for individual attention.

But loss of self-respect and dignity. Merits/demerits

120*   Deedee’s sister Christine informs Shelley that Deedee had killed herself on pills and vodka. Outburst at lunch one day, dragged back to her cell… subdued after trashing her room.

121* And she was nothing. She told herself if she couldn’t be free, then she was nothing. She asks for her notebook, revealing the writer, the author, the authenticity of this story, signaling that we are going to resolve this situation. She punches the guard with all her hatred and anger then sent to the quiet room and its silent hell.

Chap. 13

Extension Center Annual Report

Close security designed to reeducate and help our youth develop a new value system.

Quiet room, its confinement, barren, only her own voice. Director who has four children likes to talk about. “Until you show some control..” We have the option to transfer to a mental institution. Staff feels.. what about how I feel?” her civil rights standing up for herself. Without adult representation. Only her pajamas, escorted to bathroom and showers.

13 days she was in there.. Judge Evelyn Davis came, civil libertarian. Organized women’s strike for peace, active with women’s movement, involved in Deedee’s suicide. She asked to see Shelley Clarke. But the director said “Afraid that’s not possible.. She’s.. not here.”

129*    She was always to remember.. tired, weak, not eaten for 24 hours.

131*    She raised herself on one elbow. Judge promised a lawyer by morning, a civil liberties union man. The judge had said to the director “Would you do this to your own child?”

Revealed: The judge’s primary motive for visiting the Extension Center wsa to bring Shelley the small crucifix and note from Deedee.

Chapter 14

Notice of transfer: The director must consider alternative to the extension.

Director giving her over to the judge.

137*    What stuck in her mind above everything.

Judge and Shelley meet in her chambers. Bernie Delaney (her lawyer) Suing the extension.   Cruel and unusual punishment. Historic, landmark case=truth.

“Training schools for crime”

Judge Davis’ home in suburban Riverdale, her station wagon, the unkempt grass.

140      Judge offers her a place to nap before dinner

141      Delaney   “Forget the file… tell me in your own words”

He had the training and power to help her, not an animal

142      Judge Davis wanted Shelley to taste freedom without restrictions and to feel stronger physically. She could not consider running at this point. Joy!

143*    She occupied herself.. the extensions “quiet room”

144      Judge offers up “what’s the alternative? Let’s talk about … “reachable goals”

Mrs. Arbor

Chapter 15

Order of temporary custody: awarded to Mrs. Sarah Farber, observe the following conditions of behavior ~ a contract.

Became a student aide (paid) the dean gave her responsibility. Civil rights case against the state of New York. $10,000.

150      from Delaney’s brief. “All over this state.. abused under color of law”

153      Power over her mother

I don’t want your husband to miss you, or you to tell him where I’m living.

Kids are and always were much smarter than adults gave them credit for, in dysfunctional families.

154      Mama wants her money, right after she asked if Shelley had “a drink” for her.

155      “you’re lying again, Mama. You need help.”

Shelley has the power. She believes in herself. She has grown up over the six years of this novel. Shelley, the mother, mama the child after watching Mama leave and go straight to the bar. This is also the first moment when I can really “see” the neighborhood in this novel.

The book ends with Shelley revisiting the Image Bistro go-go club and she spots Charlie and the room where she and Deedee lived. She closes with Tony and realizes that his friends see her the same way they always did, as trouble. She visits the church and meets Michael Drummond, the boy who was nice to her, and since she is no longer running, gives him a photo of herself for the wall. The epilogue is Note to Family Court File Docket S7352. Shelley’s file. Proceed with caution.

 

 

Gertrude Samuels. Run, Shelley, Run. 1974. Harper & Row, New York, New York. 158 pages.