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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (June 1, 1989)
Big Sound From The Big A p p le ! A place at the table need not be earned There are crackling lines of dialogue , the sort of one-liners you're tempted to clip and post on your refrigerator BY ANN DEE H O C H MAN keeps his collection of dysfunctional pens in the dishwasher; her Trinidadian hospital A Place at the Table By Edith Konecky. Random nurse, who claims she can see Rachel’s aura; House. 1989. 241 pages. $16.95. a Mediwaste van, carrying hospital refuse and, quite possibly. Levin’s surgically- he final chapter of A Place at the Table removed left breast, down Second Avenue in reads like a wonderful short story. The New York City. writing is tight and luminous. Characters we And there are crackling lines of dialogue, the care about share an important moment with sort of one-liners you’re tempted to clip and each other, and with the reader. The messsage post on your refrigerator. Suicide “ would be haunts and comforts at the same time. like going to a party to which one has not been invited,’’ or, “ This is what aging does, why there is less and less to write about: the terrible importance of things abates.’’ But interesting characters, wry moments and memorable lines don’t make a novel. Unfortunately, it is not a short story, but the Levin fears that her life is composed merely of final episode of a book that never quite episodes, with no lingering claim to a person decides to become a novel. It’s too bad, or place. It's a legitimate fear; most of our because all the ingredients are here: a wise lives exist in episodes, and we tolerate the and funny middle-aged heroine, an array of fragmented nature of things because, really, quirky and believable characters, taut we have no choice. In a novel, we want dialogue. something more. The problem is that very little happens to This book tries hard to be more. Rachel, these places — until the last 4 1 pages, in at mid-life, is struggling to answer the Big which the protagonist, Rachel Levin, Questions: When we die, what remains? Do discovers a lump in her breast, undergoes a we all leave each other in the end? Are we, mastectomy, re-encounters a troubled friend ulti mately, alone even in our memories, on the subway and learns what it means to which no two people share in precisely the embrace life in spite of all its losses. same way? The novel chronicles the family, friends, In the final chapter, these questions begin to work and inner life of Rachel Levin like a find answers. Rachel spots a bag lady heading collection of still photographs which might or down to the subway, then realizes it is her old might not have been snapped on the same day friend Deirdre, a once-brilliant writer whose In A Place at the Table, time passes but does genius long ago burned into madness. Rachel hasn't seen her for months, possibly years. not seem to advance. The untitled, unnumbered chapters read She boards the subway, too, and together they like vignettes, sealed little worlds unto ride out to Canarsie, a literal and metaphoric themselves. Many of them begin with end-of-the-line. They share some wine that quotations or excerpts from Levin’s daily just happens to be in Deirdre’s shopping bag, horoscope, a technique that only heightens the and they talk. effect of each chapter as a separate entity. “ The really frightening thing in life, I To be fair, the book’s structure does reflect think, lies in our capacity for intattentiveness to it,” Deirdre says, and Rachel thinks, Levin’s state of mind. She is suspended in that limbo we call “ m id-life," a writer with no “ Maybe she’s right. Maybe that’s why we do it, why we write, why we live. Because we’re time to write, a lover whose relationship is interested. Curious. Attentive. . . . I feel the faltering, a mother who often feels alienated tears coming again, and there’s nothing I can from the lives of her grown children. Levin’s first-person writings, self-conscious at first do. The tears come. No, there’s nothing I can do. People who have lost the need to live die (“ I am Rachel Levin. I haven’t really got the in their own way. They leave you with what time to write,’’ it begins), are intended to slip they can.” us sidelong into the novel, to coax us into Rachel knows, finally, that she cannot save caring about these characters and their Deirdre, as she had tried to do for years. She troubles without realizing how or when our cannot, in the end, control when or how emotions clicked. people will leave her. And she chooses to live Levin’s story does include intriguing in spite of that knowledge. characters — her 32-year-old lover, Lisa, the At the end of this chapter that really ought eccentric members of her writing group, her to be a gem of a short story. Rachel Levin father, revealed through flashbacks' memory. embraces life, her own and the life of the Yet these people are delivered in too-small universe. It makes a satisfying ending. But bites, likely to leave a reader wanting more — regrettably, it comes at the end of a book more of Levin’s blunt, wry mother, more of whose lack of movement tries a reader’s her efficient friend Becky, more sense of patience. The end is sweet, a reward for movement between all these tidbits. finishing A Place at the Table, but we The book holds some rare moments of shouldn't have to feel we’ve earned it. ▼ joyous absurdity, such as Levin’s uncle, who T NEW YORK CITY Gay Men's Chorus with PORTLAND Gay Men's Chorus Saturday, July 1st, 1989 at 8:00pm A rlen e Schnitzer Concert H all 7 Interpreted for the hearing impaired Tickets: $15, $12, $8 at the box office • 248-4496 Mail orders to: PGMC P.O. Box 3223 Portland, OR 97208 SANDRA K. PINCHES, Ph.D. Counseling and Psychotherapy 180$) N.W. Johnson, Ste. 7 Portland, OR 9 7 2 0 9 Specializing in issues of: ( ><) ,) 227 7358 • Recovering Alcoholics • Lesbian & gay couples • Co-dependency _____ • intimacy & commitment 21 ▼ tunc I 9K9
