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| Photo by John Campbell |
Monday, March 4, 2013
Bonnie Jo Campbell: American Salvage Part I
It's week 8, and you're on spring break. Have you ever been addicted to meth? Ever had sex for drugs? Ever lived in a failing economy? Ever been part of your best friend's death? Ever been hit by a car? Where do these stories take you? (Hint: Fly.)
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These stories really touch on human problems and how people can get themselves stuck. I really felt for most of the characters because each one seemed stuck in a changing world. A lot of the characters live on the farm or in small towns where change is beginning to happen. The younger generation is turning away from their family roots. Other people are finding bad ways to try and cope for with their misfortunes. There is the girl who broke into a house in “The Trespasser.” She tries to cope with her misfortunes through her addiction to meth. This drug has become her life; it rules her. The family, whose house she broke into, has a girl who is the opposite in that she has a great life. The story ends with the innocent daughter waking up from a nightmare of ending up like the girl who broke into the house.
ReplyDeleteAddiction becomes a running theme throughout a lot of the stories and it doesn’t have to be drugs. In the last story, “Boar Taint,” Jill has become addicted to innovation and breaking into her own. She keeps coming up with crazy ideas to try and prove that she can be a farmer. She says that she is trying to prove it to her family, but really she is trying to prove it to herself. Thomssen is addicted to his wife, Belle in “Bringing Belle Home.” He tries to put her first even through he doesn’t seem to know how. He is addicted to the idea of her and the memories they share together even though their relationship is far from healthy. Jerry, in “The Yard Man,” tries desperately to show his wife the beauty he sees in the world. He tries to change her even though she seems very set in her ways. She hates the creatures they live near and the house they live in. No matter what Jerry does, he can’t get his wife to see the beauty he sees in the world.
These addictions hit a strong note in each of the stories and are written so well that the circumstances seem very real. Each story is very gritty and none of them end well. None of the stories really have a clear ending. They each end a little hopeless. If a reader is looking for a happy story, they should not read this collection from Bonnie Jo Campbell. She focuses on how life can be harsh. We all struggle to gain what we can from life and keep the ones we love close. Every character tries to keep a glimmer of hope alive that everything will be alright and that their life will be meaningful.
Bonnie Jo Campbell’s stories seem to have a strong family emphasis in them. However, these families are not cookie cutter American families. Rather, they are real families. We’re looking at real people who have very real problems. For instance, The Trespasser could very well be about the family that is returning to their cottage, but it’s not. If it were, then this would be perhaps more “normal.” This piece is especially wonderful for its poetic darkness. It is chilling and sad. But, it is also so tragically genuine. We feel for the trespasser. She has suffered. The mother realizes this in the end of the story, too. Not only are these people genuine (in that, they’re not exactly fairy tale material), but also they are broken. Naturally, the trespasser is broken, because of her addictions, but more importantly because of her strained past. Jerry in The Yard Man is broken, too, though he may not even recognize that. His hours have been cut and his home is not really his. At some point, that too will be taken from him. And then where will Jerry go? It is a difficult situation and he does not seem terribly worried about it. Frankly, this is a very human reaction to this type of situation. There are essentially two options: feeling shitty or moving on. Jerry, while not moving on from anything, is accepting life as it. However, he is lost, in the sense that his family history is so fractured. He never really had a father and his father figures are dying. It is such a tragic story and such a beautiful one, at the same time. World of Gas is actually more upbeat in comparison with the aforementioned pieces. However, the characters are far from perfect. Certainly, there seems to be more stability here, in the sense that Susan isn’t in any danger of eviction (that I notice, anyway). However, she is a single mother raising a difficult teenage son. She has a strained relationship with her brother in law. And, she has what seems to be an ungratifying job. She thinks she wants to put men in their place, but there’s more to it than just this. Susan is struggling, because she is human. In the end, this is what truly strings Campbell’s together. They are human narratives, which is what I find quite attractive in her writing. Certainly, there is a heavy feeling to them, but this is because of this inherent humanity. Excellent stuff, all in all.
