Frankenstein Sundae, 35

My email to Betty Bennett was not the first time I’d encountered a Scholar Star. Back in the late 1980s I’d gotten interested in Jack London (I was teaching The Call of the Wild every year to my eighth graders) and was in the process of reading all fifty of his books (only four are about dogs, by the way—and two of those were published posthumously)—and everything else I could about him. In 1990 I applied for—and was accepted into—a summer seminar on London for secondary school teachers, a six-week course sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities. The leader was Prof. Earle Labor, the leading London scholar in the world. (He still is.) Earle had published countless articles, edited collections of London’s work, and was writing what I knew would be (and has turned out to be) the definitive biography, published late in 2013.

That summer I drove out to Rohnert Park, California, where I and the other dozen or so seminarians lived on the campus of Sonoma State University, near the site of London’s former ranch at Glen Ellen, near the settings for any number of his stories and novels (including Little Lady of the Big House and The Valley of the Moon). We were in class all morning every morning, then spent our afternoons and evenings doing our homework, working on our seminar projects (mine was an annotated edition of The Call of the Wild, published in 1995 by the University of Oklahoma Press—a book that bears the imprint of Earle’s influence and published with his support), and hiking and hanging out with one another.

Some dark things happened that summer for me and my family (the death of my father-in-law, the descent into deep Alzheimer’s of my mother-in-law), some emotionally wrenching ones (our son—our only child—was preparing to leave home for college), so that London seminar was one of the few bright lights for me in a sometimes sullen summer sky.

Anyway, out in Rohnert Park I made some fast friends—none more fast that Earle Labor himself. We have stayed in touch over the years (we still exchange email now and then), have read each other’s manuscripts (I’ve been far less help to him than he has been to me), and have seen each other occasionally, as well. In 2003, Earle invited me out to Centenary College of Louisiana (where he taught) to participate in the celebration of the centennial of the publication of The Call of the Wild. On September 28, I talked to a large group, showed slides of the settings of the novel—from Santa Clara County, California, to the Canadian Yukon. Had a grand time. (Sold some books!)

So when I emailed Betty Bennett on October 26, 1998, I’d already had wonderful experiences with a prestigious—but warm and accommodating—scholar. But I had no real clue that I was about to have some more.

Tomorrow--An Anniversary for Days of Wonder, a Day of Doubt

It's odd how mid-July has emerged as one of the most significant periods of my life. Back in boyhood, I always loved the time--mostly because of no school and because I could play baseball, ride my bike, go on vacations with my family ... what's not to like?

Later, a teacher, I found that July remained a favorite month--the only month of the year when there was no school. Not that I hated school (I loved my job, except, of course, for those times when I hated it). I could read, relax, exercise, sleep late, have weekends free (no papers to grade!), drive around and visit friends and family and literary sites, take summer school classes at Kent State.


Mid-July 1969

And in July 1969 in one of those summer school courses--American Transcendentalism, Satterfield Hall--I met Joyce Coyne, who had just graduated from Wittenberg and was taking a course only to have something to do. She had decided to stay home for the summer instead of heading east to Philadelphia, where she had been accepted into the grad school at the University of Pennsylvania. Her mom had skin cancer (it turned out to be a minor issue, fortunately), and Joyce had resolved to stay home and help. I of course noticed Joyce right away in class but made no "move": She was so intelligent, so attractive, so ... together (in 60s jargon) that I knew I had no chance with her. And so I sat silent, admiring from a few rows back in the class. Feeling that regret that borders despair ...

One day, after class, she spoke to me (I've written of this before), and by mid-July we were an item. She invited me to go to dinner with her and her parents on her birthday (the 20th), and a night or so later ... she ... proposed to me. To me! I was shocked--but no so much that I couldn't speak. I accepted. (Duh!) And have not for a single second in the ensuing forty-five years felt a single electron of regret. (I dare not speak for her, however!)


Mid-July 1972

Joyce had had a fairly unremarkable pregnancy (only a man could say something so clueless, right?). We had found out around Thanksgiving that she was expecting, and I was excited. We had not "planned" to have a child at the moment (we were both busy grad students--and I was teaching, as well), but we had not, uh, planned not to, either. Joyce had developed a craving for eggs, and we were making scads of them every day. We attended natural childbirth classes sponsored by the Red Cross in Kent (confession: I was worried); the teachers told us that childbirth was labor not pain, a distinction neither of us found very useful (or accurate) later on.

