A copy of Pearls My Mother Wore is on its way to the Ukraine! Kaniv, Ukraine to be specific. On Saturday, once again, I participated in the totally groovy, monthly, local Readers’ Books event called “Random Acts.” Also participating were four Ukrainians: three high school aged girls and their English teacher. The four were visiting and being hosted by Sonoma because we’re a “sister city” to Kaniv. Who knew? I confess I had little knowledge of Ukraine except for Chernobyl and The Olympics. These “ambassadors” have forever changed that for me; I now have the faces of real people to connect with.
The teacher and her students had prepared a delightful and informative presentation about Ukraine and its most celebrated poet — Taras Shevchenko who lived from 1840 to 1861, and is buried in Kaniv. Following the dissolution of the old Soviet Union, Ukraine has been experiencing a cultural renaissance steeped in Shevchenko’s timely message of hope and freedom for all.
During the break at Random Acts, I offered a gift of Pearls My Mother Wore to the English teacher with the extravagant hope that it might be read by her or one of her students. She blushed deeply and seemed unsure of what to do. I didn’t let myself over-think her red face, although it did cross my mind that she may have been embarrassed because she simply didn’t want my book but didn’t know how to say so. When I came back from the car with a copy, she had ready for me three souvenir trinkets from her homeland: a ball-point pen with Kaniv, Ukraine scribed on it in both English and Ukrainian, two small cloisonné styled papier-mâché eggs tasseled with red and gold thread, and a comical figurine of a traditionally dressed couple kissing. I think we were equally charmed by our take-home gifts. It will blow my mind if I hear from any of them through the novel’s website. I hope.
The evening was also a delight because I found “Pearls” prominently displayed at the front of the bookstore. I wonder if anybody from Sonoma International Film Festival, also going on this weekend, saw it and bought a copy. Regardless, I love seeing it out there this way. Thank you Readers’ Books!
Pearls on display at Readers' Books in Sonoma, CA
Shifting gears, I just finished reading Tinkers by Paul Harding. It was a surprise 2010 Pulitzer Prize winner in part because it came out of a little known publishing house (Bellevue Literary Press) and had received only a few notable and enthusiastic reviews. Post Pulitzer interviews with the author have him explaining that it was tough getting Tinkers published because most agents and publishers thought it moved too slowly. Ha! Another motivating zero to hero story. Yes!
Although the novel won for fiction, it could have won for poetry. In both prose and style, the novel moved along with some of the unexpected flourishes that I have come to expect from poetry. That is to say, sometimes I was lost.
The story begins just days and hours before eighty-year-old George Washington Crosby dies, essentially of old age. Everybody, a steady vigil of bedside visitors and relatives, understands that the man is at the end of his life. He’s laid out in a hospital bed set up in his living room. As George’s physical systems collapse, so he imagines this house that he built imploding around him. His hallucinations include mangled pine framing, capped plumbing, electrical wires, roofing, and once snug windows all crashing in on him, actually crashing through him in his ethereal state.
Externally, the scene is subdued and basically uneventful with a couple of exceptions. Charlie, George’s grandson, begins reading a fascinating book he found in the attic. Charlie suspects that George wrote it because the handwritten script is so familiar, but he can’t get a straight answer out of his “Gramp” when he asks. My sense is that Howard, George’s father, was actually the writer. The first passage Charlie reads begins, “Cosmos Borealis: Light skin of sky and cloud and mountain on the still pond. Water body beneath teeming with reeds and silt and trout (sealed in day skin and night skin and ice lids), which we draw out with silk threads, fitted with snags of fur or bright feathers.” It goes on, but there is just some of that poetic stuff I was talking about. Excerpts from an antiquated clock repair manual also show up occasionally, obliquely suggesting the workings and passing of time. The other exception to George’s solemn encampment occurs when his last remaining, cigarette smoking, asthmatic, insensitive sister comes around. She never hesitates to exclaim how horrible “Georgie” looks.
Beside that, most of the action takes place in George’s silent remembrances and imaginings. Because of the off-kilter narrative, the shifting first person point of view seems par for the course. Much of the novel is about Howard, George’s father, the real tinker. Howard was an itinerant salesman, driving his mule drawn cart, mounted with a chest of drawers filled with everything from bootlaces to baby coffins. Within a day’s journey, Howard serviced the most remote reaches and backwoods around. He did his best to provide for his family, but his efforts fell far too short to please his wife. Not only was Howard a poor provider, he was also epileptic, and the day came when a fit caused him his family. Following an epileptic episode where Howard severely bit his son’s hand, his wife ended up with a brochure for an insane asylum and intentionally left it out for her husband to see. Why she did this is unclear to me. I’d have assumed she needed her breadwinner, meager as it was. But Howard caught sight of that wicked brochure and ran away from home before anything involving an asylum could take place.
This turn of events slips the story into the previous generation, to Howard’s unnamed father. One of the most beautiful passages I have ever read comes in the telling of Howard’s father being escorted by his wife and several black coated men, in the dead of winter, into a carriage. Howard’s father is in the most advanced stages of dementia, and he’s being taken away no doubt to an asylum. The writing captures something deeply loving and sacrificial on the part of the wife. Howard’s mother had to send her deranged husband away in order to spare her children. Young Howard doesn’t understand any of it and runs away in an attempt to reunite with his dad. His journey is dreamlike and implausible, but the bottom line is that it was during his search that Howard experiences his first epileptic seizure.
On the whole, this story is wonderful because it illustrates the significance of insignificant folk and events. It validates the ordinary – ordinary people, ordinary places, and ordinary objects. Within this somber account glows the richness and wonders of life as it is for most people. There’s no crime, no debauchery, no wizardry, no shock and awe. There’s love, there’s loss, there’s life, and there’s death. It’s a short read, but its synergy, like the inner workings of a time piece, accomplishes more than the sum of its parts. Given the current block buster, best seller atmosphere in publishing, I respect the Pulitzer Prize committee all the more for having recognized Paul Harding and Tinkers. Without them, this book may very well have disappeared into obscurity.
Have a great week, and I’ll post again next Friday.
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