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ReplyDeleteBonnie Jo Campbell, showed alot of the human struggle with in her writing and it seemed to be a constant theme.The characters seems similar, but not with different situations that challenge them. There seemed to be a lot of family struggle from "The Yard Man" Jerry who really is not able to show his wife the beauty of the wild life around her. It turns almost to a sad ending. To Trisha and Harold in "Winter Life." Trisha's secret love with Harolds best friend Stuart and Stuart's love for Harold and his love for plants. Sometimes the storys turn to face a darker tone with the girl in "The Trespasser." The girl doing meth and having sex with the strange men to get it. This story greatly disturbed me in the end, she used such details that made me cringe which I thought was well crafted for sure. There seems to be a theme that sometimes it all works out in the end or it all goes to shit in her stories. I'll also note that there was alot of addiction and want in these stories In "Boar's Taint" Jill seemed to be addicted or rather determened to make her farm work with Ernie. It was quite an interesting story that was quite optimistic accaully. The ending was up beat which I thought was different.
ReplyDeleteI have to say that so far the stories that Bonnie Jo Campbell has written have been really nice and a pleasure to read even if most of them are a darker side to the wild life in the rural world.
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DeleteThe ability to fly, to soar through the air without being stopped, would grant upon a person two blessings. The first of these blessings is the ability to escape, for “taking flight” has two meanings. The other is to see the world from the sky and have a better perspective of the world than that of an earthbound creature only able to see what is directly ahead. In one of mankind’s longest-lived fantasies, the ability to fly would grant these blessings. In the real world, however, literal flight is not always required for these abilities, and without our heads in the clouds, these blessings look more like curses.
ReplyDeleteBonnie Jo Campbell’s stories show us what flight looks like without the smoke and mirrors. “The Trespasser” throws us into the aftermath of one girl’s attempt at escape. The abusive life she left behind remains a haunting memory in a life on the run which is no less of a nightmare, as the trespasser can only create a temporary substitute home out of another girl’s life, a girl who would witness the remains of the crimes committed on her home and on the trespasser herself. This glimpse of another lifestyle is left on the young girl, giving her a perspective she can never forget, but would never have wanted. “World of Gas” plants the reader in a society where the men are too busy with one aspect of flight to appreciate the other. Through the eyes of Susan, we see the men around her obsessed with ridiculous sensationalism, using that as an excuse, or escape, to ignore the daily things that women like her have to deal with. This is repeated on a smaller scale with her son, who can only see his passion through fighting and sex, but is apparently oblivious to the obvious consequences. As a side note, there was a bit of irony to Susan’s criticism of men’s lacking perception, yet her perception was at a level of grouping all men into that same category of weaknesses, which raises the question: If we could see another perspective, how much credit and thought would we give it? Finally, “The Solutions to Brian’s Problem” gives us a range of perspectives much like Atwood’s “Happy Endings.” Brian has a problem of his own that he needs to escape from, his solutions ranging from something as radical as murder to as reserved as ignoring the problem. None of his solutions are perfect, yet Campbell has the perspective to include all of them, with their potential failings, and invites the reader to bring their own perspective in. What is the best solution, if there is one? If you tried to fly away from reality like these characters, would you see where you needed to go?
I’m not sure where these stories don’t take me. Thankfully I don’t personally relate to these characters most of the time in that, for example, I’ve never burned down a farm house cooking up drugs, but there is this thread that is in every one of Bonnie Jo Campbell’s stories that I do relate to very much. All of her characters are struggling. Maybe it is to stay financially afloat, or to hold on to the person that means the world to them, or maybe it is somewhere in between. But I love how Campbell knows that her reader might not be currently living a blue-collar, day-by-day lifestyle, and still somehow fills in the distance between character and reader with circumstance. In “Winter Life,” Trisha asks, “Mary Beth, how do I know if I married the right man? Is there a right man?” (87). I’ve never asked someone this question. I hope I never do. But in this moment, I felt like I was Trisha, questioning a huge part of my life and afraid to know the answer.