We exercised, too. Took walks. Played Frisbee in the road of our cul-de-sac in Kent (College Court). One night--in the gloaming--we played one toss too long: Joyce did not see it coming, caught it alongside her left eye, and had a nice shiner for a while. (These days I probably would have been cuffed and charged.) She never blamed me, but I blamed me and felt horrible until the black faded to blue, to yellow, to ... normal.

On the morning of July 16, about 10, a spasm. And off we drove to City Hospital in Akron (where Joyce herself had been born) for the delivery. Which was not easy. Which was not mere "labor." Which was painful. So much so (she was not dilating fast enough) that the doctors gave her a saddle block, at which point I had to leave the delivery room (such were the rules in those days). I was ambivalent about that. I wanted to be with her, but seeing her in such pain--hearing her cries? It was nearly unbearable.

So off I went to wait, alone. Later--hours?--the news: We had a son. I raced to the room and saw them, and immediately some "fatherhood switch" went on--a switch I never knew I had, a switch that, subsequently, has never gone off. (I discovered another one, years later, a "grandfather switch.")

But then little Stephen Osborn Dyer became deathly ill. Sepsis. They swept him off to Children's, and for a week I was back and forth: City (where Joyce was very ill, too) to Children's and back again. The second time I saw my son, he had an I-V in his head and was lying in a little crib in neonatal ICU. The doctor told me that this sepsis was "the great killer of babies."  I did not find those words comforting. What I did find comforting was the presence of Joyce's parents, Tom and Annabelle Coyne, who were with me for much of the time. They took me to dinner, sat with me ...  I don't know how much of a comfort I was to them, but I will never forget their ministrations ...

Steve emerged all right. Joyce eventually strengthened. And on a day in very late July we were all home together for the first time. And then began the process of figuring out what it means to be a parent (when I get the answer/s, I'll let you know).


July 16, 2013

It was just a year ago, at lunch, with Joyce seated beside me, both of us weeping, that I put into my mouth a little white pill--Bicalutamide--and washed it down with a sip of pomegranate juice. This was the first step in the testosterone-deprivation therapy designed to battle the prostate cancer that had come surging back after a failed surgery to remove the prostate, a failed series of 30 radiation treatments--both at the Cleveland Clinic downtown. Joyce and I were crying because we knew that our lives would never again be as they were.

And they haven't. So much is still wonderful, of course (I mean, I get to live with Joyce), but other things have become odious--the hourly periods of intense heat and perspiration, the death of my libido, my lack of energy, my periods of Arctic darkness ... and more.


Mid-July ... "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times"--or so says Dickens in the first long sentence of A Tale of Two Cities (a sentence, by the way, my 8th graders used to memorize). And so I look at mid-July--the best, the worst. But, on balance, the best ... by far.

**

All of that opening sentence from A Tale of Two Cities ...

IT WAS the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way -- in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

Frankenstein Sundae, 34

Betty

13 July 2014

A few days ago I was flipping through my Rolodex (yes I still have—still use—one), and I came across the card for Betty Bennett. On the front, her address and phone number and email; on the back, directions to her place in Washington, D. C. When I saw the card, a number of feelings surged through me—happiness, loss, regret, gratitude. The happiness and gratitude will be easy to write about. The others … not so much. So let’s do the easy ones first.

I’ve known all along that I owe Betty a chapter of this book—and much more (you may remember that I dedicated it to her). This book certainly would not have existed without her. Betty T. Bennett, 1935–2006, was for much of her adult life the principal Mary Shelley scholar in the world—and hers is a world populated by some very remarkable scholars. She spent much of her career at American University in Washington, D. C., both in teaching and administration. But her passion was the life of Mary Shelley, and at the time of her death in 2006 she had spent many years working on what would have surely been the definitive biography. She already had a contract for the book with Harvard University Press. I don’t know what the status of it now is.

Early in 1997, when I began my adventures with Mary, it was not too long before I came across Betty’s name, for she had written and/or edited some of the fundamental publications in the field. She edited the masterful three-volume edition of Mary’s letters (The Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980–1988); she co-edited The Mary Shelley Reader (with Charles Robinson, another great scholar who will appear in a bit; Oxford University Press, 1990); she wrote Mary Shelley: An Introduction (Johns Hopkins, 1998); she wrote Mary Diana Dods, A Gentleman and a Scholar (William Morrow, 1991), an amazing piece of literary sleuthing about one of Mary’s friends who “passed” as a man. There are others.

