Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Rosanne Cash, Johnny and Amelia Earhart

As I was heading home, I heard Rosanne Cash on the radio. Or rather, I heard Johnny Cash say, "Rosanne, say cmon." Then she starts singing . . . "It was a black cadillac drove you away. Everybody's talking but they don't have much to say." The perfect intro for a song that's all about loss and all about love. This song is about her love for her imperfect but undeniably charming father.

When Amelia visits a therapist in my novel, her father comes up. After all, it's therapy and begins where we all begin, with the parents. This therapist wants to uncover who his patient is, and how else to figure that out but to figure out what shaped her. Amelia gives him what he thinks he wants, she writes the story of a father who was both admirable and disappointing. In other words, human. Amelia came to forgive her father for his mistakes, his weaknesses, in the end she was supportive and kind. She was the one who flew to his side to nurse him through his last illness, (with the help and comfort of his new wife). And she continued to care for her stepmother after his death. Many have written about Amelia's dependability, she obviously took on the role of caretaker, and considering how undependable her own parents were, it must have been a relief to be able to provide for others. A relief and a burden. You see, there are always two sides, two protagonists, to versions to every story. What my novel tries to do is show both sides; Amelia's and Muriel's . . .and in the end give them what history didn't, an opportunity to make amends.

I know I have spent this much time writing a novel about making amends because of my own experience with losing loved ones. Fiction is tidier than real life. It has to be, plotting demands it. But if you do a good job, it resonates. For me, writing this novel surely has.

6 comments:

  1. In addition to her dad, do you have Amelia and her therapist discussing her mother? It would be interesting to explore why Amelia as an adult got so bossy towards her mother.

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  2. I didn't get there, but it would be a good scene. I think actually she was a little jealous of how close Muriel and her mother were. Some biographers make much of her mother's dislike of GP and her choice there. That could have been an issue as well. What's your take on that?

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  3. Well, maybe Amelia perceived her mom as being a bit too controlling and overprotective; that's the only sense I can make of that "Our family tends to be too secure" line in one of her popping-off letters for the Friendship flight. And maybe Amelia turned the tables on her mother, not with conscious intent, but in accordance with the subconscious logic of "Control or be controlled!"

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  4. Yes, I can definitely see this. I also think her mother was very needy after the divorce. She sounds like a woman who would have been much happier having a career but was born too early. I love that she put them in bloomers and I was really impressed with the incident Muriel describes, when they run home from school to change because an African American girl is wearing a dress made out of the same material and she talks them out of it. Still, obviously by the end of her life she was bereft and felt cheated by GP. Families are really so complicated, thus the novel . . .

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  5. I like that running-home-from-school story too. It's good to know that their mother was countering the social norms implicit in the photo of the kids' tea party on the lawn -- the one where Amelia and Muriel and their little white friends are being served by a young African American boy. That photo is so painful to modern eyes. Obviously, whether by intent or not, the boy was being taught his place in society: who serves and who gets served.
    (I think I recall the photo being in Amelia, My Courageous Sister. If not there, in Courage is the Price.)

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  6. I believe it was also in the collection at Schlesinger, just saw it and I'm thinking that's where.

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