. Spinning .

Gawd, I must be the slowest reader in the literary field and close reading has only added to my time spent on a novel.

Overall, I enjoyed Matthew Sharpe’s Jamestown.  The writing in this particular book did not strike me as phenomenally lyrical or skilled, and yet the very process of writing a story from so many different voices and points of view of the major (and many minor) characters was perhaps a brilliant way of not only revealing the progress of plot, but of reinforcing the theme that mankind all too often cannot change its nature.

The ending was for me a downer.  Sarcastic hope of Pochantas’ kind is gone and yet replaced by a springing back and simple will to survive.  This is in contrast with much of the voiced feelings of the characters, such as Johnny Rolfe and Jack Smith who tell us that they don’t care much one way or another. They change–or at least, they don’t but we see their real intentions so they change for the reader.  That life goes on–unchanging–is what I brought out of this.

After reading several apocalyptic novels recently, I truly wonder what life after a disaster would become.  Unfortunately it does look like these stories are more realistic than my hopes.

Quite an interesting ending, but I have to think on it some more. I see apathy and I see human nature, and yet I see a spark of hope in that the name of the game is mere survival after all.

More tomorrow.

Although I suppose the entire story is metaphor for the way society is going to hell in a handbasket, Sharpe doesn’t seem to use a lot of metaphor–or else it’s beyond the scope of my intelligence to catch.  But this one is kind of neat:

"Get the hell away from me, you lump of foul deformity," she says quietly.  He does not answer her in words, but through the black cloth of grief that enshrouds her thighs, he tries to nuzzle them with his asymmetrically positioned wooden antlers, two end of a stick that’s displaced a slender stick-shaped horizontal column of his brain, a stick whose effects on that singular organ can be seen, I think, all over this room.  (p. 305)

This is Pocahontas’ description of Penelope Ratcliffe, whose son John was killed in VA, and who’s first and second husbands have just been killed by Martin, whom she addresses here.  Now Martin’s in rough shape himself.  He is legless after a battle and he’s survived with an arrow through his brain–left in as we all know that to dislodge it would surely cause his death. To carry that further, it may be construed to mean that the concept of war, the arrow, will never be removed from human nature.

Pocahontas–whose common sense philosophy and view of life has gotten to me–says: "…a stick whose effects on that singular organ can be seen, I think, all over this room."  While she is on the surface referring to the effects of the arrow on Martin’s brain and his subsequent murdering of the two leaders, I believe Sharpe’s reference is more global.  The arrow–a symbol of war and fighting–has the effect on the mind of mankind and always will lead to death and devastation.

Nice.

There’s some good stuff here and I think you need to be in the frame of mind to read and catch it.  Johnny Rolfe and Pocahontas are finally text-messaging and it brings in yet another form of communicating story that Sharpe uses skillfully. 

Here Johnny is telling Pocahontas about the meeting of the group in a wary celebration:

So I would caution you as a fledgling director of environmental theater to be aware of how much more interactive a performance can get than you might have intended when your audience is a group of frightened, half-starved travelers from a land where parody is chiefly used to wound and kill.  And I know you were dressed–or not dressed–to look like the men of your town, but beautiful, topless girls running a circle around a group of love-starved men will cause the sort of open-mouthed, drool-lipped catatonia you witnessed, followed by the violent open-armed lunges at you my guys made. (p. 212)

Johnny is so proper; his attempts at conversation are attempts at eloquence.  This to a girl who is as open and blunt with her own language, though it may be that he sees her cunning and intelligence.  A bit later, he reveals his own outlook on mankind:

Nothing since the start of time has stopped men from killing each other.  Art, though sometimes nice, has always been perfectly useless against war.  (p. 213)

Is the violence we see not only of one tribe towards another, but within the groups as the carelessly shoot, punch, beat each other without regret a statement that this one trait remains strongest and endures?  Surely this focus on the hope of young love based on the original tale of Jamestown is also a statement of what survives in lesser degree in times of horror and devastation, but will eventually grow to overcome whatever was done in the name of survival.

Here I was, thinking that overall, Sharpe’s prose wasn’t anything to write home about when I came across some use of language that set imagery in mind that may emulate Cormac McCarthy’s often blunt and emotionless images when it comes to human nature.

I put Martin in the driver’s seat, sat next to him, and made him back the car up from the tree they’d run into.  While pressing my thumb into Martin’s newest wound I aimed the gun at Ratcliffe and told him to stand up, unload the corn, and bring it to the mess.

