Maine Humanities Council

I have just finished reading the novel, Home by Marilynne Robinson, winner of the Orange Prize, and a retelling of the story of her previous novel, Gilead, set in a small midwestern town of that name in the late 1950s.  Both of these feature the prodigal son, Jack, in his relationship to two families, and more specifically, the father of those two families: his own and his father’s best friend, both of whom are ministers, Presbyterian and Congregationalist.  In Gilead, we learn about Jack from the point of view of Ames, the father’s best friend, neighbor, and Jack’s intended but weary and suspicious mentor; in Home, we see Jack from the point of view of his sister Glory, who has recently returned home after abandonment by a long time fiancé, to care for their dying father.

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I recently read Islandport Press’ handsome 2003 edition of Mary Ellen Chase’s Silas Crockett, first published in 1935. A classic herself, Chase was born (in 1887) and raised in Blue Hill, educated there and at the University of Maine, and then, with a PhD from the University of Minnesota, spent most of her adult life teaching English at Smith College.

The granddaughter of a sea captain, Chase was probably only too familiar with the saga she traced in Silas Crockett: four generations of decline of a proud, prosperous and ambitious seafaring family against the backdrop of one hundred years of decline of a once bustling ship building and globally connected port town on the coast of Maine.  Although Chase’s family may have retained a professional status and attendant financial security, there were many other members of the community with similar family histories who were not so fortunate.

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Is there really any other theme in Maine literature than change? Whether it’s about traditional resource use, or changes in the corporate ownership of Northern Maine, or the invasion of people “from away” who buy up, fence off and make exclusive their properties, this has proven to be a surprisingly durable vein of literary inquiry, from the likes of Ruth Moore and Gladys Hasty Carroll, to Sandy Phippen, Carolyn Chute, Richard Russo, and any number of other contemporary writers.

Last week, I read two recent novels that focus on the clash of cultures surrounding the shift from “traditional” Maine, to contemporary Maine, between different ways of making a living in our state’s always challenging economy.  While I’d not planned it this way, the two books complement each other nicely.

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Mama, I’ll Give You the World (by Robi Schotter, illustrated by S. Saelig Gallagher) is a very touching children’s story of Luisa, a little girl, and her mother, who is a hairdresser at Walter’s World of Beauty. Luisa is saddened to see that her mother rarely smiles or dances, now that Luisa’s Papa is gone. Luisa understands how much her mother works to make sure that Luisa is taken care of, saving her tips for Luisa’s college fund. She also notices how much joy her mother brings to her customers through her ability to style their hair just at they want it. Luisa would like to bring her mother the same kind of happiness. To cheer her mother, Luisa conspires with her mother’s favorite customers, and her fellow hairdressers to create a wonderful surprise party at the salon, (also known as the World), for her mother’s birthday. Luisa’s mother is so happy that she not only smiles, but dances again.

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The reader’s first sight of Orito Aibagawa is of a midwife delivering what appears to be a dead baby, that of the concubine of the magistrate of Nagasaki. It is, without question, a difficult birth, with the mother’s life at stake. But the baby ends up alive and Orito is given credit for tremendous medical mastery. Her skills and reputation are to benefit her, and haunt her, in the pages ahead.

This is our introduction to the woman who guides much of the action in The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, David Mitchell’s new novel about a Dutch trading post in late 18^th and early 19^th century Japan and the clerk who goes there to make his name and, he hopes, his fortune.

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This spring, I attended the annual Infant Mental Health of Maine conference to hear the keynote speaker, Vivian Gussin Paley, whose dedication to storytelling with kindergarten and preschool children has made her a legend as well as a MacArthur award recipient.

Paley’s many books sold rapidly at this conference, but I also found on the sales table, The Call of Stories: Teaching and the Moral Imagination by Robert Coles, which was published just over twenty years ago.  Anyone who is a fan, as I am, of the reading and discussion programs of the Maine Humanities Council would enjoy this testimony to the power and pleasure of ideas in books to transform lives. Coles depicts how his psychiatric practice was transformed when he was a resident in training at Harvard and a supervisor makes a plea for “more stories, less theory.”  He began to visit regularly with William Carlos Williams and became influenced by his view of stories, “yours, mine‑it’s what we all carry with us on this trip we take, and we owe it to each other to respect our stories and learn from them.”

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One of the opening pages of Carl Little’s The Art of Dahlov Ipcar strikes the mood of the folktale world, tinged with the energy, magic, and power: a fox turns back its head, teeth bared, as partridges rise in gorgeous brown haste to fly in all directions (Fox Moon). This is one mood of Dahlov Ipcar. Other works in this book show zebras galloping across a series of whispering lines, or Caribbean animals of the sea arranged in a segmented mandala, and whisper the influence of Rousseau, another mood.

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Rachel Carson, perhaps best known for her groundbreaking book, Silent Spring, which exposed the dangers of chemicals like DDT, was a quiet and intensely private individual. Yet, coupled with these traits, Linda Lear’s biography (Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature) demonstrates that Carson possessed incredible strength and conviction. These characteristics ultimately led her to place herself under scrutiny as she challenged the powerful chemical industry. While Lear seems somewhat protective of Carson, she does a thorough job of recording Carson’s life and influences, and explores what compels a person as weary of the public eye as Carson was to put herself in the spotlight. In an era in which admirable people like Rachel Carson are being forgotten, Lear should be commended for bringing her life and work back to the forefront.

Recommended by Martina Duncan

Diane Athill’s meditative memoir Somewhere Towards the End examines aging with honesty and wry humor. In an opinionated and unadorned voice, Athill, now 93 and a longtime editor for edgy publisher André Deutsch in London (some of her authors included Jean Rhys, V.S. Naipaul, Simone de Beauvoir, Philip Roth, and Norman Mailer) touches lightly on subjects as varied as driving, gardening, the ebbing of her love life, family, the gradual breakdown of the body, and regrets (or lack thereof). In a chapter on her reading habits, she confesses that she reads mainly nonfiction because novels no longer thrill her: “I became bored with what they had to tell me: I knew it too well…old age has made me pernickety, like someone whose appetite has dwindled so that she can only be tempted by rare delicacies…I no longer feel the need to ponder human relationships – particularly not love affairs – but I do still want to be fed facts, to be given material which extends the region in which my mind can wander…” Athill infuses her reminiscences with a sense of gratefulness, both for the life she has lived and for the quotidian joys that bring meaning and pleasure to each day.

Recommended by Anne Schlitt

In Gentlemen, a dark young adult novel by Michael Northrop, Bones, Tommy, Mixer, and Mike are kids caught between the cracks, or beneath them, depending on how you look at it. They’re the kind of kids who are invisible or avoided when met on a street. Yet their feelings, personal strengths, and minds match just about anyone’s in this chilling story of a disappearance, suspicion, and blame.

One day, after a blow-up in class, Tommy disappears. The same day, Mr. Haberman, the English teacher of this remedial group, has a curious presentation involving a barrel. He encourages the students to guess what is inside, and Mike, the narrator guesses meat. When Mr. Haberman has Bones, Mixer, and Mike—“gentlemen,” he calls them—haul the barrel out to his car that afternoon and dump its blanket-wrapped contents in his trunk, Mike thoughts develop farther: it feels like a body. As Tommy’s disappearance lengthens, more clues arise, all pointing at Mr. Haberman and what seems like open mockery in class. It seems a warped coincidence that the text for that class is Crime and Punishment.

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