I see in my journal that it was 26 October 1998 when I went online and found Betty’s email address. Here’s what I wrote in my journal that day—just a brief note: found Betty Bennett’s email address at American U and sent her a fan note.

That Halloween week (appropriate for the author of Frankenstein!) I had no idea what would ensue because of that email—what wonders would ensue.

Sunday Sundries, 8

1. I continue to enjoy my mornings (and Sunday afternoons) at the newly opened Open Door Coffee Co. in Hudson. A wonderful place to wake up, to see the unparalleled view of Main and Aurora Streets, to get my morning's reading done (and, okay, to catch up on Facebook), and--now and then--to have a surprise visitor, as I did yesterday when former WRA colleague Dana Cunningham dropped by for a while. We talked about books, teaching, politics, families--just like the Good Old Days.

2. I pretty much sucked at science in public school (a dire combination of bad teachers and a bad student). So by the time I got to Hiram College and had some really good teachers, it was almost too late: I was so far behind I didn't even realize there'd been a race. But for the last few decades a popular science title has always been on my reading pile. As I posted on FB last week, I just finished Your Inner Fish, a wonderful book about the evolution of the body--and how all living creatures (and extinct ones, for that matter) resemble one another. And now I'm reading a book about Time (can't remember the title--too lazy to go up to the bedroom to look).

3. Not long after we married in 1969, Joyce and I acquired ... a trash compactor. From Sears. I'm not sure why--perhaps the dawn of an ecological sense? It stood in our kitchen (not the built-in type) where we tossed and smashed stuff for more than a few years. (It looked vaguely like the one in the photograph--but it was gold (in color, in price), a popular kitchen-appliance color during the early 70s. We had a gold fridge!) When you pulled out the compactor's compartment (as you see), you could see (you can't see here) a little can of deodorant that sneezed off some mist. A good thing. Kind of. The garbage, most of which was organic, did ... spoil ... over the course of a week, and the deodorant was supposed to help. But really? What we got was the smell of rotting garbage trying to disguise itself with perfume. Like an athlete who works up a full, foul sweat, shuns a shower, splashes on the Old Spice instead.

When the unit finally died, we did not replace it.

4. Are we parrots or people? So many conversations I've overheard in coffee shops and the health-club locker room in recent weeks (Johnny Football, LeBron, Obama, immigration, etc.) sound like readings from transcripts of TV and radio talk shows: I hear the identical phrases and sentences coming from different mouths in different venues. Coincidence? Or evidence of our psittacine proclivities?

5. We've been streaming the first two seasons of Longmire (A&E show), about a contemporary Wyoming sheriff with issues; it's grown on us--to the extent that I'm now reading the Longmire novels, too (there are about a half-dozen of them, I think).

6. On Friday night, Joyce and I saw a film we both liked a lot--Begin Again (link to scenes), a story about a young singer/songwriter (Keira Knightly) and an older music producer (Mark Ruffalo) who connect (and don't). Written and directed by John Carney (Once and Zonad), the film shows us two damaged people--Knightly's BF has betrayed her with another woman; Ruffalo's marriage has fractured (he has a teen daughter, too). The performances were so good, and the music so appealing, and the cinematography so creative (very much so in some places) that we both chose to ignore the improbabilities and other issues we would have complained about in a more inferior film. (Knightly recently appeared on The Daily Show and talked a bit about the film--and its demands on her: link.)

Memorizing ... Realizing ... continued

I started a post the other day about memorizing poems by Emily Dickinson, and the next thing I knew (digressive little fellow that I am), I found myself writing about my experiences with Miss Emily in high school (don't think I had any--or, at least, I don't remember any) and in English 101, Freshman English, at Hiram College in the summer of 1962.

A day or so later, I remembered another experience I'd had with her my senior year at Hiram College. My roommate, Charlie Rodgers, and I, caught up in the folk singing craze of the era, began singing together. He had a very nice lead tenor voice; I could stay on pitch--most of the time. I'd also acquired a guitar and was painfully teaching myself how to play some chords. I say "painfully" for more than one reason: Obviously, the sounds emanating from that guitar--at least initially--were painful to listen to, but, as beginning guitar players know, it soon hurts to hold the strings down to the relevant frets--at least until your fingers develop some callouses, acquired only after much practice and a bit of suffering.