ReplyDeleteAt the same time, these stories take me to places I imagine going and give me some ground to dig my feet into. What is it like to smack somebody across the head with a pipe, so hard you almost kill him, and all for the wads of bills he’s got stuffed in his pockets? When you feel a twinge of guilt, but do it anyway? I don’t have to live this to know what it feels like—Campbell lets me see this experience through Slocum’s eyes in “King Cole’s American Salvage.” These stories provide the perfect examples of how life for people in one of the richest nations in the world is anything but rich. Instead, it is filled with dirt and grime, not only on their hands and faces, but also in everything they do, hope for, and what they wish they could leave behind.
While reading all of these stories, although I did not personally relate I was still able to enter the characters world and feel the emotions that fueled the stories. The fact that I don't have to shoot up meth or sell my body for drugs, to understand and relate to these stories, is what makes Campbell such a good writer. I feel like a common theme in most of these stories is the relationship between characters and the struggles of life. Sex, drugs, desire, pain, terror. I feel like Campbell zeros in on all of these elements. Although I enjoyed reading all of these stories because they were filled with unhappy endings and drama (which I like cause face it life isn't all sunshine and butterflies) my favorite story was " The Solutions to Brian's Problem". I really liked the form that Campbell chose to write the story. It kept me entertained and guessing. It also was more exciting and creative to hear Brian's life through the different ways he was thinking to go through it. If it was just a simple narration of Brian explaining that his wife was a drug addict who left him home with their new-born child, I feel like the readers would have had a harder time understanding and feeling for Brian. Having the different solutions and wondering what he was going to pick was page turning. We get so seem Brian go from one extreme to the next. Maybe he should drug Connie with Drano, maybe he should blow his own head off, or maybe he should just do nothing and try to survive the way things are. I think these stories are so easily entered because they are realistic, these stories cut deep and open eyes. When I think of the title being American Salvage, I find it very fitting. All of these characters want to live the American dream, if not they still want to be happy, yet they get lost and caught up in this world, life is not always rewarding.
ReplyDeleteBonnie Jo Campbell’s stories may as well be recounts of real events only possible in these small rural working-class communities. What strikes me most about these stories is exactly that: They’re so incredibly believable. Right down to the details of the Hunter in The Inventor, 1972, Campbell employs such beautiful particulars that had I not known this was fiction, I’d think these were stories about her neighbors—or even of herself. It’s very clear that Campbell has a rare talent, which is to watch people and understand them and get to know them inside and out and then transform and transcribe them onto the page. These stories were moving, to say the least, for their sheer humanity. Simple, real, nitty-gritty humanity.
ReplyDeleteWhere do these stories take me? Well I’ve got to say I’ve never been hit by a car, I’ve never done hard drugs, and I’ve never had sex for money. I’m the goodie two-shoes down the road, raised by a motherly biologist and a writerly straight-laced woodcutter. At least, that’s what I thought—straight-laced. My knowledge and understanding—my entire concept of my father—has been unraveling itself lately. My mother’s been telling me things, hinting at his life before my brother and I. No, more than hinting. She’s pretty darn blatant. My father, who I know to smoke a cigar every so often, who used to smoke cigarettes in his university’s library—no, but he’s clean now; and besides, he was never too bad. Well, until I learned he did cocaine and has a history of selling drugs for money. That unraveling—that breaking of what I thought I knew—is something that’s been haunting my thoughts lately. While reading Bonnie Jo Campbell’s work, I couldn’t help but imagine the setting as West Orange, the place my father grew up. And I couldn’t help but imagine my father being one of the guys driving off, abandoning the girl in the closet in The Trespasser. Do I know the truth about my father’s life? No. Just bits and pieces—not even as much as I know about the characters in American Salvage. What I can, say, though, is that these characters are real.
Bonnie Jo Campbell really focused on the tougher, down-on-your-luck aspects of human life. A lot of her stories focused on people in bad situations, such as the very first story in the collection, “The Trespasser”. This story about a girl squatting in a family’s house and paying for drugs with sex really sets up what’s to come and prepares you for the rest of the stories. Though the stories were hardly upbeat and joyful, I still found myself interested because of the dynamic and how real the stories seemed. Real people experience hardship, just like the characters in these stories.
