Memory vs. Truth: a Review of Oliver’s Travels by Clifford Garstang

All novels are mystery novels, a seasoned author tells hopeful writer, Ollie. At the core of everything we read about a character is their greatest desire. The mystery, as in real life, is what will the character do, and to what lengths will they go to attain this desire?

Ollie’s desire is multifold: his most urgent need is to find his Uncle Scotty, and ask him why Ollie is haunted by childhood memories related to him. Underneath this urge runs the very familiar, existential dread of the recently graduated. But in Ollie’s case, this includes the question of his sexuality. In Oliver’s Travels, Clifford Garstang interrogates the folly of memory and meaning through a deeply flawed, possibly traumatized, occasionally problematic main character, asking, how do we know a thing, or how do we come to accept something as known?

Oliver’s Travels is indeed about travel, including the travels Ollie should have taken; “I should have gone west, like the man said,” the novel opens. But rather than follow this romantic cliché of young adulthood, Ollie does what many young people are forced to: move back in with a parent. At first it is in Indianapolis, with his divorced father and “wounded warrior” brother, Q in the house where Ollie grew up. One day, Ollie is looking through family photographs when he becomes curious about his father’s estranged younger brother, Scotty. His father tells him Scotty is dead. His mother tells him Scotty is dead. Neither of his siblings, Q or Sally-Ann can recall what happened to him. But Ollie’s memories of his adventurous uncle, and his lack of memory of his death, point to different conclusions.

When staying with his father becomes unbearable, Ollie moves in with his mother in Virginia. Once again, he fails to go west. He admits, “I’m deficient in the courage department.” There Ollie accepts a job as an adjunct professor of English at a community college. He meets another teacher, a prim young lady wearing a cross necklace named, appropriately, Mary, whom Ollie begins half-heartedly dating. Immediately he begins projecting a version of himself that he suspects she wants: a passionate teacher, and a nice guy certain of his future.

But Ollie is anything but certain of his future. What will he do with a degree in Philosophy? He realizes he greatly misses the structure and challenge of school. He was inspired by his relationship with one professor in particular, which ended abruptly. Yet the influence of Professor Russell is clearly embedded in Ollie’s consciousness, as Ollie’s chronological narrative is interspersed with his memories of the professor’s lectures and their meditation sessions.

Meanwhile, Mary and Ollie are all wrong for each other. They disagree on nearly everything, with little crossover in interests and tastes, to a comical degree. Ollie is a wimp and Mary is a ninny. As such, their convergence only makes sense, the one too scared to leave the other, despite their obvious incompatibility. Mary, he thinks, represents things he should want: a nice, churchgoing girl who reads books (albeit not “good” ones), plays piano, sings “like a Siren,” and knows she wants to be a teacher, a wife and a mother. She has also continued living with her parents for three years after graduation, a thought that is mortifying to Ollie. But when he meets her brother, Mike, suddenly Ollie wants to spend as much time with Mary as possible. Why can he not get him out of his mind, Ollie wonders? And does it have to do with his patchy memories of Uncle Scotty?

Since cowardice and indecision render him incapable of running the trodden path of young male fortune-seekers, Ollie lives out his fantasies another way: on the page. He invents “Oliver,” an alter-ego who possesses the adventurous spirit Ollie lacks, journeying to distant lands with an “exotic” woman by his side. As Ollie develops Oliver’s character, anyone who has attended a freshman creative writing workshop will be amused to recognize the young writer trope of prosaic fantasy-fulfillment, the way a twenty year-old reveals their gushiest visions of their ideal selves, while casting love interests as props to their main character’s self-discovery. With characters’ names barely changed from their counterparts (“Oliver” and “Maria”), Ollie re-imagines himself as charming and courageous, and Mary as exciting and dangerous. It is at times agonizing (read: triggering) to watch as a scared young man wastes an ambitious young woman’s time, abusing her trust while he figures himself out. And yet Mary may have a secret or two of her own. Meanwhile, the possibility of his childhood trauma looms heavily over Ollie. We are beckoned, if not compelled, to give him a break.

Ollie’s relationship with his father is especially pertinent to his wavering confidence. Ollie was born with only four toes on each foot, a harmless expression of some genetic trait. “One of the clearest memories I have of my childhood,” Ollie recalls, “is my father’s insistence that I wear something on my feet while in his presence–socks, shoes, slippers.” When one day young Ollie compares his number of toes to his brother’s, he finally notices the discrepancy and begins to cry. “But it wasn’t the missing toes I was crying about. I had finally understood why my father hated me.” Reading Ollie as a possibly-not-heterosexual character, this strikes an especially emotional note, as he realizes his father hates him not for his choices, but for the way he was born.

As snippets of his childhood return to Ollie, he wrestles with the imperfect and erratic nature of memory and truth. If others have no memory of an event, and your own is patchy, did it happen to you at all?

