Re: JCO: The Gravediggers Daughter & "Cousins" WARNING PLOTS DESCRIBED

Hi, Nicole.  I got a copy of the recent JCO story collection, HIGH LONESOME, which contains the relevant story "The Cousins," which first appeared in Harper's in 2005, I think.  Unfortunately, I don't have a copy of GRAVEDIGGER'S DAUGHTER handy to compare the two versions of the correspondence between the 60ish cousins.  I believe the later variant, which ends GD, is quite different, even though it's essentially the same two women characters. 

     In "Cousins," Rebecca approaches Freyda after reading Freyda's childhood holocaust memoir "Back from the Dead."  (Freyda, by the way despises the word "Holocaust, " declaring "I never use this word that slides off American tongues now like grease.")  At first Freyda shuns her "tenacious American cousin" Rebecca, who begs Freyda to come visit her retirement home in Florida.  Little by little the emotional power balance shifts between the two correspondents until, by the end, Freyda -- in her own lofty way -- is begging Rebecca to let her come forth from her Chicago skyscraper "aerie" to flat, "boring" Florida for a visit.  It's a must-read story, collected for the first time in BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES 2005, and then in HIGH LONESOME (2006).

     Freyda appears to have been renamed Hazel in GD.  I don't think the letter device works well at the end of GD because there are hundreds of pages during which Hazel does not appear in Rebecca's thinking.  Rebecca's vanished cousin might be an important figure in R's mind as Rebecca goes through her youth and middle age, but I the reader did not feel it so. When I came to the letter exchange at the end of GD, I thought: Oh, I know how this goes now, because I had read the original story when it appeared in Harpers three years ago.

     For this and other reasons I do not consider GD among JCO's "best" fiction, although I would certainly place the short story "Cousins" in a hypothetical best of pantheon.  Still, GD is a vital link among the journey of JCO, and I hope more of you read it soon so we can discuss it here as a novel separate from its post-publication interviews, reviews, and articles.

Best,

Cyrano

 

 

In a message dated 8/17/2007 4:43:26 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, ndprovencher@lake.ollusa.edu writes:

Eric,

I would have to say that the resolution of the characters is what was most perplexing to me.  I am very used to JCO "leaving" her characters to go on with their lives when the story ends, but leaving the characters off and then picking up with the cousins seemed strange to me.  It did not seem as if The Grave Digger's Daughter was a story about the cousins, although I can understand the need for Rebecca/Hazel to want to make that connection.  It is very ironic that the cousin desires this same connection only when it is to late. 

I agree with you completely about this novel being one of her finest.  It seemed that several of the themes she deals with in other works have a more finished feeling.  The girl who survives when she is not meant to (her father, Tignor, the man on the path - there were several for Rebecca) seems to take on a particularly American quality here (as she is often reminded by her father and brothers "you were born here") - however, the chronology of the story was such that these attempts were not the most important thing - but rather the dealing with the events that made Rebecca who she was (or was not) - a truly American idea of reinventing the self.  Was she denying this in contacting her cousin?  Or was it simply ok once she raised her son and felt detached from who she was?  I found this question arising again and again as I neared the end of the book. 

Your observations about family and drawing strength from family seem to answer this question in part - that she was returning to family.  But I wonder if any of it was real for her?  She invented the cousin for herself in childhood games as she reinvented herself several times over throughout the novel - I wonder if there was a common heritage?  Is family in genetics or what is invented?  She had genetic and familiar (as with Chez) connections - but none of them seemed real?

I did enjoy the novel - I found myself reading and rereading passages that were particularly striking.  I would love to hear what you and others think - and questions the novel might have raised ...

- Nicole (Texas)

 

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