Fire Exit: Morgan Talty's Identity Dilemma

 

 

Fire Exit (2024)

By Morgan Talty

Tin House, 235 pages.

★★★★★

 

Morgan Talty is a rising name in Native American fiction. He authored Night of the Living Rez, a short story collection. This makes Fire Exit his debut novel. Talty is a member of the Penobscot Nation in Maine.

 

Fire Exit concerns itself with questions of blood and percentages. How Penobscot must one be to be an Indian? That’s not an academic question. Unlike the antebellum South where a single drop of African blood made one “black,” Talty tells of “The Book,” a literal counting of percentages; to be in The Book, one must be at least 25 percent Native. It matters for federal recognition and, in Maine, to determine who is included in the Indian Claims Settlement Act. Talty invites us to “laugh” in his preface, though his protagonist Charles Lamosway is obsessed by the question:

 

There is nothing strange about a white person wishing to be Indian. It’s comical, if anything. And white  people saying they’re Indian happens all the time, and it’s laughed at by Native people…. I get it. I do. I’m not skeejin–not Native… . But I feel that I am…. No place makes a Native a Native. It strengthens it… but it’s not the deciding factor.

 

Or is it? Charles flunks the 25% rule. His mother, Louise, married a white man, but her second husband, Fredrick, was Native, hence Louise and Charles could live on the Penobscot reservation. It was Charles’ step-father “whose love… made me feel Native.” Fredrick taught him about Penobscot ways and customs. Louise continues to live on the reservation because she married an Indian, but Charles is officially “white” and had to move away after Fredrick’s death. Now he stares across a river that separates him from Native friends and culture. To paraphrase, Charles knew what it was like to belong and not to belong.

 

Fredrick died in a hunting accident in 1996, which deprived Charles of his chosen identity, teacher, protector, and provider of love that his cranky mother withheld. In 1967, Fredrick and Charles built a 500 square foot house on the other side of the river when Fredrick sold his camp to pay bills. He and Charles lived there, but it’s all Charles’ now and it could use some TLC that he has neither the time nor inclination to give it.   

 

It would fair to say Charles is adrift. In the greater Bangor area, the closing of pulp mills left the region with a per capita income that remains 40 percent lower than the average for Maine. Lately Charles has spent a lot of  time crossing the Penobscot River in his battered truck; Louise has dementia and sprints between lucidity and living in the past at the speed of light. She needs various treatments (including electroconvulsive therapy), so Charles spends a lot of time taking her to the hospital. He also looks out for Bobby, who is a cross between a friend, a hanger-on, and a problem. Bobby’s an alcoholic prone to creating havoc–not exactly the best company for Charles who has been sober for 22 years. Bobby is helpful, though, when Louise needs care and Charles is busy trying to make a living.

 

An even bigger burden rests on Charles’ mind. When he was younger he fell for a lass named Mary whom he impregnated. That ended their relationship because of the ostracism associated with giving birth to a partially white child. Mary subsequently married Roger, a Penobscot. As fate would have it, his house is directly across the river  from Charles’. Charles hasn’t had contact with his biological daughter (Elizabeth) since she was a toddler, but he watches her from afar. She’s now a young woman who assumes she is Native. Charles, however, wonders if she has a right to know who she really is.

 

Fire Exit is ultimately about blood, identity, family, culture, and the damage that can be done by making an “incorrect” choice between truth and fiction. We go deeply inside Charles’ mind, one so conflicted that there is no need for Talty to resolve or sermonize. Instead he present us with universal puzzles: Who am I? What makes me, me? What duty do I owe to truth? You will notice that most of the Penobscot have Anglicized names. Nobody ever said there were easy answers to moral dilemmas. If you’re wondering, there is a fire in the book, but is there an exit?

 

Rob Weir

 

 

 

 

Hundres of Beavers is Just.Plain.Camp!

 

 

Hundreds of Beavers (2022/2024)

Directed by Mike Cheslik

Cineverse, 108 minutes, PG-13.

