University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 8-2010 Welcome to Boomland Cebrun Abe Gaustad [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss Part of the Literature in English, North America Commons, and the Other English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Gaustad, Cebrun Abe, "Welcome to Boomland. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 2010. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/799 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a dissertation written by Cebrun Abe Gaustad entitled "Welcome to Boomland." I have examined the final electronic copy of this dissertation for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, with a major in English. Allen Wier, Major Professor We have read this dissertation and recommend its acceptance: Michael Knight, Arthur Smith, Cary Staples Accepted for the Council: Carolyn R. Hodges Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (Original signatures are on file with official studentecor r ds.) To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a dissertation written by Cebrun Abe Gaustad entitled “Welcome to Boomland.” I have examined the final electronic copy of this dissertation for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, with a major in English. Allen Wier, Major Professor We have read this dissertation and recommend its acceptance: Michael Knight Arthur Smith Cary Staples Accepted for the Council: Carolyn R. Hodges Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (Original signatures are on file with official student records.) Welcome to Boomland A Dissertation Presented for the Doctor of Philosophy Degree University of Tennessee, Knoxville Cebrun Abe Gaustad August 2010 Copyright © 2010 by Cebrun Abe Gaustad All Rights Reserved. ii For Johnna iii Acknowledgments Some of the stories in this collection were previously publish in slightly different form. “Age of Decaying Cities” was published in Other Voices and “The Torso” appeared in Memphis Magazine. I'd like to thank Allen Wier, my major professor on this project. His readings were always nuanced and thoughtful and sparked what I hope are many good revisions. Thanks also to Michael Knight, Arthur Smith and Cary Staples for their valuable comments as members of my dissertation committee. Finally thanks to my friends and family, but especially my mother Janice, my father Cebrun, my wife Johnna and my daughters, Gressa and Bren. Without you, this work would not have been possible. iv Abstract Abe Gaustad's first collection of stories, Welcome to Boomland, explores the lives of disparate characters longing for some escape. Whether a paraplegic blues aficionado or a boy who finds a strange object in the woods, they are each searching for a way out of their stagnation. Yet each character is trapped by their own unique circumstance: some of them by their mistakes, some by ruthless dictators, some by the very notion of death. As they search for their freedom, they find out new things about themselves and manage to wage quiet rebellions against those that would control them. In the end, they earn small victories, but noble ones. v Contents Introduction: Flights....................................................................................................... 1 A Month of Rain............................................................................................................13 Taken Apart by the Flame …........................................................................................29 Age of Decaying Cities..................................................................................................51 Who is Rios Montt?.......................................................................................................64 The Torso ….................................................................................................................83 Stars on the Wall.........................................................................................................101 Playing Ginger.............................................................................................................106 Assisted Living.............................................................................................................127 Boomland.....................................................................................................................144 Buch and the Snakestretchers.....................................................................................167 Works Consulted..........................................................................................................199 Vita .…..........................................................................................................................200 vi Introduction: Flights For every writer there is some embarrassing notebook sitting in the bottom of some dusty closet. I remember a yellow legal pad where I used to scribble stories. I wrote in a scrawl with a red felt tipped pen about two friends who found terrible footprints in the back yard and then worked together to track a mysterious creature.. And I remember my mother finding this yellow pad and leafing through it with a distant smile on her face. I can still feel the embarrassment of that moment even if I cannot recall precisely the room we were in or what she wore. But I can't forget the moment of trepidation as she read my words. I can't remember if I ran to another room or snatched the pad from her hands. She was laughing though. She thought it was cute. But to me it was serious. I didn't have any idea of what a writer was, but I knew I had things in my head that wanted out. Just as Milan Kundera, in The Art of the Novel, sees the reader as completing the creative act of the writer, I see my own writing as an essential component of my life, a sort of parallel universe where I can explore paths that I chose to not take, or perhaps paths that were impossible or even stupid. My narrators are almost always a bizarre reflection of myself. In Flannery O'Connor's wonderful story “Parker's Back,” the hero has a strange attraction to tattoos and spends his money on new and exciting images. To Parker, the ink he receives makes him feel electric for a week or so, but the newness soon wears 1 off and he must search for a suitable image to make him feel alive again. This search continues throughout the story until he is covered in bright images—except for one critical spot: his back. The story serves as an inspiration for my writing on many levels. Firstly, O'Connor is a master at symbolism without creating paper-thin characters to carry the symbolic load. Parker is a full-fledged human; despite his depravity, he grows through immense and confused suffering. In fact, it is the search that Parker engages in that makes the story especially memorable. Parker's search is a writer's search. He is an on a quest for the true Parker. In fact, O'Connor wrote about her own writing process as a kind of discovery, claiming that she did not know the Bible salesman in “Good Country People” would commit his comic and grotesque act of stealing an artificial leg until a few moments before she wrote the scene. IN “Parker's Back,” Parker finds a picture of Christ that touches him. The description of his reaction reminds me of an ideal reader's reaction to a good story. He feels the eyes of Christ burning through him. The description is wonderfully physical and real in the story, not a mere passing feeling. For me, there is almost always a visceral reaction to a good story. I feel it in the back of my neck and in the skin, just as Parker feels his tattoos come to life. Parker himself becomes a text in the story, and while he is not an artist, he directs the artists on what to inscribe on him and where to place it. His worst fear is to be misperceived, and this fear causes him some grief and discomfort. The men in the bar think he has become a religious nut, while Sara Ruth mistakes an eagle tattoo on his arm for that of a chicken. As any artist would be, Parker is insulted by these 2 mistakes. But he is also afraid of how the “misreadings” might stick to him and cause him trouble in the future. My artistic fears are similar to Parker's. There is a common fear among writers of being misread and misinterpreted, though in my case I worry that it would be my own fault. But more importantly, I see in Parker's obsessive tattooing a journey not unlike a writer's quest. I see Welcome to Boomland as a sort of Parker, a strange compilation of stories that take place in different states and countries with very different characters. *** Harold Pinter was inspired by a mere peek into a room: I went into a room and saw one person standing up and one person sitting down, and few weeks later I wrote The Room. I went into another room and saw two people sitting down, and a few years later I wrote The Birthday Party. I looked through a door into a third room and saw two people standing up and I wrote The