Ollie and Mary have a memorable (and cringe-worthy) fight related to the nature of memory, faith, and truth. A shaken Mary confides in Ollie when a student of hers tells her she has just been sexually assaulted. In response, Ollie enters interrogation mode: “So she called the cops? Went to the hospital? No? Why the hell not?” He questions whether or not she would have reason to lie (Mary has said the student is prone to embellishment in her essays, she had an exam that day, etc). He suggests that “maybe she needs some attention.” One wishes a tug on the ear could make him shut up as he presses on. Surely no one could be so oblivious, so lacking in emotional intelligence, as to not recognize the real stakes in the conversation (i.e. his relationship with Mary).

To her credit, Mary reminds him of the emotional nuances of sexual trauma, and even introduces him to the student in person. But this backfires, as Ollie doubles down on the issue of the student not reporting her attack to the police. “If you don’t,” he warns her, “. . . eventually even you will begin to doubt that it happened. It will fade from reality and become just a bad dream.” The fight illustrates Ollie’s attitude towards his own trauma: if certain facts are not known, the event cannot be said to have taken place. And yet, based on his vague memories of his uncle, and the fact that no one in the family can say where he lives or whether he is living at all, Ollie is already convinced that: 1. His uncle is alive and 2. His uncle did something to Ollie that has bearing on why Ollie cannot know himself. He feels he knows these points inherently, what one would call faith.

Throughout the novel Ollie is in a state of questioning, seeking to illuminate truth even as he obscures it from those around him. “Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth. Repeat a memory, whether or not the memory is flawed, and the same thing happens.” Ollie’s reaction to Mary’s student mirrors his own, inner interrogations of his imperfect memory; his defensiveness actually having to do with the possibility that he was himself a victim of abuse. “Do I doubt Sylvia’s story because I’m uncertain about what happened to me? Am I a victim? Or have I imagined it? If it happened, why didn’t I tell someone?” Implied but not overtly explored is the question of the gender divide in terms of sexual abuse; perhaps Ollie feels there is more shame in being a man and having been abused by a male member of his family, than there is in a male-female date rape scenario.

In the last third of the novel, Ollie convinces Mary to move abroad for a couples’ adventure, his secret agenda being, of course, to track down Uncle Scotty. After awkward family engagements, travel gaffes, and a few truly lucky breaks, Ollie’s journey comes to a peak. And while the story lands safely, I can’t help but acknowledge lingering resentment for the very character I also rooted for. Ollie’s complexity is at once overstated (by himself), and also understated by his oafish actions. I was often frustrated with Mary, the put-upon girlfriend who attempts to reclaim the power imbalance with soapy manipulation tactics. Ollie’s highly serendipitous dalliances with other women on his travels, exotic beauties that appeared solely to comfort and assist him in his not-quite-Homerian quest, felt so fantastical and idealized as to suggest that he is merging with his literary alter-ego, becoming more Oliver than Ollie.

Garstang’s dry humor and tight, aphoristic writing make for an engaging, unstoppable read. The Philosophy classroom discussions frame and inform the narrative, and provide context for Ollie’s actions. The author’s close attention to structure and tone support the reader’s emotional journey, and enables him to balance the richness of Ollie’s interior monologues with those facepalm dialogues. Ollie’s eventual discovery of the truth arrives padded with tenderness, yet the impact resounds. We are not so much left with questions as we are rewarded for the search. Oliver’s Travels was indeed transporting, challenging, and provocative, drawing me in as the mystery unfolded.

A Variety Show in Two Acts: Terese Svoboda's Theatrix

Mary Pickford once called acting an “emotional exercise.” The audience also undergoes this wringing-out, a process that allows our emotional centers to react to imagined scenarios without consequence. Certainly we could apply this to the act of writing, as well as the act of reading. Research indicates that the tears we cry when watching a sad movie are chemically distinct from those that we shed in reaction to internal sadness. It is a dress-rehearsal, so to speak, for the real thing.

While I haven’t seen a live production in quite some time, reading Terese Svoboda’s latest poetry collection, Theatrix: Poetry Plays brought back so many of the sensations of witnessing live performance: the giddiness of the curtain rising, the suspension of disbelief granted the actors, and our activated empathy when they succeed. With her playful manipulation of language and knowing winks at our voyeurism, Svoboda draws us into the emotional peaks and valleys of her acts.

The cover art alone is arresting, featuring what appears to be a clay, humanoid model with mask-like face and gaping mouth, the torso buckled over withered, misshapen legs. The red right hand (apologies to Nick Cave) clutches the right leg, the left hand gripping the neck as though in pain. Through the nose protrudes a long tree branch. Most unsettling, though, is the right eye; the only one visible to us, it fixes us with an uncannily human, blue-eyed stare. Pinocchio comes to mind, a knowing wink at the possibility for untruths, our humanity rendered imperfectly, even primitively. What are plays, after all, if not artful lies? Acting an uncanny reflection of humanity?