★★★

 

 Rabbits, and wolves, and raccoons, oh my! And hundreds of beavers. Sort of. Hundreds of Beavers is one of the sappiest movies I’ve ever seen. Yet … it’s so camp that you can’t look away. Like an old Henny Youngman comedy routine, you tell yourself that you’re not going to laugh, but you do until your face hurts!

 

Hundreds of Beavers was cowritten and directed by Mike Cheslik and could be called his Covid project, as he filmed it in the dead of a Wisconsin/Michigan winter during 2019-20. It unexpectedly grabbed people’s attention at a few film festivals in 2022, and gained wider release in 2024. It’s so unusual that it almost defies description. It’s what you might get if you crossed a Buster Keaton silent film with Looney Tunes, some Charlie Chaplin slapstick, a snowy Road Runner episode, Rube Goldberg, W. C. Fields’ 1933 short The Fatal Glass of Beer, and cosplay. Wait! Did I say cosplay? I’ll get to that. It’s also possible it has a hidden serious message that has eluded most reviewers.

 

It opens with a cartoon that spared no expense in the making because it was probably drawn in a morning, with the afternoon devoted to writing a song that tells the sad tale of Jean Kayak (Ryland Brickson Cole Tews). Jean is a maker of hard cider who likes his own product too much. When his orchard and cabin burn down, Jean is left with nothing. That’s not a good thing at any time, but it’s especially perilous in the north woods during the early 19^th century–long before any social services. This gets us to the cosplay part. Jean tries to make a go of it as a fur trader; all of the animals, including sled dogs and a pantomime horse are humans in bargain-basement costumes ordered from a Chinese mascot Internet site. Thus we have 6-foot tall beavers, rabbits, and other beasties. All Jean can see is food in the form of wily rabbits that elude him. The snow blows furiously, always in a direction that threatens to extinguish the fire he makes by rubbing sticks together. The snow “effects” reminded me of Fields declaring, “It ain’t a fit night for man nor beast,” except that after the opening song there are silent-film title cards and the film is devoid of sound except for chirps, grunts, ummms, and ahhhs.

 

Jean’s only chance of survival is to become a trapper, a pursuit at which he is hopelessly inept. He falls in with Master Trapper (Wes Tank) and also encounters Indian Trapper (Luis Rio), but Master Trapper and his dogs meet an unfortunate end, so Jean must secure enough hides to take to The Merchant (Doug Mancheski). He’s a rifle-toting skinflint with set prices for everything and a singular talent for missing the spittoon as he chews tobacco. Jean is also attracted to The Furrier (Olivia Graves), but he has no chance with her unless he can provide “hundreds of beavers.” Watching Graves eviscerate the animals is hysterical, as she is clearly pulling plush innards from them.

 

As the movie come-on puts it, Jean must go from “zero to hero,” which he does by developing fiendishly silly ways to trap animals. (with X’s in their eyes of course!) And what are the beavers up to as they construct a dam that rises like a skyscraper of wood? Two beavers dressed like Dr. Watson and Sherlock Holmes are roaming the woods as well, but are they any match for the increasingly adroit Jean? His furry superhero suit alone must be seen to be believed.

 

If this sounds as if it’s like the dumbest idea ever for a movie, it just might be. It could also be one of the smartest! Hundreds of Beavers was made for $150,000 and has paid off many times over. You could also see the film as a warning; nature was decimated by the real fur trade. Or maybe it’s just fluff. Hundreds of Beavers has cultists called–what else?–“the beaverati.” I again emphasize that the special effects are more surreal than real, assuming you could teach elementary school-aged designers about surrealism. How to rate it? If you’re serious, a 1 is in order; if you simply surrender, it’s a 5, so I split the difference.

 

Rob Weir

 

 

The Novel Pearl is a Gem

 

 

 

 

Pearl (2024)

By Siân Phillips

Alfred A. Knopf, 210 pages.

