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| I grew up in Utopia, in a simpler time | |
A few weeks ago I was having coffee with a friend who is a poet and a teacher of literature and writing. I found myself telling him about the novel I wrote--and self-published--and lamented that I should have held it longer and done more rewrites before releasing it. I found I was embarrassed that it wasn't a better book.
My novel, That Was Tomorrow, was set in my hometown in Alabama. Its protagonist was a young teacher, and I based her on what I knew about a real person who had moved to the town in 1920 to learn from the visionary teacher Marietta Johnson, who ran a school to demonstrate her theories of educating the whole child. I had a heavy mission in writing this work; I wanted to realize the power and charm of Mrs. Johnson herself, and to capture the essence of the Utopian community in which she lived, and bring them all to life. I knew much of myself would work its way onto the pages in the character of the young teacher--although I have never been a teacher, and only know second-hand what it was like to be young in the 1920s. There was fairly good response to the book, but sadly, historical novels do not sell, and even in a town that is quite infatuated with itself, there is little interest in learning what it was at its creation. In short, there was little market for my book, even had it been the brain child of a famous and successful novelist, much less a little-known local would-be writer.
I had also set a high bar for myself in the writing. I wanted to capture the style of writers of the day. I was, you might say, going for the tone of Edith Wharton. I didn't know the basics of novel writing, even that the omniscient narrator is no long acceptable. I did work with an editor who helped me in shaping it, and her best advice when I considered it finished was to leave it six months and then do a rewrite. But I didn't. I've been over my mistakes many times, and the clearest one was that if I had done that, I would not be ambivalent about the product.
But I haven't reread the book in years, and something told me to pick it up today. I was looking for a certain chapter about a picnic on the beach. However, the book opened itself to an earlier page, and this is what I found, in the chapter when the heroine, Amelia, is a five-year-old child being taught by a cruel and sanctimonious nanny:
"Amelia learned to keep her fears hidden. The surface of serenity concealed that in her heart, there was a fear of almost everything."
I was struck, reading that some nine years after I wrote it, that it was more me than I'd ever thought at the time--and that it was good. Maybe I was a better writer than I knew. More from the same section:
"Miss Pritchart imposed her doctrine of original sin on the child. It was her contention, and that of many childhood educators of her day, that children would do anything to outwit the adults in charge of them, and that the devil lurked near them at all times to lead them into sins of misbehavior and ultimately seduce them into lives of debauchery. Only by constantly relating to a child what was wrong and impressing upon him how deficient he was could an adult gain the proper respect of a child and get him to focus on work, the most important facet of his young life...
"When left alone in her room, Amelia closed the door and talked with Nicodemus [her stuffed bear], creating extremely passionate scenarios for her little friend. In these dramas he was in grave danger of being tortured by giants who sought to do him tremendous harm. He fell off cliffs simulated by the old highboy in the corner of her room; he was trapped in dark caves occupied by bats and frightening flying things; he was tortured by a wicked witch who threatened him with the fires of hell. All the while, the stoic soft stuffed toy stared with his shoe-button eyes at Amelia, the one kind heart in his stuffed-animal life. He could take anything, knowing she would come to his rescue and hug him until he fell asleep every night. Amelia had no one to do the same for her."
See what the author did there? The toy becomes as complex and lovable (and loving) as any human being, and he is transformed simply through the little girl's imagination. The last sentence smacks of the voice of an omniscient narrator--but let's just say the writer didn't know that omniscient narrators are no longer acceptable. I think it works.
Of course the book takes Amelia into adulthood, and out of that stifling home into a larger world where she finds interesting and challenging people. She never quite gets over the damage done by Miss Pritchart, but she finds romance, friendship, and a magical utopian community where she will gain the strength to take charge of her own life. This little fragment is just a taste of the novel I wrote, and I rather like it. I hope you might too.