In a collection punctuated with positively vaudevillian acts of drama and drollery, it is fitting that the title should be so rich and varied in meaning; are these “Poetry Plays” hybrid forms, ie. poetry/plays? Or does poetry play? I imagine Svoboda answering, “Yes.” In fact the poet is playing on every level, using props and ventriloquism to challenge our notion of knowledge and self. She works within a wide range of settings and modes, from HBO documentaries to the silent dramas of silverware. In variety show style, the poems shift from the tragic to the jocular.

The literal meaning of the collection’s title is supported by the appearance of a cast list, which preludes the collection. The first listed name is Stage Manager, as if the tech hands are in front of the curtain. Other entities include familiar faces and names: comedian Jack Benny, Debussy, and the corpse of Emma Goldman. At the bottom is a note: “Many non-speaking parts, or parts that can’t speak, or parts speaking inaudibly.” Svoboda uses brackets liberally, suggesting stage directions, asides, intrusions of outside voices, or even the whispers of prompters in the wings.

The collection is divided in two sections, with the first feeling more outwardly performative and the second more intimate. It is as if we, the audience are traveling from a proscenium to a black box theater, a theater-in-the-round, and even the red brick of the standup stage. Appropriately, the first poem in the collection is titled, “STAGE MANAGER: LIGHTS UP.” Nervous energy bubbles as bracketed lines bear the urgency of stage directions, and a voice asks, “What about this is false: the scale, the alien plastered to the wall in a green/you can’t see? the trust you place [like an acorn] in the seat?” The first question, “What about this is false” could be a sincere invitation to criticism, or a peremptory challenge, as in “how could you say this isn’t realistic?” It takes on a tone of irony with “the alien plastered to the wall,” as I’m picturing the inflatable green aliens we bring out at Halloween in my home. Who else is alien, but the audience member, the outsider who watches the simulation of human experience from a removed vantage point? Our trust as the audience is fragile, though offered willingly, bolstered by the careful attention of actors and stage hands, and sprouting under the blaze of immersive stage design and engaging acting. Svoboda, of course, occupies all these roles simultaneously, allowing these curiously selected voices to dance the dance of suggestion.

Svoboda is one of those writers whose work you just cannot skim. Whether it is her fiction or poetry, her writing rewards careful reads and re-reads. Like any script or play, one is advised to slow down and read the poems in Theatrix out loud, so as not to miss her wordplay and double entendres:

Waves of light breakfast glamorously/with English spelling,/a woman/peeling hair from her face,/waves turning [away] wet, lapping/lapis [humid],/a shore where hair sticks blue.

Under Svoboda’s nimble hands, poetry is as much a visual art as a literary one. Take “Silverware Dialogue,” which begins: “A fork and a spoon lie together/to spoon and to fork.” There are no knives here to abscond with said spoon, however, in fact neither utensil poses a flight risk; “It is as if we lie on a vast table/says the fork. Useless.” Though inert, the fork has needs, and pride to be hurt:

The table was laid, says the spoon/not me. Tines, my dear, are everything,/says the fork. My tines are retired./They spoon through course/after intercourse, the hunger being/incurable, inconsolable.

If I hadn’t read this out loud, it might not have occurred to me that I was reading a love poem. In fact, the more I read it, the more I pictured a married couple in mid-life, saddled with ailments, contemplating their purpose after years of “usefulness.” And suddenly I’m wondering if are we no more than implements, simple tools created to feed the consumption of others?

Block quotes do no justice to Svoboda’s attention to aesthetics. “Silverware Dialogue,” for example, naturally appears in couplets. “Scatter Force Two,” which opens, “We’re two girls and we’re left/and we’re right” makes liberal use of line breaks and white space. The first line is left-justified while the second, beginning with “and,” fits directly beneath “left,” with “we’re right” extending beyond the line above. This structural effect mimics the image of two girls walking side by side, but also emphasizes the double-meanings of “left” (abandonment or simply directional?) and “we’re right” (as in, “correct,” or simply standing to one side?). Certain repeated words, like “pink,” throughout the poem take on holographic significance, as turned this way a word like “bars” signifies a pub where you’d have a drink, and turned that way it makes us think of imprisonment. I’m suddenly thinking of the “prison” that some might consider femininity or gender identity generally, the “pink fools” that a woman might meet and abandon in a bar, and the way in which young girls lean on each other for support in the world.

As I read (and reread, and reread, and reread) Theatrix, I reminded myself that theater—indeed all live performance—is experiential. We may not glean every line’s full significance, or catch onto Svoboda’s particular cleverness and lightning-quick wit the first time. But like performance itself, this collection is astonishing, if occasionally befuddling. These poetry-plays are worth each and every read, allowing them to stretch into the stages (pun intended) of our lives.

I am reminded of Heraclitus, who stated that it is impossible to step into the same river twice. Like gazing at the surface of water, the poems in this collection may reflect my current sense of inadequacy as I wrestle meaning from each line. But where there is a preponderance of questions, one is assured there is vast depth. Next year, the poems will likely take on brand new significance for me. And perhaps this is the point of performance, the way in which we should approach it: as demonstrative of life’s complexity, an unearthing of wonder, and a startling realization of the contents of our own consciousness.