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DOWN AT THE BOWL: A NOVEL A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts By THERESA MARIE EVANS B.S.J., Ohio University, 1984 2007 Wright State University COPYRIGHT BY THERESA MARIE EVANS 2007 WRIGHT STATE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF GRADUATE STUDIES May 14, 2007 I HEREBY RECOMMEND THAT THE THESIS PREPARED UNDER MY SUPERVISION BY Theresa Marie Evans ENTITLED Down at the Bowl: A Novel BE ACCEPTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF Master of Arts Carol Loranger, Ph.D. Co-Thesis Director Erin Flanagan, Ph.D. Co-Thesis Director Henry S. Limouze, Ph.D. Department Chair Committee on Final Examination Carol Loranger, Ph.D. Erin Flanagan, Ph.D. Nancy Mack, Ph.D. Mary Beth Pringle, Ph.D Joseph F. Thomas, Jr., Ph.D. Dean, School of Graduate Studies ABSTRACT Evans, Theresa Marie. M.A., Department of English Language and Literatures, Wright State University, 2007. Down at the Bowl: A Novel. Novel set in late-1970s Cincinnati, on its traditionally conservative, Catholic west side. Karen is a sheltered seventeen-year-old girl, who gets a job bussing tables at a bowling alley restaurant. Unlike the friends she has struggled to fit in with throughout high school, Karen finds she is immediately welcomed into the group of teenagers who work there. Karen tries to become more street smart like her new friends, but she finds herself jolted at times by their casual attitudes towards drinking, drugs, and sex. She also finds herself conflicted by her willingness to follow the crowd. She falls in love with a co-worker, who becomes one of her best friends, but whose popularity among other teenage girls seems to thwart her desire for a more romantic relationship. Along with the coming-of-age theme of trying to establish an identity and a set of values, the story addresses issues of homosexuality in a time when gays were just beginning to come out publicly. Karen struggles with her search for truth and love against the seventies’ backdrop of social upheaval and economic insecurity. While the subjects are serious, the first-person narrator has a sense of humor and enduring hope that reflects the bittersweet and fleeting nature of teenage melodrama. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTION ............................................................................1 II. DOWN AT THE BOWL Chapter 1............................................................................................7 Chapter 2............................................................................................16 Chapter 3............................................................................................20 Chapter 4............................................................................................27 Chapter 5............................................................................................33 Chapter 6............................................................................................39 Chapter 7............................................................................................48 Chapter 8............................................................................................53 Chapter 9............................................................................................56 Chapter 10..........................................................................................62 Chapter 11..........................................................................................65 Chapter 12..........................................................................................69 Chapter 13..........................................................................................73 Chapter 14..........................................................................................81 Chapter 15..........................................................................................87 Chapter 16..........................................................................................93 Chapter 17..........................................................................................101 Chapter 18..........................................................................................105 Chapter 19..........................................................................................111 Chapter 20..........................................................................................121 v Chapter 21..........................................................................................126 Chapter 22..........................................................................................134 Chapter 23..........................................................................................138 Chapter 24..........................................................................................146 Chapter 25..........................................................................................151 Chapter 26..........................................................................................157 Chapter 27..........................................................................................165 Chapter 28..........................................................................................170 Chapter 29..........................................................................................175 Chapter 30..........................................................................................179 Chapter 31..........................................................................................187 Chapter 32..........................................................................................197 Chapter 33..........................................................................................206 Chapter 34..........................................................................................214 Chapter 35..........................................................................................221 Chapter 36..........................................................................................230 Chapter 37..........................................................................................236 vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I would like to thank my co-thesis directors Dr. Erin Flanagan and Dr. Carol Loranger for their support and advice during the completion of this work. This appreciation also extends to my readers, Dr. Nancy Mack and Dr. Mary Beth Pringle, who provided insightful commentary that helped me to fine-tune the final version. I would like to express deep appreciation to my creative writing instructors, Mr. Jimmy Chesire and Dr. Erin Flanagan, for believing in me, which is what I needed from them most. Finally, I have to acknowledge and thank all of my creative writing classmates who participated in some very productive workshops with me; I will never forget their friendship, respect, humor, and intelligence. vii DEDICATION To my husband, Bradley, and my children, Kara and Daniel. viii INTRODUCTION Down at the Bowl is told from the perspective of Karen, a sheltered, insecure teenage girl, who is trying to make sense of a world that is at odds with the religious and cultural ideals she’s been raised on. With dry, self-effacing humor, the narrator reveals the confusion and anguish of trying to fit in, dealing with unrequited love, and trying to determine the truth behind the games people play to avoid completely revealing themselves. The story is set in 1970s Cincinnati, in a working-class area known for its German Catholic roots and generations of families who would never dream of leaving. Both the tumultuous times and her part-time job at a bowling alley bring the protagonist in contact with the types of situations and people that challenge her black-and-white view of the world. Issues addressed include drinking, drug abuse, premarital sex, and homosexuality. This story is very loosely based on what happened to me, but most of it is too fabricated to qualify as a memoir. I did not want to be tied down to strict reporting of facts, partly because that would be impossible, but mostly because it would bore me as much as any reader. In the process of writing this fictional work, I have merged, split, deleted, and transformed actual people to create the novel’s characters. Sometimes I created completely new characters. Passages in the story based on real events are not necessarily in the order that they actually happened—and most events are simply the product of my imagination. The few sections based on actual events have been stretched beyond recognition to anyone who was actually there. The important thing is that they could have happened. 1 I wrote the basis of Chapter 1 when I was a freshman at Ohio University, but dropped the project because I didn’t feel I had enough distance from my experiences to write about them. My junior year I took a creative writing class, for which I wrote a short story on which Chapters 32 and 33 are based. My professor said that nobody would believe a girl could be as stupid as my main character, and he suggested setting the story up so the reader would understand her lack of perceptiveness. He was the first person to point out to me that just because something happened in real life doesn’t automatically make the event interesting or even believable in a story. I revised my story and got an A on the paper and in the class, but I was so embarrassed about my apparent spectacular naïveté that I dropped the project once again. I began to feel that everything I wrote was going to be derided for being clueless.