"I told you, I was just in a car crash and my head is killing me."  I shot at the dirt in front of his feet to make it spring up and hit him in the eyes. He got up and came toward the car with a sad look as if I’d said the kittens his cat had just given birth to weren’t cute.  (p. 174)

That’s rather amusingly cold; amusing since these guys are on the same team.  The backstabbing and physical wounding of each other is taken in stride.  (Here I reflect on 78 year-old Angel Torres and I shiver.)  Then Sharpe leads us into the simile of kittens and as we hold our breath, he surprises us with a rather mellow one.

And here’s a more creative description, given by John Smith on the naming of the settlement as Jamestown:

While I was gone they’d named this place Jamestown after our CEO.  That they dared make town of this wet and sucking thing that vied with my foot for my boot at every step bespoke the glorious and yearning bullshit of men’s souls.  (p. 176)

The tone is one of underlying dark humor, a sardonic and sarcastic attempt to create a place that the mind has been stretched to accept.

Of course, natural resources are at a premium, but in these "after the day the earth…" novels, I’m always curious as to exactly what happened that could devastate the ground and animals yet leave people to survive. 

"Good.  We’re running out of trees.  Ninety-eight percent of Central Park is denuded and the other two percent is under armed guard.  Have Chris hack down trees and send them up.  And he should set up a small glass manufacturing plant."  (p. 166)

Curious. Also curious was the ‘poetry’ between Penelope Ratcliffe and Jim, back in their Manhattan bedroom.

In this multiple point of view, first person narrative, it is usually narrator reliability that may be questioned. Here, however, I find it points more directly to the creator of the many voices, that being Matthew Sharpe himself.

I just find it difficult to believe that the smartest most philosophical and practical person in the two groups (possibly three, counting the Manhattan characters left behind on this trip) is the nineteen year-old Pocahontas.  With everyone running around killing each other as the main form of activity, and the return of her tribe to the old traditional forms of mating and communicating, I just don’t feel her character would have the insight:

But I love this day, which has shown that a big wooden wall around a small port of air can serve to make two folks work hard to say what they mean, and that one can sometimes understand what the other thinks and wants despite the great impediment of the matter between two minds.  (p. 158)

There seems to be the writer’s touch here, and elsewhere, that endows only certain characters with any common sense. The rest, a parody of a society gone wayward by its own machinations. The only Indian of the tribe besides Pocahontas who was firmly but briefly rounded as a character was the short-lived scout, Albert.  The rest seem to revolve around Pocahontas’ whims and reflections.

There may be some discrimination here as well since the Northerners have a bit more character–good or bad–built into them.  Or maybe I’m just taking it all too seriously.

Up to this point in the story, I’ve sort of gotten a feeling of the Three Stooges meet Planet of the Apes.  There has been a dramatic effect–whatever the cause–on the two societies which we are seeing.  Both are mistrustful and readily hurt one another with little provocations.  But there’s an underlying sense of knowing that whatever happened, these people have adjusted to their new world in what appears to be a universal outlook.  This, from John Smith, gives it voice:

It’s good to have someone to like in a time and place in which nature whispers to your heart, Like nothing, care for nothing, respect nothing, believe in nothing, attach yourself to nothing but the wish to live.  (p. 142)

That’s powerful. And, it is sad.  I dont’ know exactly the time frame here, at which point the event has happened and the time since, so it’s hard to guess at what stage these people are in recreating their lives.  It seems that they’ve gone through their resources in Manhattan and are looking elsewhere, exploring further south.  The Indians appear to have adjusted to whatever poisonous substance ruined a good amount of food and water. 

But this is more than despair.  This is an acknowledged way to survive.

Have gotten through some more of Jamestown in between other demands and what I’m seeing now is rather a clever employment of multiple POV in combination with the characters preparing psychological evaluation of each other via Rorschach testing.

What this does is allow us a deeper examination of the characters not only from their responses, but from the interaction of one-on-one between the two sides or groups of society.

Dialogue has always been an excellent vehicle for pacing, backstory, infodump and indepth character study.  Sharpe uses it to great advantage here.

One thing about an apocalyptic novel is that you don’t have to understand 1) what happened to cause the disruption of the human race–unless of course the author wants to make a statement about things like war, toxic poisoning of the waterways, weapons of mass destruction, corporate downsizing, or the interrupted cycle of the cicada; 2) what parts of the global land masses have survived in what states of rehabilitative possibility because the novel happens in a place that either is managing somehow, or the folks are moving out to one that does; and 3) who won.