★★★★

 

Pearl is one of those small gems that falls into your lap and when you finish, you’re glad that it did. It was long-listed for the 2024 Booker Prize that ultimately went to Hernan Diaz’s Trust. It’s hard to argue against that choice, but to quote from the book’s back cover, Pearl is “an exceptional debut novel… a mystery story and a meditation on grief, abandonment, and consolation.”

 

Marianne Brown is eight-years-old and her brother Joe is still in nappies. Their father Edward teaches at a local college in Cheshire, but we infer that he’s an underpaid adjunct. The family lives in a ramshackle home and mom is a 1970’s free spirit who tends a large garden, decorates with flowers and herbs, and fills Marianne’s head with folk tales, poems, rhymes, songs, and a few mainstream stories such as Charlotte’s Web. Then the unthinkable happens. Marianne is in the garden, but when she looks up, her mother is gone. Did she wander off to a visit someone? That’s the presumption, but she doesn’t come back. Searches turn up nothing other than faint footprints by the swift-flowing tidal river. Did she slip and fall in? What is the meaning of an unmarked gravestone near the river’s mouth?

 

Marianne does not adjust well. She becomes a perpetual school truant and once she learns how to game the system, stops going altogether. She carries with her the verses, folk wisdom, and stories that her mother taught her but at several junctures she forgets how to read and has to learn anew. Thus, she knows a lot about some things but very little about the things society values. She fervently believes, however that the key to the mystery of her mother’s disappearance resides in a poem titled “Pearl.” Like Marianne and her mother, it’s an enigma. “Pearl” is an important work from 14^th century England, but it’s long (1,212 lines of alliterative verse), difficult, and scholars to this day are not certain who wrote it or exactly what it means. For many years it was said to be about a father who has lost his daughter, but best guess now is that it’s an allegory on death and heaven written as a dream vision. Some have speculated that the same hand also wrote Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

 

That tells us a lot about Marianne. By the time she’s a teen she’s socially gauche, fearful, and resistant to change. When Edward relocates his family to a house in the village, it is henceforth the New House that fails to measure up to the Old House, where Marianne takes refuge from time to time, though the place is falling into ruin. Then again, so is the New House–note the personification via capitalization–because a generalized stasis besets all three of the Browns. Marianne always calls her father “Edward,” and why not? It’s not as if he’s any better at playing the adult role than either of his children.

 

Imagine the burden that Marianne carries–Joe was an infant when his mother left–even though she acts as if she’s fine. We see through her eyes and feel her hopes, frustrations–an unreliable girlfriend when she’s 15– and her anxieties as she tries to carve out a life that makes sense to her as she drifts into adulthood as a single mother and art therapist. Even the Old House is rebuilt with new unorthodox (but monied) owners.

 

I don’t mean to suggest that Marianne is a sad sack for life. Perplexed, yes. Yearning to solve the mystery of her mother’s disappearance? Yes, again. It would be more accurate though, to say that hers is decades of coping in which sadness, pluck, curiosity, and intermingle. Over time, some memories dim and others become bathed in brighter hues. One commentator aptly called Marianne’s a “splintered reality.” I tend to call Pearl a ghost story without spectral visitors.

 

As a final observation, note that each chapter is introduced with a rhyme or verse that packs metaphorical meaning. Each, including embedded song lyrics, are part of the English folk tradition. You can enrich your reading experience by searching for the source material. Here are two song links, one for “Raggle Taggle Gypsies”* and the other for “Tam Lin.”  I can’t resist the second as it involves two of my favorite musicians ever, lead vocalist Sandy Denny (R.I.P) and guitarist Richard Thompson. 

 

Rob Weir

* Irish legend Christy Moore sings "Raggle Taggle Gypsies." I chose this one be/c it has close caption so you can se the lyrics. The cc isn't great but it will give you an idea. If you'd like Tam Lin lyrics, click the link.