Autumn Garden

San Jose State University SJSU ScholarWorks Master's Theses Master's Theses and Graduate Research Spring 2010 Autumn Garden Les Brady San Jose State University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/etd_theses Recommended Citation Brady, Les, "Autumn Garden" (2010). Master's Theses. 3748. DOI: https://doi.org/10.31979/etd.4awt-ux3v https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/etd_theses/3748 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Master's Theses and Graduate Research at SJSU ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Master's Theses by an authorized administrator of SJSU ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. AUTUMN GARDEN A Thesis Presented to The Faculty of the Department of English & Comparative Literature San José State University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Fine Arts by Les Brady May 2010 2010 Les Brady ALL RIGHTS RESERVED The Designated Thesis Committee Approves the Thesis Titled AUTUMN GARDEN by Les Brady APPROVED FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH & COMPARATIVE LITERATURE SAN JOSÉ STATE UNIVERSITY May 2010 Professor Cathleen Miller Department of English & Comparative Literature Professor Alan Soldofsky Department of English & Comparative Literature Professor Nick Taylor Department of English & Comparative Literature ABSTRACT AUTUMN GARDEN by Les Brady Autumn Garden is a novel using a semi-omniscient third-person narrator who conveys the perspectives of ten-year-old Nick Lucera, his mother, Mary, and father, Tony. The story challenges conventional beliefs of mortality as Nick confronts the greatest loss of his young life, his mother’s impending death. The novel is set in 1970’s coastal California. Two characters influence how Nick processes events in his life: seventeen-year- old neighbor, Brian, an evangelical Christian, and Sal Amato, an acquaintance of Nick’s parents, whose insights range from the curious to the fantastic. Brian’s friendship is a refuge for Nick, who suffers regularly from the bullying inflicted upon him by schoolmates. While finding sanctuary in his relationship with Brian, Nick also feels fear at the apocalyptical beliefs that Brian espouses. The story is a work of realism in the tradition of Chekhov, with a subtle element of fantasy, drawing on such works as Toni Morrison’s Beloved. The character Sal appears to possess abilities that defy conventional understanding as perceived by the other characters. Sal seems to influence those around him nonverbally, and he displays this ability by compelling all three main characters in ways that change their views of reality. TABLE OF CONTENTS Thesis Preface…………………………………………………………………………vi Works Cited……………………………………………………………………………xiii Chapter 1………………………………………………………………………………1 Chapter 2………………………………………………………………………………14 Chapter 3………………………………………………………………………………22 Chapter 4………………………………………………………………………………34 Chapter 5………………………………………………………………………………48 Chapter 6………………………………………………………………………………70 Chapter 7………………………………………………………………………………80 Chapter 8………………………………………………………………………………97 Chapter 9………………………………………………………………………………112 Chapter 10……………………………………………………………………………..130 Chapter 11……………………………………………………………………………..151 Chapter 12……………………………………………………………………………..173 Chapter 13……………………………………………………………………………..193 Chapter 14……………………………………………………………………………..206 Chapter 15……………………………………………………………………………..225 Chapter 16……………………………………………………………………………..240 v Thesis Preface In his The Art of Fiction John Gardner asserts, “All great writing is in a sense imitation of great writing.” (Gardner 11) Autumn Garden is a coming-of-age story based on a Central California coastal family and the events that shape their lives over the course of one year. The novel is a work of realism that incorporates elements of the fantastic into its narrative. In this light I will preface how Autumn Garden garners influence both from authors of realistic, character-driven fiction as well as those adept at the weaving of fantastic elements into otherwise realistic narratives. For this discussion we will define “fantastic” as not only a conscious authorial break from reality, but “the logical extension of reality;” simply put, when we take away all boundaries of reason, all frameworks of constraint, what might occur that would not otherwise with those boundaries in place, and what end would such occurrence elucidate? Nikolai Gogol employs elements of the fantastic in his work for very specific aesthetic purposes. In Gogol’s “The Nose” we see elements of the fantastic used to comment on both the absurdity of society as a whole and how the individual struggles against this absurdity to create meaning in a life that could be spent in utter obscurity. Gogol’s “The Nose” employs elements of the fantastic to expose the ridiculously