But we do need to have some idea of why human behavior has evolved (devolved) into the way the characters are acting.  We realize that people may become selfish, greedy, desperate, etc. in a world that is shortly sad of edible food and fuel.  But Sharpe’s characters are slapping each other around, and I mean, really beating each other badly for no good reason.

I realize that much of this is sort of a parody, and yet I’m not getting the meaning.

While Sharpe might have continued on in his pattern of first person pov of Johnny Rolfe and Pocahontas in alternating chapters, he has wisely introduced some new characters viewpoints.  These characters have already been mentioned in the previous chapters so that while a nice setting and tone has been established, these new bursts of voice and information does not disturb the narrative.

Opening Section of the novel, we have John Ratcliffe, a member of the exploration party who up until now we’ve only seen through the eyes of Johnny Rolfe.  Here, in a letter to his superior, we see a bit more of what precipitated their departure and what he himself is up against, thus giving us a slant on his character.

Ratcliffe mentions his mother, back in NY, and this flows easily into the next chapter which is from Penny Ratcliffe’s notes.  Here again, we see contrasting perspectives, as well as confirmation of other characters previously mentioned.

The next one to speak up is Father Richard Buck, traveling with the men on the bus.  His directive (interesting point as to who these ‘stories’ are directed to; Rolfe and Pocahontas both communicating with an uncertain future, Ratcliffe directly to his boss, and Father Buck to God Himself) is a riot of camouflaged doubt. There is the battle between good and evil compromised by a reality that has drastically changed for him (and everyone else) by some event–possibly even an act of God.  How do you hide resentment for that?

Lord, I come to you with all my doubts; if I did not you’d know them anyway.  In spite of all, please grant this one modest request: welcome to heaven the soul of Matthew Bernard, in whose lower intestine an arrow has made a hole.  Lord, by the way, if you don’t mind my saying, what were you thinking with regard to the flimsy construction of the human form?  Oh, sorry, Lord, let me try to put that more respectfully.  For what mysterious purpose hast thou made men such weak vessels of thyself?  Really, why’d you make his middle so soft and arrow-pervious?  (Father Richard Buck, p. 83)

With what these people are up against, it’s rather amazing anyone has any religious faith left at all. But then, isn’t this all relative?  Contemporary life offers us the same choices of hope versus total loss of faith.  It still comes down to what makes it easier for an individual to face, at every point in his life, his eventual death.

There is an edge to Buck’s words, a sarcasm that tells us where he stands emotionally despite his bluntness of words that waffle between the peace of faith and the knowledge of his existence.

There’s some good stuff here, where Sharpe endows Pocahontas with some intriguing ideas:

So there I was, spread languidly on the divan (…) minding my own business, and minding the business of the large looking glass on the wall opposite the diven, which is the business of the secrets of the world revealed by looking twice, once forward and once backward.  And to my hardened, dirt-caked feet, and to my skinny legs and scrape-scarred knees, and to the rough and colorless garment that covered my sylvan torso, and especially to my dented and inquiring face–whose eyelids drooped not so much in languor as in the lids’ attempt to shield the eyes from the full-on assault of seeing–I asked, "Who are you?" and "Who are you?" I asked back at me.  (Pocahontas, p. 61)

The duality of the mirror gives me some reinforcement in my view of Pocahontas as a multifaceted personality.  She is caught between the world of a child and that of a woman; she is trapped between acceptance of that world and rebellion against it.  She speaks her native tongue and chooses English in which to leave her legacy of words.  Naive and simple, yet wise in many ways, Pocahontas indeed seems a mirror image of herself.

Then there is this, as she asks Stickboy why he was with the men at the bus, and persists regardless of his evasive answers:

And this was his response:  the sound of the wind on the land, the same wind that blew the ash that clogged my ears.  A friend who won’t respond to what a friend can’t ask is like a looking glass in which you cannot see yourself.  (P. 71)

Nice.

Okay, so here is where Sharpe starts to lose me. 

