Re: JCO: Missing Mom

Hi, Eric. I look forward to getting my copy of Missing Mom later this month.
I always read a book before I read its reviews, or even the raves on the
book's paper overjacket: a worthy old book-reviewing habit. Discussions of JCO's
latest books here on Tone Clusters too often begin and end with the reviews
-- and various angry reactions to reviewers who seem envious and/or ignorant.
Would November be a good month for a general discussion here of the book and
our own unmediated reactions to it? I expect to have MM read by the end of
October. (MM is not one of the books I'm reviewing this year, and someone else
took it out of the newspaper slush pile before I could get it -- dang!)
It's a happy coincidence you mentioned "About Schmidt." I just saw it
last weekend for the second time and realized how refreshing it is to see a
character study movie done so well -- and with a major star like Nicholson. The
ending of that film is so beautiful. And Nicholson's performance as a
Midwestern businessman -- my family is full of them -- is a gem. Not many actors
would consent to being filmed sitting on a toilet in the abject, "hen-pecked"
manner that Schmidt does.
"The brutality of never mattering" is an interesting issue. JCO has in
past interviews noted her mother's lifelong pain at having been put out for
adoption by her own parents. From what I understand, JCO's mother was raised by
other relatives who lived nearby -- the heroine of MARYA, a character inspired
partly by JCO's mother, according to interviews with JCO around the time of
MARYA's publication -- had a similar situation. Being, in effect, "rejected"
by one's own mother and then raised in close proximity to that mother must have
been very painful. And pain is a rich lode for fiction-writing.
Cyrano

In a message dated 10/11/2005 1:47:24 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
erickarl78@hotmail.com writes:

<< To me it felt like she was circling around Missing Mom in favour of
talking
about her admiration for Oates’ work in general and her overall respect for
what she’s produced. She did make me think about the novel from a different
point of view though, that perhaps Oates was contemplating “the brutality of
never mattering” and class politics instead of just the personal process of
a period of grieving. This is a similar idea to the one expressed in the
excellent film “About Schmidt”. In this movie, a man at retirement age who
has led a very straightforward life begins questioning what the accumulation
of all his little life’s details signifies when contemplating if he really
matters to the world. It’s an unsettling thought and one which Oates
protagonist of Missing Mom is obviously struggling with when examining the
physical things that amount to her parents’ life work. >>
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