I had an acoustic classical guitar acquired from Sears (looked like the web image above)--the nylon top strings were easier on my fingers than steel--and pretty soon, after lots of listening and screwing up--I could move quickly through the standard chords of folk songs--in several keys; I could even do a little finger-picking--the "Travis pick" was the one I favored. (Here's a link to a YouTube video that shows you how to do it! Oh, where were you, YouTube, when I really needed you!?!)

Anyway, Charlie and I began by doing covers of other popular folk songs by Dylan; the Brothers Four; the Kingston Trio; the Limeliters; Peter, Paul, & Mary; et al. In our repertoire: "Make Me a Pallet on Your Floor," "Greenback Dollar" (always our opening number), "I'm Being Eaten by a Boa Constrictor" (really), "San Francisco Bay Blues." Somewhere I have a recording of us doing all of them; I hope I can't find it.

But Charlie thought we had a better shot at the Big Time if we had some of our own material, too. He asked me, doughty English major that I was, if I knew any poems we could set to music. I did. We had recently read Emily Dickinson's "If You Were Coming in the Fall" in Dr. Ravitz's class, and I thought that would be a great one to sing. (I'm blaming you for what ensued, Prof. Ravitz!)

Our method of composition was for me to play standard chords while Charlie tried to figure out a tune. He eventually did--it was fairly lugubrious, but singable--and soon we were performing the piece at various Hiram venues--there was a Hootenanny out at Sugar Camp one time (a maple-sugar barn out in the nearby woods), and the Hub (the local coffee shop/soda fountain) had a "Folk Night" now and then where we groaned and moaned to my sick Travis picking.

Later, I acquired a Guild 12-string (my fingertips were really tough now!), and that (very expensive) guitar added a bit of cachet, if not music, to our sound. Soon, though, we graduated (1966). He headed out to grad school at the University of Wyoming, eventually earning a Ph.D. in psychology (presumably learning along the way about our craving for the Big Time); he still lives in Wyo.  I started teaching in Aurora, and we saw each other only rarely after that. The most recent time was on June 17, 2011, at our 45th class reunion at Hiram. I didn't go to the reunion festivities, but we met for dinner at the nearby Welshfield Inn and had a great time. And you can bet we talked about our singing--and we even launched into "Greenback Dollar" out on the Welshfield Inn porch (no, I hadn't been drinking). I didn't see any approaching Welshfield customers turn around and go home--but I wouldn't have blamed them.

I wrote here much earlier (February 2012) about how Charlie and I nearly made an appearance on a TV show, Ted Mack's Original Amateur Hour, in the fall of 1966 (link to that earlier post). But that came to naught. Later, I played occasionally for my students--sometimes even accompanying them in some of the shows I staged at Harmon Middle School--but my callouses had disappeared (playing hurt!), and there were far better musicians at school (real ones) who helped me out, so the 12-string went into my closet, where it now leans like a derelict against a wall, waiting to be sold or played by a descendant.


Here are the words to the Dickinson poem we used for our song ...

If you were coming in the Fall,
I’d brush the Summer by
With half a smile, and half a spurn,
As Housewives do, a Fly.

If I could see you in a year,
I’d wind the months in balls—
And put them each in separate Drawers,
For fear the numbers fuse—

If only Centuries, delayed,
I’d count them on my Hand,
Subtracting, til my fingers dropped
Into Van Dieman’s Land,

If certain, when this life was out—
That yours and mine, should be
I’d toss it yonder, like a Rind,
And take Eternity—

But, now, uncertain of the length
Of this, that is between,
It goads me, like the Goblin Bee—
That will not state—its sting.

TO BE CONTINUED ... I promise I will get to the memorizing thing next time!

Frankenstein Sundae, 33

And on 10 September 2012, I’m back in Imlaystown again, this time—the third time—armed with even more information about the site of the Imlay family graves. A local historian (Monmouth County Historical Association), John Fabiano, has sent me this in an email: Although I doubt the site is along the creek, due to flooding issues, the site most likely is across from the Upper Freehold Baptist Church to the right where is a former Schoolhouse, since restored into a residence, on a bluff overlooking the creek and lake. There are remnants of a graveyard behind the Church in the brush, but I believe that was only a dumping ground for old headstones. 

So that is where we head this time. We drive up to the old schoolhouse, now abandoned and weedy. We look south toward the creek. There is so much between here and there. Private property. No markers. I take a few pictures, disgusted with myself for driving all this way again (450 miles from home)—for nought.

