Neither of the Grimes sisters would have a happy life, and looking back it always seemed that the trouble began with their parents’ divorce. That happened in 1930, when Sarah was nine years old and Emily five. Their mother, who encouraged both girls to call her “Pookie,” took them out of New York to a rented house in Tenafly, New Jersey, where she thought the schools would be better and where she hoped to launch a career in suburban real estate. It didn’t work out--very few of her plans for independence ever did--and they left Tenafly after two years, but it was a memorable time for the girls.
“Doesn’t your father ever come home?” other children would ask, and Sarah would always take the lead in explaining what a divorce was.
“Do you ever get to see him?”
“Sure we do.”
“Where does he live?”
“In New York City.”
“What does he do?”
“He writes headlines. He writes the headlines in the New York Sun.” And the way she said it made clear that they ought to be impressed. Anyone could be a flashy, irresponsible reporter or a steady drudge of a rewrite man; but the man who wrote the headlines! The man who would read through all the complexities of daily news to pick out salient points and who then summed everything up in a few well-chosen words, artfully composed to fit a limited space--there was a consummate journalist and a father worthy of the name.....
-The cliche about fiction is that it should feel as seamless and authoritative as a dream--and you see that quality in “The Easter Parade.” By this point in his career, Yates had been writing and writing and writing. It’s one of the main things he did; beyond writing, there was drinking. That’s all. His natural gift and his tenacity meant that--by mid-career--he could move you through entire years in the space of a paragraph. You’re just hypnotized. “Parade” speeds along without clunky transitions; a dinner is mentioned, and in the very next sentence, we’re in the middle of that dinner. A recent memoir was entitled “Just the Funny Parts”; Yate’s “The Easter Parade” is just the gripping parts of Emily Grimes’s life, and so it compresses the action of a sprawling, five-decade tragedy into two hundred pages. You’re left breathless.
-Lorrie Moore says, when she is writing poorly, she finds herself leaning on: “And then.” “And then there was a knock on the door. And then the door opened. And then seven years had passed.” You won’t find “and then” in “Easter Parade.” It really is as if God were doing the narrating.
-The first sentence has the stern confidence of a fairytale opening. No show-don’t-tell worries here. Yates can break rules when he wants to break rules. The third sentence has so much magic happening under the surface: That a grown woman would ask her daughters to refer to her as “Pookie” gives us pause. (Shouldn’t the *mother* call her *child* by that name?) That same sentence has the twin weapons of: “she thought the schools...” and “she hoped to launch....” The parallel structure--“she thought” and “she hoped”--makes us pause and take note. Yates is going to dismantle Pookie with glee--whenever possible--and you can almost sense the rage flowing from his pen. (It seems he was writing about his own mother, and that he, Yates, was really Emily Grimes. It’s touching, then, that he gives the superior artistic talent, in this story, to Sarah. Yates really did have a sister, and I believe her story did not end well, as Sarah’s story does not end well. Filial loathing flows into so many details of Yates’s Pookie portrait: The way Pookie lets her legs spread wide when she has had too much to drink, the way Pookie runs her mouth at social events, the way Pookie allows grease to build up on her lips. At times, you feel like you’re witnessing a mysterious sadomasochistic act, even though you’re just reading a story.)
-Another killer aside. “It didn’t work out--very few of Pookie’s plans for independence ever did--and they left Tenafly.....”
-You’re witnessing a magic act. “See,” says Yates, “I can summarize and deliver bits of exposition really well. But something I’m even better with: dialogue.” The rapid-fire grilling of Sarah in the schoolyard feels a bit like a catechism; it also makes us notice, as few other novels make us notice, how painful it is to be a child explaining messy adult behavior. Sarah has learned self-delusion from her mother: She emphasizes that the missing father is a headline-writer (though probably a part of her already realizes she isn’t telling the truth.) We can imagine the attention of the schoolmates drifting; they have extracted what they need, which is the news that a father can semi-abandon you and move to New York City. Now Sarah is lost in her own fantasy of Dad’s New York Sun omnipotence--a compensatory strategy to help her not-think about how much she misses being parented (or even lazily half-parented). The “well-chosen words,” the “salient points,” the “artful composition,” the acts of a “consummate journalist”: We know we’ve left brass-tacks reality for something like a Hollywood film. And of course Yates will go on, briskly, to deflate everything Sarah has just puffed up for us; the deflation is complete before we finish the first chapter.
