UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL OKLAHOMA JOE C. JACKSON COLLEGE OF GRADUATE STUDIES Edmond, Oklahoma THE TURTLE A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE FACULTY in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS IN ENGLISH WITH CREATIVE WRITING EMPHASIS By Mike Robertson Edmond, Oklahoma 2008 ii ABSTRACT OF THESIS University of Central Oklahoma Edmond, Oklahoma NAME: Mike Robertson DIRECTOR OF THESIS: Dr. Constance Squires PAGES: 392 ABSTRACT: The Turtle is a novel that incorporates elements of fiction genres including fantasy, horror, and American gothic in an attempt to synthesize a unique postmodern sensibility that is simultaneously rooted within and drifts outside conventional literary forms. The novel’s story is told in the first person by an unreliable narrator who filters events through his lens. This narrator is almost paralyzed by anxiety and, later, grief. The story begins as a conventional family drama, but then moves into a new, fantastical setting populated by mythical characters displaying quirky human characteristics. There are two major settings in The Turtle, both of which relate metaphorically to the protagonist’s inner life. The first setting is within his family, in the first part of the book. His wife is terminally ill, and the protagonist is forced to operate almost entirely within the context of her illness and his responsibilities to her. In the later part of the book, the protagonist travels to an Alaskan valley in which the various characters and landscape features serve as symbolic foils for his personality and emotional state. His interaction with these symbols in some ways provides the protagonist with a more constructive way of viewing life, though in other ways it illustrates the fact that, given human nature and the nature of time, any wisdom or personal revelation we might reach will inevitably be temporary. The entire novel is offset as a ‘frame’ story, a convention of American gothic stories and novels. The book contains a fictitious Editor’s Note explaining the origin of The Turtle as being physically delivered to the world’s attention not by its author but by one of the author’s friends long after it was written. The reputation and history of the book are further filtered and altered by the passage of fictional time. The events in the novel take place in 2001, but the Editor’s Note is dated 2062, and the author’s true identity remains a mystery. This is done to offset the fantastical nature of the later parts of the book. Obviously, not all the events in the novel could really have taken place, but the question of who really wrote the book and what really happened to him or her creates an added narrative dimension that comments not only on the unreliability of the narrator in this specific work, but on the general unreliability of literature as a medium for communicating encoded experience. iii Introduction Writing The Turtle has taught me about the unpredictability of the writing process and has shown me that it may be inadvisable to stick too rigidly to a plan of action when it comes to long-form fiction. The Turtle was born out of both experience and necessity. The first part of the book is based on my own experiences with my first wife, who died in October of 2001 of complications from secondary cardiopulmonary hypertension, the same disease that kills Sharon, her fictional counterpart in the novel. That experience and its aftermath represented a major ending and beginning in my life. Before her death, I supported my wife and her daughter working at different manual labor jobs. I was always interested in reading and literature and wanted someday to learn writing, but there was never enough time for it, and it was hard to convince myself that doing so would even be worth the effort. After my wife died and my stepdaughter went to live with her biological father, I had what I’ll call an “episode” that made it very difficult for me to go back to my old job and live my old life. I quit working and enrolled at the University of Central Oklahoma in January of 2002, majoring in journalism. After graduating in May of 2005, I decided to enroll in the graduate program in the English Department at UCO, majoring in creative writing. I wanted to write a creative thesis for the degree, but at first I didn’t want to write about my own experience, because I thought doing so would somehow cheapen my lived experience and upset other people who had been involved. I eventually decided I was avoiding the subject because it was iv painful. I reckoned the possible benefits of writing out the story would outweigh any possible negative results, and I started writing The Turtle in July, 2006. The first 200 pages of my first draft were pretty straightforward, because they were drawn directly from events in my life as I had perceived them and from my reaction to those events. I gave my stand-in, Gary, a different job (he originally worked in a box factory) and included several flashbacks to events that led up to my (now his) wife’s illness and illustrated general points of interest from our/their relationship. Since I really don’t know anything about making boxes, I eventually gave Gary one of the jobs I had during that period, working in a lab testing soil samples from construction sites. Without thinking much about it I created Harrell, Gary’s supervisor, who isn’t really based on anyone I ever knew, but is completely fictional. But when I got to Sharon’s death, the story felt too short – and it felt far too autobiographical. I felt I had realized some therapeutic effect by re-living the loss, but I didn’t feel I had created anything with which a reader would strongly identify or even find especially interesting. The story was too scattered, and it didn’t have much direction. I had been workshopping the first 150 or so pages over two semesters in novel-writing classes, and many of the comments I received from the other students confirmed that the plot moved too slowly. Gary was static and self-absorbed, and although he had his entertaining moments, he was a bit depressing and uninspired overall. One bright point in the earlier part of the first draft was the appearance of Father New Year, whom the people in my novel-writing class found both confusing and interesting. I shared their feelings, to a certain extent. It seemed outrageous to have Father New Year appear in reality, even though only Gary could see him, which indicated that Gary’s emotional v problems went much deeper than we had first believed. Father New Year, like Harrell, represented a movement outside my personal experience and foreshadowed subsequent developments in the novel. In the meantime, I had written an incomplete short story about a man who travels out into the wilderness and meets a giant woman living in a big log cabin. It was more a situation than a short story, and it didn’t have much narrative arc or movement. At the same time, the general concept nagged at me, and it occurred to me that I could graft the idea onto The Turtle. Looking back, this was the point in the process where the project fully transformed from an exercise in self-pitying self-therapy into a novel with its own internal, universal logic, characters and momentum. I gave myself two paths from which to choose: I could keep moving Gary along the choppy narrative course my own life took after my wife’s death, or I could come up with some way to move Gary out into the world, where he could discover the giant woman’s valley. Watching Gary meet a giant woman seemed more interesting than watching him sit in an apartment, crying and eating cheese and crackers for a couple of years, so I chose the giant woman. When I started the project, I had made a commitment to produce at least ten pages a week. I forced myself to push through Gary’s post-funeral experience for two or three weeks, finally getting him back to work testing soil samples from construction sites. I still had no real idea of why or how Gary was going to move out into the world. But as I wrote about how miserable Gary was at work, he kept mentioning the knife I used when I tested soil samples. It was blunt and short, with a white plastic handle. It stood out in my mind more clearly than the other details in the testing lab, and after Gary had mentioned vi it three or four times I realized I was trying to tell myself something. Harrell, who hadn’t had a real purpose before, provided the vehicle by which Gary breaks away from being a shadow version of me to become his own character, a protagonist with his own inner life and set of motivations. I was fairly surprised when Gary stabbed Harrell in the neck and ran from the police. It took a fair amount of feeling my way along in the dark before I got him on a bus headed north with Dan Tacos, a new travel companion, and even after he was on the road, I wasn’t sure exactly what was going on. I’ve never been to Seattle or Alaska, so I relied on MapQuest to give me a general idea about distances, travel times, and landscape. The Gates of the Arctic National Park seemed like a good place to put Karen’s valley because, on the map at least, there’s basically nothing there but huge stretches of mountains and snow.