ReplyDeleteOne of the stories I liked a lot was “The World of Gas”. It wasn’t as negative as some of the other stories but it still focuses on a woman and her struggle to hold her family together while her son gets in fights at school and her husband didn’t care enough about the kids to stay with her. I think reading this story was also interesting because I remember all the talk about what would happen when it became the year 2000. I remember that people were scared computer systems everywhere would crash, but no one where I lived took it the extreme of the characters in this story. So I could kind of relate to that aspect, though that was hardly the center of the story. The main character, Susan, is frustrated with the men in her life and doesn’t know how to handle them, and this just seems like a very real situation to me, which is common element in all of the stories. I feel like each and every one of these stories could actually happen in real life.
“Bringing Belle Home” was also an interesting story, and another one I could actually see happening, even though it would be an awful thing. I especially liked how Tomssen was characterized. He was a very large man but he wasn’t stereotypically mean or even that powerful of a figure. He was self-conscious and he tried to do things right and help, but he couldn’t bring himself to be brave and stand up to Belle’s father and he often couldn’t control his own strength, thus the not powerful comment. Powerful in the sense of being in control. Belle is a perfect example of how someone’s life can go wrong. She doesn’t have any sympathy anymore and Tomssen doesn’t have the strength to deny her what she wants, even as she throws him under the bus and gets him sent off to jail.
These stories were gritty and dark for the most part, and the showed the tougher side of human living. It was a change but I found it was an interesting and even enjoyable one as Campbell painted her world and her characters so well, that I could really get into these characters and experience the stories.
There is definitely very little I can relate to in Bonnie Jo Campbell’s stories, but they all take me to one distinct sort of place. All of these characters feel as though they live in the same sorts of areas, both physically and emotionally. They live out in the rural areas and they all have struggles to deal with. I find it fascinating that Campbell zeroes in on these sorts of people rather than writing about people from all over with struggles. It ties the pieces together on many different levels.
ReplyDeleteI personally found myself noticing how Campbell develops the theme of love in her stories, specifically the idea of being with the wrong person, whether you love them or not. It is brought up again and again in multiple stories, some situations very similar, and some radically different. Starting with The Yard Man we find Jerry and his shaky relationship with his wife, a woman he loves very dearly. Yet, their relationship falls apart because they simply cannot connect with each other in a meaningful way. They are both just too different to find some meaningful common ground, expressed in the story through their differing opinions on the wildlife and their living arrangements. Jerry is satisfied with his house, and loves the animals around him, while his wife wants to be away from the dirty old place with the snakes and the bees. Jerry loves her, but can’t leave. He’s the only one left in the scrap yard, like the snake. He has to keep it alive because he’s all that’s left.
Then, we see a similar situation in The Solutions to Brian’s Problems. This man again loves his wife, but their relationship takes a huge toll because she is abusive and too much of an addict to truly care about her family. We see the theme of failing relationships come up again. In both stories, it does not matter how much the man loves the woman, love does not change them, and the relationship struggles because of that. In Winter Life we see characters who feel as though they’ve ended up with the wrong people, or that they don’t love who they decided to marry. Trisha feels regret for marrying Harold because Stuart was her first love. Stuart also misses Trisha because his wife has started smoking meth again. Harold begins to feel old feelings for Pauline, who accepts that she’s always loved Harold and because of that breaks up with her fiancé. None of the characters feel as if they’re with the right people, and all of them seem to suffer in some way because of that. Stuart and Trisha’s struggles seem most apparent, as we hear more from their sides of the story, but even Pauline and Harold have their share of confusion and emotional struggle. After all, Harold does love Trisha, but finds himself feeling something for Pauline. Pauline simply does not want to deal with the drama her family starts because she broke up with her fiancé.
