Light from the City
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LIGHT FROM THE CITY A Thesis Presented to the-Faculty-of the College of Arts and Sciences Mc:irehead State University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements .for the Degree Master of Arts __ in English by Joseph John Twomey D.;cembe r 1984 ., ,: Accepted by the faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences, Morehead State University, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Arts in English degree. DI F\EC'f.OFTI1ES=GEk; IS ~ '"'"''' eo.;uoo '~e_ 6d:IJ ,Ch•lrn" -~~ A~C-~ LIGHT FROM THE CITY Joseph John Twomey, M.A. : Morehead State University, 19~4 I Director of Thesis: The creative thesis Light From the City, Is, a novel, its author's first. Central to the theme of the work is the idea of regeneration ' . (a coinage by the author). As the reader wanders through thl s novel, h'opeful ly he or she wi 11 run across similarities In characters otherwise ,separated by two generations and an ocean. Also, the juxtaposition of similar events may inst i 11 a fee 1 i ng of deja vu. Some readers :may cone I ude that "blood runs deep", or cite philosophical/metaphysical theories about eye! ical time, in arriving at the final analysis, for this work. Yet Light involves much more. It tells the story of a growing romantic relationship of a young man and woman.: They' re at an age I when they feel the energy and vigor to confront :the world, yet remain unavoidably naive about the way their world works. Obstacles, In the form of a strangling, bureaucratic society·and unbending, by-the-book authority figures thwart their goals before they have even stayed still for a long enough time to think through what those goals are. The genesis for the novel arose from some ~urious facts concerning the life of Georges Melies, one of the ploneers:of the moving picture I medium. Blinded by artistic pride, he stubborn1y re~used to band I together with the other European filmmakers of the day to form a ,· '' ( ,( - corporate-run Industry. Inevitably, those businessmen stole his ideas ·l. (and even his films), forcing him into bankruptcy. Later, in a fit of I I rage, Melies set fire to a stockpile of his films'., destroying most of them, so that the number remaining today i.s smad. The premise arose I thus: what if one or severa I of the o 1d Me 1i es H lms somehow turned up7 As it stands, the completed Light From the City concerns its two main characters, Andrea and Tony, fl rst, and the .recovered film second. In the novel, the Meli es based emotional filmmaker has been named Jacques Moret. The professor of questionable ethics, Dr. Utrecht, plays the role of catalyst and chief authoritative obstacle. Whfle Light is an entirely creative work, bits and pieces of theory influenced it. The most notable of these are 'th~ Narrative Structure theories outlined by Seymour Chapman in his book.Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure In Fiction and Film (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1978). These proved to the author of Lig~t that today's reading audiences can dea 1 with huge shifts in space and ti me th rough the narrative discourse, and that th.\", technique can work tremendously 1 •~; if well-executed. Accepted by: WITH S HJCERE THANKS: The author acknowledges the fo 11 owing: Eug'ene 0. Young, G, Rona 1 d ' Dobler, and Marc Glasser, who formed the readin'g committee for this ' ' thesis, offering advice and encouragement along the way, ' Special thanks to Mrs. Mary Jo Netherton, who aided in the translation~ .of '' French' books concerning the life and work of Georges Mel ies·. Several intriguing facts about the 1 ife and work of that man helped form the basis for the novel Light From the City, Additional thanks and dedication of the bo'ok go to the myriad friends and acquaintances I have encountered in university life, the memories of whom have helped fi 11 in the deta i 1s of ·the characters involved in th~ story (even though any dead-on similarity to any person'alive today is purely coincidental), Copyright Joseph John Twomey •j'" 1984 CHAPTER ONE "So, where have you been hiding al 1 semester? I 've never seen you I before." Tony realized that he'd had to stoop when 'talking to her, At five- feet-nine with boots on, that meant to him that. this girl was more than petite. "I've been here," she replied. I From the neck up, she