Then a man in a truck drives up onto the school property, begins unloading a large lawnmower. We go over to him. His name, improbably, is Dan, and he tells us he has lived all his life in Imlaystown. But he doesn’t know the grave site. He makes a cellphone call to a neighbor, an old man who supposedly knows everything. But Dan gets only voice-mail. Figures.

We drive over to the church across the road. I go in the back and find the old stones in the clump of woods behind the mowed grounds. Take a few foolish pictures. Wonder if I’m in poison ivy.

We drive off toward Pottsville, Pennsylvania, again. John O’Hara sites await us. And I know where they are.

Mary Wollstonecraft was a shimmering presence hovering near her daughter throughout her life. As time went on, radical thinkers (Frances Wright, for example) would approach Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, assuming—because of her middle name, because of her parentage (on both sides), because of her husband—that she would support their causes. But, as we will see, Mary Shelley was not her mother. After the death of her husband—and well before, too—social sanctions and economic forces had circumscribed her, constricted ever more tightly,  threatened to crush her. She found that in some very fundamental ways she could not be her mother’s daughter. She was, I realize, susceptible to something that had never seemed to affect her mother.

Fear.

I, FRANKENSTEIN

A few days ago I finally watched--via DVD from Netflix--the recent film I, Frankenstein, which bombed so badly at the box office (and with critics) that Mary Shelley probably whirled in her tomb in Bournemouth. (Link to YouTube trailer.) (She would have whirled more if she'd seen the film!) IMDB says it took $65 million to make--and grossed only about $19 million. That ain't good. The Times called it a "solemn, ho-hum film" (24 Jan 2014).

I've seen many (most?) movies about Frankenstein and his creature--from the earliest silent film (1910--here's a link to the entire film, 12 min+, on YouTube) to the classic James Whale film (1931), to many of the many later versions--like Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter (1966) and Frankenhooker (1990) and on and on and on. (I own many of them on VHS: That was a good investment.)

The first problem I had with I, Frankenstein (based on a graphic novel by Kevin Grevioux--a publication that's not available right now--must have one!), is casting Aaron Eckhart as the creature (who acquires a name--Adam (duh)--in the film). Eckhart is one of those impossibly handsome men, and trying to make him look ugly (and large--the creature was eight feet tall in Mary Shelley's novel) was something the filmmakers couldn't quite handle. (And why did he do this film?!?!) It's a bit like casting, oh, Brad Pitt as Quasimodo.

Eckhart is a hot creature--six-pack glistening in some scenes (see below). An action hero, whirling around like a Ninja at times. (True, Mary Shelley's creature was agile and quick--unlike in most film portrayals--but an action hero? Who looks as if he's been spending major gym time the past two centuries?) Eckhart did do some significant training--as this interview reveals.

And then there was the script. At the outset, we get a glimpse of the original ending of Shelley's story (in the Arctic) but none of the ambivalence the creature feels in the novel for his creator; in the film, Adam hates Victor. In the two hundred years that have passed, Adam/Eckhart (who must have found the Fountain of Youth--maybe after reading "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment"?) now has a nice haircut, contemporary clothes (scars but no bolts-in-the-neck), but gets drawn into an apocalyptic war between the gargoyles (that fly from a massive cathedral to do battle) and the demons, who can be sent back to hell when struck with a weapon that's been blessed. Adam gets weapons, uses them with aplomb to dispatch lots of demons.

Demon #1 (no, not Satan) wants to capture Adam so he can make a bunch of other creatures (and have demons possess them); also in play--the original journal of Victor Frankenstein, which describes his experiments and creation in detail. So ... there are lots of winged gargoyles flying around, demons that hiss and sneer, a sexy woman scientist initially working for the Bad Guys, and the ever present questions: Does Adam have a soul? Will he join the Good Guys? Will the Bad Guys get his journal--and/or Adam himself? Will a bunch of bio-engineered Bad Guyd emerge to dominate the earth? Will Adam and the Sexy Scientist ... you know?

It's a horror film without any horror, really. Nothing scary--just battles and special effects and cgi and preposterousness. (Example: The gargoyles claim they hide on the church because they don't want ordinary people to know what's going on. But ... there are astonishing battles in the skies and the streets, and no one ever notices. Not one fire truck or cop car arrives to see what in the hell (!) is going on.)

That's because not much is going on in this awful film.