All of these “romantic struggles” feel very real. I had always wondered to myself if there was always someone out there for everyone, and if so, does everyone always find that someone. Sadly, through Campbell’s stories the answer is either “no, because they are not the person you thought they were” or “yes, but that doesn’t mean you can be with them.” It’s a sad, but very true feeling, and Campbell does a fabulous job of highlighting these struggles in such a real way. We can sympathize with each side because no one is perfect, and no character seems to deserve more sympathy. Everyone is suffering in their own way, and Campbell makes that very well known.
Bonnie Jo Campbell’s American Salvage was raw and real, which is one of the biggest things that I liked about it. It’s weird to get into the mindset of all of these pieces, and no, I have never had sex for drugs. “The Trespasser” is definitely the opening story for a reason. The story is less than four pages long, and it automatically pulled me out of the world of sugar-coated fiction and slapped me into reality. What a sad way to live, a sad site to be witnessing. Even though it was a moving piece that made me hurt, I still believe that it’s one of my favorite stories from this collection. “It is the teenaged daughter, the swimmer, the honor student, who discovers her own missing mattress on the river-side porch, screams ‘Mommy!’ a term she hasn’t used in years.” Wow, Campbell gives us a view of both sides of the spectrum; one is clean, the other is grimy.
ReplyDelete“Storm Warning” caught my attention. I’m not sure of the exact reason, but I’m thinking that it has something to do with the idea of this man depending on the woman dynamic, and seeing how it plays out in the end. Is it ironic that the Julie returns back to her stubborn boyfriend who is frightened after the accident? Who is the stronger person in the relationship? All I know is, the back and forth of emotion seemed real to me.
Another piece that really got to me was, of course, “Family Reunion”. I didn’t know what to expect as I began to read about a young girl, named Marylou who has barely grown yet. However, even though she has a bit of growing up to do, she is well trained when it comes to hunting and shooting a gun. We find out that her uncle has taken advantage of her and has raped her (a year ago, during a family party), which causes an issue among the family. Marylou is barely a woman, and at the end of this story we see her get the ultimate revenge on her uncle for what he did to her. When I first read this story, I had to reread it. After I reread it, I must admit that I laughed. What is this dark and twisted humor that Bonnie Jo Campbell has exposed all of us to?
Whatever it is, I really enjoyed it.
I think one of the greatest gifts a good writer can provide the world is revealing the truth about a certain place, group, or lifestyle. Bonnie Jo Campbell shows us a way of living that we all know exists but only read about in local newspapers. It is more widespread than we care to admit, but especially after the recent failure in the economy this country has seen a depressing increase in this lifestyle that Campbell illustrates. She has made it sound realistic and given an impressive amount of examples to show that this side of society takes up a wider expanse than we previously thought. With such details like Jim’s thought process and foresight in “The Burn”, I completely believe that this incident happened to someone, perhaps close to Campbell herself. Because of how personal she tells the events of his accident and the recovery period I knew I could see this as a realistic situation.
ReplyDeleteI can partially relate to some of these, at least the setting of where many of these stories take place. The vast majority of Vermont is categorized as country; miles and miles of fields, forests, and mountains. You do not need to travel far from the suburbs and “city life” of the Burlington area to drive by dilapidated farmhouses, overgrown pastures, and collapsing silos. For years, smaller farms have been struggling and while the story “Boar Taint” may be the extreme of a situation up north, there are those seedier parts of the backcountry that people just know to avoid. Plus, it’s not difficult to reach the other side of the lake and find oneself in northern New York, which has been used for murder mystery literature and films for decades. The lower middle class well-being is a much more common sight than people normally think.
Campbell places even more obstacles on top of her characters’ psyches besides living in the crumbling world that they all seem to inhabit. The constant struggle of relationships is a pattern in her stories, and “Bringing Belle Home” feels to be the one that carries the most pain. The way that Thomssen has always tried to be the best support he can be for Belle, ever since they were kids, and Belle tortured him for decades. Even at their age, she still manages to betray him and take something more out of him and he becomes even more of a shell.
I'm blown away by all the smart commentary on my American Salvage stories. Wow! Thank you so much for reading so thoughtfully. I have a new collection coming out in October, with less about poverty and drugs and more about the troubles of rural women in this world.
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