Well! I've finally finished Too Close to the Falls.
I'm rather astounded by this small-town childhood memoir, set in Lewiston, New York, close to Niagara Falls. Gildiner had an amazingly eventful childhood: she saw Marilyn Monroe in her slip! To me, that's only one in a series of amazing events, not even the most exciting or surprising. I find myself feeling amazed that a small town in western New York had so many real events to offer.
For one thing, the young Cathy lived close to Niagara Falls where sledding, a favorite winter pastime, contained the danger that if you didn't control your sled you'd land in the river with its fatal whirlpools.
Cathy was really smart, really restless, precocious, and had a surprising family. Her mother didn't work, had household help, and her chief interest was local history. I find this amazing. Her father was a hard-working man who quietly accepted his more-than-surprising daughter.
At the age of four, the local doctor suggested that Cathy, because of her restless energy, go to work in her father's drugstore. There she spent much of her time with Roy, with whom she made delivery runs. As her father said, Cathy did the work of an adult. It's possible that this was the single most interesting aspect of the novel to me. I was amazed by Cathy's precocity and admired it, too. And Cathy did a bunch of other things: she was athletic, she was a gifted writer, she mingled with every part of Lewiston society.
My favorite chapter was "Roy." I liked Roy, as Cathy did. I thought that Roy and Cathy together enjoyed an enviable position: they were certainly living at the margins but their work as prescription deliverers gave them entry to every part of society. Possibly my least favorite chapter was "Mother Agnese."
I did not like Mother Agnese; I thought, frankly, that she was crazy and given her privileged background ignorance was not an excuse. Here was a world in which women were more explicitly powerless than today: I wondered if the joy she took in her vocation was partly inspired by her desire to escape the limitations of living in the "patriarchy." After all, as principal, she was powerful to the pupils of the school of which she was head. She seemed very judgmental and I found her remarks to the young Cathy to be abusive (she attacked Cathy's faith, and, in fact, attacking her in any way seems inappropriate according to today's standards). It should be said, however, that this is my view and not the author's. I may have found it difficult to divine the point of view here, or it may be that the view of Cathy, as a youngster, is very different than that of Catherine Gildiner, adult. I read the book club edition and in it there was an interview with Gildiner in which she clearly saw Mother Agnese differently than I did after reading the book.
Gildiner's description of her feelings as an adult toward Mother Agnese are far more respectful than my own would be. (Cathy was a skeptical and questioning person, which clearly put her on a collision course with Mother Agnese; Cathy was also a little bit of a Franciscan, which I also admired and which was also dangerous.) Finally, Gildiner's remarks tacitly acknowledge that they were rivals. This is what bothers me so much but it's human nature: I think Mother Agnese was so hard on Cathy because she saw her as a threat on both a practical and deep psychological level.
Gildiner said in an interview in the back of my paperback copy that it was natural for her to end the memoir when she did, just before her father sold the drugstore and the family moved to Buffalo, which I'm sure was a wholly different world. She said that she felt her childhood was innocent and that she had really changed by the time the Buffalo part of the book took place. That innocence is part of the attraction of this story.
Gildiner is also the author of a second memoir, After the Falls: Coming of Age in the Sixties (2010) and a mystery novel about the philosophy and history of psychotherapy, Seduction.
I'm rather astounded by this small-town childhood memoir, set in Lewiston, New York, close to Niagara Falls. Gildiner had an amazingly eventful childhood: she saw Marilyn Monroe in her slip! To me, that's only one in a series of amazing events, not even the most exciting or surprising. I find myself feeling amazed that a small town in western New York had so many real events to offer.
For one thing, the young Cathy lived close to Niagara Falls where sledding, a favorite winter pastime, contained the danger that if you didn't control your sled you'd land in the river with its fatal whirlpools.
Cathy was really smart, really restless, precocious, and had a surprising family. Her mother didn't work, had household help, and her chief interest was local history. I find this amazing. Her father was a hard-working man who quietly accepted his more-than-surprising daughter.
At the age of four, the local doctor suggested that Cathy, because of her restless energy, go to work in her father's drugstore. There she spent much of her time with Roy, with whom she made delivery runs. As her father said, Cathy did the work of an adult. It's possible that this was the single most interesting aspect of the novel to me. I was amazed by Cathy's precocity and admired it, too. And Cathy did a bunch of other things: she was athletic, she was a gifted writer, she mingled with every part of Lewiston society.
My favorite chapter was "Roy." I liked Roy, as Cathy did. I thought that Roy and Cathy together enjoyed an enviable position: they were certainly living at the margins but their work as prescription deliverers gave them entry to every part of society. Possibly my least favorite chapter was "Mother Agnese."
I did not like Mother Agnese; I thought, frankly, that she was crazy and given her privileged background ignorance was not an excuse. Here was a world in which women were more explicitly powerless than today: I wondered if the joy she took in her vocation was partly inspired by her desire to escape the limitations of living in the "patriarchy." After all, as principal, she was powerful to the pupils of the school of which she was head. She seemed very judgmental and I found her remarks to the young Cathy to be abusive (she attacked Cathy's faith, and, in fact, attacking her in any way seems inappropriate according to today's standards). It should be said, however, that this is my view and not the author's. I may have found it difficult to divine the point of view here, or it may be that the view of Cathy, as a youngster, is very different than that of Catherine Gildiner, adult. I read the book club edition and in it there was an interview with Gildiner in which she clearly saw Mother Agnese differently than I did after reading the book.
Gildiner's description of her feelings as an adult toward Mother Agnese are far more respectful than my own would be. (Cathy was a skeptical and questioning person, which clearly put her on a collision course with Mother Agnese; Cathy was also a little bit of a Franciscan, which I also admired and which was also dangerous.) Finally, Gildiner's remarks tacitly acknowledge that they were rivals. This is what bothers me so much but it's human nature: I think Mother Agnese was so hard on Cathy because she saw her as a threat on both a practical and deep psychological level.
Gildiner said in an interview in the back of my paperback copy that it was natural for her to end the memoir when she did, just before her father sold the drugstore and the family moved to Buffalo, which I'm sure was a wholly different world. She said that she felt her childhood was innocent and that she had really changed by the time the Buffalo part of the book took place. That innocence is part of the attraction of this story.
Gildiner is also the author of a second memoir, After the Falls: Coming of Age in the Sixties (2010) and a mystery novel about the philosophy and history of psychotherapy, Seduction.
No comments:
Post a Comment