stratified society that renders the individual unable to cope. Major Kovalyov awakes to discover a flat place in the middle of his face where his nose once protruded. We soon learn that Kovalyov is somewhat of a second-class collegiate assessor, not one who vi attained office through education, but who is merely appointed, implying a lesser level of acumen. Kovalyov soon witnesses his nose not only bounding out of a breaking carriage but clad in the uniform of a state counselor, three ranks higher than Kovalyov himself. The nose appears not only rushed, but with purpose, to which Kovalyov assumes is the precursor to an important rendezvous. The major is correct, and over the course of most of the remainder of the story he supplicates himself to his own outranking nose, attempts in vain to gain assistance in recouping it. It is worthwhile now to ask, for the purposes of substantiating our definition of “fantastic” as well as why such detail is employed, the simple question, “Why a nose?” The nose is perhaps our most prominent, visible feature, thus a clear metaphor for individuality. Having to bow down to one’s own nose is mocking of the system that causes any one individual to need bow down to another. As Gogol utilizes an animate nose, complete with high civil rank, to expose the ridiculously stratified societal conditions of 19th Century Russian culture, Sal Amato’s transformation into Santa Claus in Autumn Garden represents a unique archetype to American culture, one that at once conveys the playful innocence of the Santa myth, but also goes beyond mere gift-giving to comment on the nature of existence. To achieve a convincing element of the fantastic in Autumn Garden that can be read as a logical extension of reality through Sal, his character needed to be grounded in reality while displaying fantastic traits in a convincing manner. As in “The Nose,” only Kovalyov can actually see his lost appendage roaming about town; similarly, only Tony and the guests of the party see Sal as a Santa figure. When a curious neighbor inquires from his front vii porch as to the noise he has heard outside late on Christmas Eve, Sal’s character is immediately rendered back as the old fisherman: “‘Merry Christmas, Angelo!’ Sal’s familiar voice answered the query. Tony turned and saw not a towering figure but the old fisherman, Santa suit drooping from his frame, fake beard askew.” Quoting again from John Gardner’s The Art of Fiction, “the writer’s first job is to convince the reader that the events he recounts really happened, or to persuade the reader that they might have happened (given small changes in the laws of the universe).” (Gardner 22) Autumn Garden seeks to build on Gardner’s assertion in conveying Sal’s character as one whose intuition and transformation require that small universal change. Another of Gardner’s observations may be related to works of realistic fiction that rely upon characters that possess fantastic traits: “Dragons, like bankers and candy-store owners, must have firm and predictable characters. A talking tree, a talking refrigerator, a talking clock must speak in a way we learn to recognize, must influence events in ways we can identify as flowing from some definite motivation.” (Gardner 21-22) In other words, whether the character is a reincarnated child who has returned grown, as in Toni Morrison’s Beloved, the Judge of Blood Meridian—a giant man who speaks every language he encounters and makes gunpowder from the raw elements of the desert, or a strange old fisherman who appears to have a near-psychic intuition and transforms into Santa Claus, our characters must be convincing. Gardner defines this blending of realism with the fantastic as “genre-crossing,” a technique that “expands the emotional range of drama.” (Gardner 20) This notion works both in Gardner’s own Grendel, and Autumn Garden. Gardner’s famed retelling of the viii Beowulf story from the monster’s point of view utilizes the irony of reversal to level the playing field of the narrative, succeeding in bestowing not only mere storytelling capability to the monster, but ascribing in his character basic human abilities that engender sympathy in the reader: language, and the desire to reason. When commenting on his observations of the drunken, boasting men and their violent tendencies toward one another he observes from a distance, Grendel tells us that “I began to be more amused than revolted by what they threatened…It was slightly ominous because of its strangeness—no wolf was so vicious to other wolves—but I half believed they weren’t serious.” (Gardner 32) Gardner skillfully allows Grendel’s narration not only to comment critically on the men’s behavior, but contrasts the behavior with a wolf’s—an animal that

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