Telling the Truth

I'm searching for a quote by William Faulkner. You know, the one about memory and ways of looking at a blackbird and the past never really being past. Except I think I'm conflating at least three of Faulkner's most famous lines. I want to find it because today I wrote this:

Every family has their own story, the tale they tell the world about who they are and what they stand for and where they’re going or not. And every member of every family has their own version. As Faulkner said, “….” So too if you added up all the versions of each family member, you would get something perhaps approximating the truth.

This is my version of my family’s story. I call it “Washing Dirty Linen” because that is what my mother was zealous that we never do: wash our dirty linen in public. Bare our secrets. Tell our truths. But she’s gone now and so is my father, so there’s no one left who I care about protecting.

I've been thinking about this for a long time. But maybe not long enough to be able to actually write it. Maybe my mother hasn't been dead long enough, although it's now been nine years. The long arm of Libby Lee may, in fact, be capable of reaching far beyond the grave--and she would like that. That arm is doing what it did so often in the past, reaching under the table and squeezing my knee in a vise-like grip: Silence. Quiet. Don't wash your dirty linen.

Not that our linen was really very dirty. Nothing heinous happened in my family; no secrets that would shock the world. Still, I can't really get a grip on what I want to say. I'm writing and deleting line after line, trying to capture this sense I have of--of what? Of smoke and mirrors.

Faulkner has always been my favorite author. If things had been different when I began my PhD studies, if the professor I had gone to work with, the Faulkner scholar, hadn't taken early retirement, I might be teaching Southern Literature at some university. And then surely these Faulkner quotes would be tripping off my tongue, rather than lurking somewhere in the back recesses of my memory.

A Funny Thing Happened On My Way to a PhD

This was written as a guest post for my friend, Nina, of ReaderWrites, whose dad died last week.

So the order of the day is to be funny, crack wise, amuse the crowd so they won't get too totally bummed out by the fact that we're all here because of--hushed tones, Addams Family music--A Death In the Family. And wasn't that a novel by James Agee? Or one of the Agee's. It sticks in my mind, halfway there obviously, as are any number of other works of fiction. My mother gave it to me on my thirteenth birthday, along with five or six other classics that she now considered I was old enough to read. Hah!

Like Nina (or perhaps that should, grammatically speaking, be As with Nina), I am a dropout from a PhD program in literature. We are, Nina and I, what's known as ABDs. All But Dissertation, that is, standing between us and the world calling us Doctor. I gave up the ghost long ago, admitted I would never finish that damn thing and thus condemned myself to, if I choose to teach, a lifetime of Freshman Comp classrooms. If you read Nina regularly, you know that that is somewhere south of purgatory. I don't know if Nina will finish hers. She might get a growth spurt in the fall and just go for it. Or maybe not.

I think statistically there are more of us ABDs than there are PhDs. Those of you who are unfamiliar with the hell that is graduate school may wonder why that is. Why don't we just get on with the fucking thing and finish it (words that I believe my dissertation director, not to mention my department chair, said to me often). Well, here's the truth of it: the easy part of getting a PhD is the course work. It's structured. There are assignments and exams and deadlines that Mommy and Daddy Herr Professors are setting for you. You go through term after term, picking your courses, buying your books, going to your classes, doing your readings, writing your papers, taking your exams and counting just how many credits more you need until you are Done With Your Coursework. And when you have amassed the requisite number of credits, you get shoved into the PhD Exam stage.

It varies from department to department and university to university, but suffice to say, it entails reading EVERYTHING written by and about and even tangentially remotely related to your topic. And then you get to write these horrendous exams written by faculty who are still sulking over (a) their career disappointments, (b) their age, (c) the horrendous exams their profs put them through all those years and years and years ago. Sometimes you're lucky enough to be in a department that has Orals, when those same sulky faculty are now quizzing you face to face about why you didn't put this or that arcane point into your exam answers. Or, as did actually happen to me, one of your examiners will fall asleep while you're responding. Oh, and did I mention that the chair of my committee was certifiable? But even so, the PhD exams are a cakewalk compared to what comes next.

The dissertation. It is not, as many of our relatives think "a really long paper," like maybe forty pages instead of a mere twenty. It is a book length original work of research. See that word 'book'--yep, that's what you're writing, a flippin' book. And for this, you are almost totally on your own. No Mommy and Daddy Herr Professors telling you what to do and when to do it. Just you. Alone. No deadlines, except what you set for yourself. And no one really cares if you keep them. Or not. No one cares about this thing that is taking up your whole life. And no one ever will. The point of it is that you've done it. It's the final hoop you must vault through before you get your degree. I faltered at the last step. I tripped on the final jump. And thus I am, forever and a day, ABD. A vast repository of now-useless knowledge about one minute speck in the world of literature.

The Weather Report

The weather is grim in these here parts. Meteorologists are predicting gale force winds. Can Oz be far away???

It's raining. Storming. Pouring buckets. I know this because I was out in it this afternoon with no coat. I got wet. What the hell. I went to have lunch with my friend, S., which ended up being a quickie of sorts since she, poor thing, is one of those unfortunates who only gets a measly hour for lunch. After lunch, when S went back to her job where she actually gets paid (!), I went shoe shopping. My collection has been dwindling, and I need to restock.

Especially I need Uggs, since I threw out my pale green ones in a fit of cleaning this summer. Who knew that I would not be able to replace them this winter. I tried to get a new pair when I was in LA, but, eh!, I wanted red and they didn't have them in my size. And Elk Grove is not a shoe person's city--or maybe it is, but only if your taste runs to Target and Kohl's and Mervyn's (I cannot shop at Mervyn's for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the name. It's a nebbishey name. It doesn't speak of quality or taste or even proper fit). I went to Target. I went to Kohl's. They have the same shoes, mass-produced in the Hunan Province, with lead gromets for decor. And no boots. None. Evidently, it is no longer boot season in Northern California. This despite the fact one is never more than an hour or so away from snow up here.

So I am Uggless this winter. Bootless in a world of cruel wind and rain. Pity me. Feel my pain.

Actually I love this kind of weather, the stormier the better. I adored the various Blizzards of the Century that I lived through in Pennsylvania. I would sit in my office, which was the finished attic of our 100 year old house and look out the window at the snow piling up and think all those Robert Frostian thoughts about drifts and fences and roads taken or not. Perhaps this was because I was reading a lot of American lit for my PhD exams, but I like to think it was just the sheer poetry of the world outside. The windows would get frosted over, and then the condensation would freeze on the inside, because this was, after all, the attic of a 100 year old house and insulation was not a big deal when it was built. But I was wrapped in a down comforter. I had books to read and grand thoughts to think and much of life was then still in front of me. What wasn't to like....?