Look Back, Women of a certain Age

From the midst of the Korean war our main characters are drawn, and so think of war and its riches: death to parents of children and to the children themselves; the fighting and bombing that brings death and then the gathering of the remaining body parts (someone has to do it) for burial; the torture and the pain and the resultant desire for death. The book brings you down.

Happily for you, there are lots of interesting women characters, missionary type mostly, and yet there's no deliverance, no holy, healing power. Trudge on. Women survive and excel. I suppose that's the miracle.

Lee is known for his deft and subtle descriptions, the piquant interior phrasing. He doesn't disappoint here. I know you will love the book straight off, the opening chapter is that good. I'm afraid the book bogs down because it is so heavy, as if the content reaches out to the reader and the text, saying "Why do you want to live?"

That may be the abiding question throughout the novel. The main characters, no longer in Korea during wartime, do well in the New Jersey of thirty years later. But their success or nobility proves little salvation. They represent the underside of life.

Lee is currently the director of Princeton's Program in Creative Writing.

Robb Forman Dew received the National Book Award in 1982 for her book, Dale Loves Sophie To Death. To get to know Dew a bit, listen to her put that award in perspective.

"it's a curse, too, sure. Everything you do is measured against it. But Dale Loves Sophie to Death wasn't the success everybody says it was. It won what was then the American Book Award for first novel, not for best fiction. I keep telling my publishers not to say I won the National Book Award, but they'll never change the blurb now... I can't remember who won for best fiction, but whoever it was must really hate me by now for eclipsing their award." http://www.beatrice.com/interviews/dew/

Granddaughter of US poet, essayist and political writer John Crowe Ransom, Dew grew up around readers and writers in Ohio, not far from Oberlin College. As it turns out, this book is the final part of a trilogy, about a family in the 19th century whose legends (myths may be a better word) are what personal stories are measured against. Rather like if your sons don't turn out like that one awful uncle, you'll have done a good job.

In the introduction, I said this story was plotless, and it is. Yet isn't that how life is a lot of the time. We seem to worry about some household repair, fear a new disease, worry too much about preparing supper, until we've completely forgotten about world affairs or what became of a love. It's like a giant memory taking on a life of its own.

I was drawn to the title of this book. What could it mean, I thought. Since there is no plot, there's nothing to give away. A college educated woman from Virginia (Southern and determinedly independent) at a Christmas dinner party refuses to go along with a Chamber of Commerce type who is rallying support, post-mortem, for the execution of the Rosenbergs for treason. Lavinia won't stand for it and tells him off in no uncertain terms. Her husband, a doctor, is mortified. On the drive home she says, in effect, propriety is one thing, but even at a party, would you be polite to Hitler?

It's a rhetorical question that goes to the heart of being in the moment. You will never be at a party with Hitler. Still, the point stands. We choose to act or not. How prepared are we for those moments? Her husband doesn't get it. Turmoil prevails, and that's how it goes.

Dew chronicles a spirit that leaves the fifties about the time the Soviet Union launches Sputnik, turning a happy time into an anxious time, not that there wasn't the famous Doomsday Clock (Dew describes this deliciously) signaling the proximity of death through thermonuclear destruction, but we now had a competitor for World Power. That led to the sixties. Or did you know that?

Poem (Lana Turner has collapsed!)

Lana Turner has collapsed!
I was trotting along and suddenly
it started raining and snowing
and you said it was hailing
but hailing hits you on the head
hard so it was really snowing and
raining and I was in such a hurry
to meet you but the traffic
was acting exactly like the sky
and suddenly I see a headline
LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED!
there is no snow in Hollywood
there is no rain in California
I have been to lots of parties
and acted perfectly disgraceful
but I never actually collapsed
oh Lana Turner we love you get up

Ave Maria

Mothers of America
let your kids go to the movies
get them out of the house so they won't
know what you're up to
it's true that fresh air is good for the body
but what about the soul
that grows in darkness, embossed by
silvery images
and when you grow old as grow old you
must
they won't hate you
they won't criticize you they won't know
they'll be in some glamorous
country
they first saw on a Saturday afternoon or
playing hookey
they may even be grateful to you
for their first sexual experience
which only cost you a quarter
and didn't upset the peaceful
home
they will know where candy bars come
from
and gratuitous bags of popcorn
as gratuitous as leaving the movie before
it's over
with a pleasant stranger whose apartment
is in the Heaven on
Earth Bldg
near the Williamsburg Bridge
oh mothers you will have made
the little
tykes
so happy because if nobody does pick
them up in the movies
they won't know the difference
and if somebody does it'll be
sheer gravy
and they'll have been truly entertained
either way
instead of hanging around the yard
or up in their room hating you
prematurely since you won't have done
anything horribly mean
yet
except keeping them from life's darker joys
it's unforgivable the latter
so don't blame me if you won't take this
advice
and the family breaks up
and your children grow old and blind in
front of a TV set
seeing
movies you wouldn't let them see when
they were young

Variations On A Theme By William Carlos Williams(Kenneth Koch)

I chopped down the house that you had been saving to live in next summer.
I am sorry, but it was morning, and I had nothing to do
and its wooden beams were so inviting.

2
We laughed at the hollyhocks together
and then I sprayed them with lye.
Forgive me. I simply do not know what I am doing.

3
I gave away the money that you had been saving to live on for the
next ten years.
The man who asked for it was shabby
and the firm March wind on the porch was so juicy and cold.

4
Last evening we went dancing and I broke your leg.
Forgive me. I was clumsy and
I wanted you here in the wards, where I am the doctor!

The Waking (Theodore Roethke)

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close behind me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lonely worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air;
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

A Supermarket in California (Allen Ginsberg)

What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked down the
streets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon.

In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit
supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles
full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes! --- and you,
Garcia Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons?
I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking among the
meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys.
I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops? What price
bananas? Are you my Angel?
I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following you, and
followed in my imagination by the store detective.
We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary fancy tasting
artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy, and never passing the cashier.
Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in an hour. Which way does
your beard point tonight?
(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and feel
absurd.)
Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees add shade to
shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both be lonely.
Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automobiles in
driveways, home to our silent cottage?
Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America did you
have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank and
stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of Lethe?

One Art (Elizabeth Bishop)

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster,

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three beloved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

-- Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) a disaster.