seemed to be made of'. hair, so Tony 1ooked at the warm brown mane while thinking of what t~ say next. It tumbled from her head in huge whorls. The largest of the curls sprang from either side of her widow's peak, forming a symm~trlcal frame for her face. He stood beside her, and she faced front, gazing at the yellow-painted cinderblocks. The tress-frames blocked Tony's view of her eyes. Tony said "So, do you think the o 1 d geezer 1 s ever going -to make it?" hoping that she would turn to face him. She did. The delicate arcs o\,~er eyebrow~ squeez together. ' •. ·~ Had that remark about Dr. Utrecht annoyed her?' Her lips curled crookedly as she shrugged, turning to face fron~ once again. "Well, my name's Tony Taverneau," he saia,: pushing himself away from the wal 1. That got her to face him. After a slow blink of her rose-tinged eyelids, she sajd "Hello, Tony. Ni.ce to meet you." She wore gray sw~atpar.ts, Nikes, and a wine-colored tank leotard, and he wore his fad·ed Van Halen T-shirt and fat,igues. Yet from the way she'd said those words, he folt that he might have been in a bowtie and I ' I tuxedo, and she in a strapless evening gown, th!'! s i tuat·ion a royal I I I - "·•' IJ cotillion, where they'd just been introduced by some gray-haired matron wearing long gloves. "My name's Andrea Streicher," she went em. I Tony expected her to I extend her hand, yet knew she couldn't have when he looked at her arms, ' ' They clasped a load of books tightly against her chest. At that moment, Dr, Utrecht appeared, weaving his way in and around his stude~ts standing in the hall. A burly janitor with a wire- orusn mustache fol lowed h.im.. Dr. Utrecht huffed and puffed beneath the .strain of a stack of fi !ms he carried, "Sorry· I'm late," he said, wneezing, while the Janitor unlocked one of the classroom doors. "At least I· know this old body can still move if it has to, 11 Tony wondered wnat would llappen with tile rest of the semester if Dr, Utrecht col lapsed from near.t failure, right there •. All tile students filed in behind their teacher, Rooms at Heggendorf Hall made tile best movie theaters Tony had ever seen •. They jutted out from a central core, like giant fan blades, Each one was shaped like a mi·ni·ature orchestra shell, with three rows of seats tiered and shelved, . r; ~ l'f Tony Fiad Eleen at the front of the room to lecture to people sitting down,' he would have felt as if he'd been on trial by a panel of thirty Jur.i·sts, Tile central core contained projectors that beamed movies and slides from liehind, onto a twelve-by-five foot screen at the front .of the cl ass room. Tony watched Andrea glide into a seat, placing her books atop the tali le, He slid into a seat beside her, instantly realizing how she had clended in so well during the first couple of weeks: she'd always sat In tfie topmost row of 'the a renr..-1 i ke room. He'd always opted for the I' I front seats nearest the screen. They turned their attention to Dr. Utrecht, who stood behind the oak podium at the front of the room, on the "stage", as Tony liked to call it. He was an older professor. in the department, easily sixty, who used his right hand to jiggle the corresponqing side of his wire glass·frames, tap a pipe against his lips, or (presumably) grade papers. 11 i't dbesn't look like the guy's hair grows out of his head," Tony had told a few of his friends during the first week of classes, "it looks as though someone took a can of Sherwin-Williams white and splattered it on." Tony glanced at Andrea as Dr. Utrecht began to speak. She had flipped her stenography pad open to a clean page and poised her pen .. against it. For some reason, Tony thought of an Olympic runner tensing nis calves and hamstrings against t.he starting b.locks, "Today, we will study the films of Jacques Moret," he said, to which Andrea scrifihled down the. words "Jacques Moret" at the top of the paper. When the teacher continued with a barrage of other names and dates, she jotted those down also. Tony simply leaned back in his chair, arms folded, and watched her. Dr. Utrecht paused, as if to punctuate an intense' turning point i·n his lecture. H).s lower I ip jutted. He said "When I die and go to heaven, I'd like to meet this man and talk about the old days, and how he made all of his films." With that, he gazed skyward and smiled, as if he could see a sneak preview of what awaited him there.