. Spinning .

Been emailing back and forth with my soon-to-be 14 year-old niece today, and bacause of Jamestown’s Pocahontas and my previous comment on her immaturity, I’ve compared the two young ladies.  While I can’t find the exact type of language used, there’s something that screams "Teenager!" from within the words.

It’s funny.  Zoee, like Pocahontas, was struggling with using a different language in daily life when she lived in Spain (they’ve just come stateside to Tennessee and she’s getting used to English but not spoken as she, a New Englander for most of her life, has heard it!), just as Pocahontas is using English other than her natural language–some form of Indian I assume.  What’s funny is that the teenager has a language all his or her own that is yet a modification of the main tongue, and that is what comes through loud and clear.

Sharpe is good with character, but then, first person pov is very showing of character in how they portray the world.  For example, this was great:

He’s a funny man, our family doctor, not funny-laughing but funny-sighing, he’s like a figure in a bad painting who wishes it was in a better painting.  (Pocahontas, p. 14)

This was wonderfully put, yet evidently Sharpe felt so too and like make authors, tries to make a good line serve double-duty, although at least he did it honestly:

My dad’s chief advisor, Dr. Sidney Feingold, the one who I know you remember I told you said I have a tumult in my ovaries, and reminds me of a guy in a bad painting who wants to be in a better painting–that guy–entered the pantry.  (Pocahontas, p. 25)

So for me, the idea was diluted and less outstanding.  Here’s another glimpse into Pocahontas’ via her own words, and it is one that shows us just how far, despite her emotional immaturity, she does ‘get the picture’:

Do great and powerful men where you’re from sat they’re sad and use words like emotionally only when talking to women?  I mean I love my dad and everything but what was that visit to the pantry about, anyway?  What did he mean to tell me?  Does he think I’m a receptacle for his delicate girly feelings?  I ain’t no receptacle.  (Pocahontas, p. 26)

Even as she’s telling us her feeling, she’s telling us what her world is like, and wondering if ours–the future somewhere–is different because she doesn’t go along with it. 

There is a childlike naivete’ about Pocahontas, mixed with some street knowledge that’s beginning to hook me.naivete

Well, as with most apocryphal novels we get an immediate sense of uh-oh, something’s wrong from the opening chapters. We recognize the fact that the world around the characters has changed, though we never find it clear as to what happened or when.  I noticed this in McCarthy’s The Road as well, and while it may not be important to the story, it does itch the mind and set it to an almost anti-enjoyment factor because you are thinking of the author.  You know, the guy who wrote the book and shouldn’t be intruding upon the story this way, but because he hasn’t given you all the facts, you feel he’s withholding something and you don’t trust him.  You tread lightly and keep looking over your shoulder as you read.

And frankly, I do find it a bit more important when you have folks that appear to be in a normal contemporary setting (or from one) that are talking funny.

Thinking in English is beautiful sort of in the way it is beautiful to have smoked a big bowl of busthead.  (p. 7)

We on this bus are brothers by default.  We breathe each other’s breaths, fumes, and farts.  That a flake of Martin’s shed skin, while riding the currents of the bus’s inner wind, should land on my lunchmeat is a likelihood too great not to make my peace with. (p. 13)

These two are actually some of the lovelier use of language here that Sharpe employs. Yet it is hard for me to accept the language of the first speaker above, Pocahontas, who at nineteen speaks a bit like a goofy thirteen year-old.  We do know that English is a second language for her, so maybe that’s a part of it, and she does get the dirty words right. She is heartbreakingly honest, yet I feel I am reading teenage poetry.

So far (and yes, I’ve peeked ahead to see the layout of the novel) the chapters are alternating between Pocahontas and Johnny Rolfe, each in the first person pov, each addressing the unknown reader as if leaving a record of their journals for posterity.  But there is one big difference between them:

Johnny Rolfe:  To whoever is out there, if anyone is out there:  (p. 3)

Pocahontas:  To the excellent person I know is reading this:  (p. 7)

Johnny Rolfe:  To the one whose existence I doubt:  (p. 11)

Pocahontas:  Dear person who by reading these words will know me deeply and truly, (p. 15)

Johnny Rolfe:  Dear air:   (p. 19)

Pocahontas:  Dear special person out there getting to know me:  (p. 23)

The difference is faith.

Been antsy to read this novel by Matthew Sharpe since I read McCarthy’s The Road and it looks like I’ll have the time and head to put into it now.