The arrow attack didn’t last long.  Newport, our driver, stopped it with an automatic assault rifle. (…) With his single arm he wasn’t too precise with it, but didn’t have to be to get his point across.  The particular wisdom of the assault rifle is the wisdom of abundance and speed.  But any of our guns, really, seem gross and stupid compared to their lean and intelligent arrows, with the assault rifle earning the prize for the stupidest gun of all.  It takes no intelligence or skill to use it, and it took not only no intelligence but a willful negation of intelligence to have invented it, though I do think it took a certain kind of imagination to invent it. (Johnny, p. 59)

This just makes no sense.  First of all, to compare the gun to a bow and arrow is going to show the gun, when handled with skill, to be a far superior weapon.  The "intelligent" arrows only appeared to be so because the archers had taken a stance to surprise the others, and, remaining hidden while they shot–like from a circle around the bus, hence no specific direction–the only option the men had was to shoot into the cornfields at invisible targets while they stood out in the open. 

More importantly, I strongly doubt that Johnny Rolfe, who is well acquainted with violence, is in the middle of this battle thinking how wrong and awful it is that firearms had ever been invented.  I would find it a lot more believable had he hied his ass into the safety of the bus and knelt down to thank God for fire and steel over wood and feathers.

What I take this to be then, is authorly intrusion into the narrative that professes personal beliefs rather than a realistic viewpoint of his character.

Sharpe hasn’t really given us a good view of the environment of the story, either by Johnny Rolfe, riding the bus from New York to Virginia, or from Pocahontas, who has given us merely a cornfield and woods.   But when the two meet, we get our first glimpse of the two characters as they have been described by each other.

(…)with a new, tall and willowy guy, dark-haired, the first one of them to be remotely handsome, though he had sallow skin, was bone-thin, and smelled like poop. And something was amiss about his face, as if fear and sadness had long done the work meant for seeing hearing, smelling, tasting and touching.  (Pocahontas, p. 44)

This is a very eloquent, insightful commentary by Pocahontas, blending the empirical with the guesswork of a more psychological and emotional reaction. I was fine with this, after having built my own image during these first forty pages of story.

The girl was spectacularly ugle.  She was short and thing and of an unnaturally reddish hue.  Her face was wide as it was long, with big, thick cheekbones and pockmarked skin.  Her black hair came halfway down her arms in two dense, gobbed-up plaits that looked like a pair of large, dead rodents hung in the sun by their tails from the top of her head to cure their meat.  (…) Her teeth were yellow stubs.  She had a smile that showed more gum than teeth, and the only part of her face less nice to look at than her teeth were her gums, which were soft, pulpy, red, and seemed designed to show us we were making a mistake.  (Johnny p. 48)

Hmmm.  I didn’t picture her that way at all.  And why not?  Where I can now see that Sharpe’s intention is to perhaps parody or at least mimic the real Pocahontas et al, and I am not judging Indian physical traits by the movies, I just would never have considered the heroine here to be "spectacularly ugly."

There are things that just don’t fit in this story, based upon the time placement–which we do not know for sure.  There are Indians, but the English that Pocahontas speaks is pretty current.  There’s the Chrysler building in New York City that collapses and the bus the thirty men use for their travels.  And the most obvious, both young people are using handheld computer units.

Why then, the intolerance on the part of Johnny as to the Indian’s appearance?  Why even his surprise?  It would be interesting again to know what amount of time has passed since this disintegration of the land started, whether it be decades or merely a couple of years, though it does seem that it happened possibly when both were small or even prior to their birth.

I’m having a problem with the character of Pocahontas.  From a naive teen to a serious-minded protester against government policy is a stretch.  No doubt, the use of ESL can be put as part of the problem, but I don’t see what she thinks, and how she thinks, in alliance with what she is writing here in her diary.

There is no doubt that sex and coming of age is a more natural part of this community’s existence, and she is waiting for her period so she can "fuck," but then, when it does come to her, she puts it this way:

So I came out here to my lonely little corn shack to contemplate and tell you all these things about my day, and I felt something itchy-tacky, you, know, ‘down there’ in the tippy-top-of-the-thigh-type place, and I casually reached down to give a scratch.  I withdrew my hand, found it wet and sticky, I looked at it, and the darkness of the corn shack notwithstanding, there’ no doubt but that’s blood on my hand, so either I’m hemorrhaging to death through my pu-sy or–yes, beloved English speaker–I’m having my period!  Which is also the word y’all use when you want to show you’ve come to the end of what you have to say, for now.  (p. 46)

She has written the word ‘p…y’ here, and has used the word ‘c..t’ before,so the ‘tippy-top-of-the-thigh’ thing doesn’t fly.  Now I realize she has a sarcastic nature, but there’s just a strange sense of a strong change of voice particularly after her conversation with the Doctor, and her greeting of the strangers on the bus.

Let’s see how she develops.