-It’s said that the darkest stories are the most therapeutic. It’s also said that Yates’s compassion was so great, he “saw eye to eye with each and every one of us.” “Easter Parade” makes me feel less alone. And so I read it--over and over again. It’s weirdly uplifting to see what we can do with life’s sordid materials. How those bits of disappointment and humiliation can sometimes turn into art.
“Doesn’t your father ever come home?” other children would ask, and Sarah would always take the lead in explaining what a divorce was.
“Do you ever get to see him?”
“Sure we do.”
“Where does he live?”
“In New York City.”
“What does he do?”
“He writes headlines. He writes the headlines in the New York Sun.” And the way she said it made clear that they ought to be impressed. Anyone could be a flashy, irresponsible reporter or a steady drudge of a rewrite man; but the man who wrote the headlines! The man who would read through all the complexities of daily news to pick out salient points and who then summed everything up in a few well-chosen words, artfully composed to fit a limited space--there was a consummate journalist and a father worthy of the name.....
-The cliche about fiction is that it should feel as seamless and authoritative as a dream--and you see that quality in “The Easter Parade.” By this point in his career, Yates had been writing and writing and writing. It’s one of the main things he did; beyond writing, there was drinking. That’s all. His natural gift and his tenacity meant that--by mid-career--he could move you through entire years in the space of a paragraph. You’re just hypnotized. “Parade” speeds along without clunky transitions; a dinner is mentioned, and in the very next sentence, we’re in the middle of that dinner. A recent memoir was entitled “Just the Funny Parts”; Yate’s “The Easter Parade” is just the gripping parts of Emily Grimes’s life, and so it compresses the action of a sprawling, five-decade tragedy into two hundred pages. You’re left breathless.
-Lorrie Moore says, when she is writing poorly, she finds herself leaning on: “And then.” “And then there was a knock on the door. And then the door opened. And then seven years had passed.” You won’t find “and then” in “Easter Parade.” It really is as if God were doing the narrating.
-The first sentence has the stern confidence of a fairytale opening. No show-don’t-tell worries here. Yates can break rules when he wants to break rules. The third sentence has so much magic happening under the surface: That a grown woman would ask her daughters to refer to her as “Pookie” gives us pause. (Shouldn’t the *mother* call her *child* by that name?) That same sentence has the twin weapons of: “she thought the schools...” and “she hoped to launch....” The parallel structure--“she thought” and “she hoped”--makes us pause and take note. Yates is going to dismantle Pookie with glee--whenever possible--and you can almost sense the rage flowing from his pen. (It seems he was writing about his own mother, and that he, Yates, was really Emily Grimes. It’s touching, then, that he gives the superior artistic talent, in this story, to Sarah. Yates really did have a sister, and I believe her story did not end well, as Sarah’s story does not end well. Filial loathing flows into so many details of Yates’s Pookie portrait: The way Pookie lets her legs spread wide when she has had too much to drink, the way Pookie runs her mouth at social events, the way Pookie allows grease to build up on her lips. At times, you feel like you’re witnessing a mysterious sadomasochistic act, even though you’re just reading a story.)
-Another killer aside. “It didn’t work out--very few of Pookie’s plans for independence ever did--and they left Tenafly.....”
-You’re witnessing a magic act. “See,” says Yates, “I can summarize and deliver bits of exposition really well. But something I’m even better with: dialogue.” The rapid-fire grilling of Sarah in the schoolyard feels a bit like a catechism; it also makes us notice, as few other novels make us notice, how painful it is to be a child explaining messy adult behavior. Sarah has learned self-delusion from her mother: She emphasizes that the missing father is a headline-writer (though probably a part of her already realizes she isn’t telling the truth.) We can imagine the attention of the schoolmates drifting; they have extracted what they need, which is the news that a father can semi-abandon you and move to New York City. Now Sarah is lost in her own fantasy of Dad’s New York Sun omnipotence--a compensatory strategy to help her not-think about how much she misses being parented (or even lazily half-parented). The “well-chosen words,” the “salient points,” the “artful composition,” the acts of a “consummate journalist”: We know we’ve left brass-tacks reality for something like a Hollywood film. And of course Yates will go on, briskly, to deflate everything Sarah has just puffed up for us; the deflation is complete before we finish the first chapter.
-It’s said that the darkest stories are the most therapeutic. It’s also said that Yates’s compassion was so great, he “saw eye to eye with each and every one of us.” “Easter Parade” makes me feel less alone. And so I read it--over and over again. It’s weirdly uplifting to see what we can do with life’s sordid materials. How those bits of disappointment and humiliation can sometimes turn into art.
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