Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant: Anne Tyler and the Faulkner Connection
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Atlantis Vol. 10 No. 2 Spring' printemps 1985 Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant: Anne Tyler and the Faulkner Connection Mary J. Elkins Florida International University ABSTRACT The structure of Anne Tyler's novel, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant is interestingly reminiscent of that of William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying; an investigation of the similarities reveals an underlying connection between the two works, a common concern with family dynamics and destinies. Both novelists examine the bonds between people, mysterious bonds beyond or beneath articulation. Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant is not, however, a pale imitation or a contemporary retelling of the Bundren novel. It is a participant in a tradition. The parallels between the two novels are suggestive rather than exact. Despite a certain sharing of Faulkner's fatalism, Tyler gives us characters a bit less passive and events a bit less inexorable. The echoes from Faulkner deepen and intensify the themes of Tyler, but in her novel, for one character at least, obsession ultimately gives way to perspective. The ending is not Faulknerian but Tyler's own; the optimism is limited but unmistakeable. Anne Tyler's latest novel, Dinner to the Home• also named Tull.2 A close look suggests that the sick Restaurant, begins with this sentence, similarities are not limited to names and surface "While Pearl Tull was dying, a funny thought appearances. The structure of Dinner at the occurred to her."1 Pearl does not actually die Homesick Restaurant is reminiscent of that of until the beginning of the last chapter; she "lies As I Lay Dying. In Faulkner's novel, each chap• dying" throughout the novel. Tyler may be ter is given over to one character's voice, one intending an evocation of As I Lay Dying, a character's description of and reactions to the novel by William Faulkner, in which, as in this events taking place; the individual chapters con• book, a mother's death brings together her fam• tain conflicting viewpoints and philosophies, ily to participate in a ritual act: a funeral journey differing attitudes towards the mother, the other in one, a funeral dinner in the other. In fact, members of the family, and the task the family Tyler seems to be throwing out hints that she has taken on. wants the reader to suspect a connection between the two; the neighbors in Faulkner's novel are The alternation of first person narration which For Pearl, Cody's childhood croup makes her characterizes As I Lay Dying is not the narrative change her mind about having no more child• device at work in Tyler's novel, but the principle ren; she thinks, "If Cody died, what would she is the same. In each chapter, the reader sees the have left?" (4) But more children only increase events described with limited omniscience, reveal• the vulnerabililty. With Ezra "she was more ing the consciousness of one character at a time. endangered than ever." (4) These reactions to Consciousness shifts only with the beginning of their children are not to be equated, but what is each new chapter. The first and sixth chapters to be noted is that both women are radically belong to Pearl, the second, fifth and tenth or last changed, moved to passion and anger, by child• to her older son, Cody, the third and seventh to ren rather than by marriage. her daughter Jenny, the fourth and ninth to the second son, Ezra, and the eighth to Cody's son, There are similarities in the characterizations Luke. Each of these chapters reveals a character• of the children as well, particularly the sons. istic attitude toward the world unique to the Ezra Tull, Pearl's second son, is an "innocent," consciousnness indicated. Each of these chapters patient and guileless; one reviewer of the novel also furthers the action, moving along for the compared him with Dostoevsky's Idiot, both in most part chronologically, very much as the his own purity and in the effect he has on less individual chapters of As I Lay Dying do. innocent characters.3 Actually, readers of Tyler's other novels have met Ezra Tull's spiritual rela• Moreover, there exist interesting similarities tives before, but so have readers of Faulkner. Ezra of characterization in these two novels. Addie is not an idiot; he is slow and mild, quite a bit Bundren is a fierce, angry woman described by like Cash Bundren in his uncomplaining accept• her neighbor Cora Tull as "a lonely woman, ance of whatever must be. Cash works outside lonely with her pride." (21) Pearl is, by her own his mother's window, building his mother's cof• admission, "an angry sort of mother" (19) given fin. Ezra sits by his mother's deathbed, solid and to wild temper tantrums, physical and verbal dependable, just as he sat beside the deathbed of assaults on her children, and isolated from her Mrs. Scarlatti, his surrogate mother. While Mrs. neighbors. Cody remembers "that she'd never Scarlatti lies dying, Ezra does his carpentry shown the faintest interest in her community but work, tearing down walls and rebuilding her dwelt in it like a visitor from a superior neigh• restaurant. borhood, always wearing her hat when out walking, keeping her doors shut tightly when at Ezra is also his mother's favorite child, as home." (285) Both are women who withhold Jewel Bundren is his mother's favorite. But there themselves from the men they marry, keeping are few, if any, character traits shared by Ezra and themselves, psychologically at least, intact. Both Jewel. Jewel is more like Cody Tull, wild and find children the experience that violates them sharing in his mother's frustrations and anger. and makes them vulnerable. Addie says, Cody is also somewhat like Darl Bundren, the highly sensitive troublemaker of the Bundren And when I knew that I had Cash, I knew family. Like Darl, he is jealous of his brother and that living was terrible and that this was is untiring in his efforts to make his life miserable. not the answer to it...I knew that it had been, not that my aloneness has to be vio• Finally, each of these families has a shiftless lated over and over each day, but that it had father. Anse Bundren is a man who believes that never been violated until Cash came. Not he will die if he sweats; he is criminally careless even by Anse in the nights.(163-164) of his children's well-being, setting Cash's leg in cement and stealing his daughter's money. He uses others' misfortunes to his own advantage her novel. All the characters revolve around her; and insists on the respect he feels a family owes to their words seem to emanate from her. The dura• its father. Beck Tull deserts his wife and abandons tion of the action is more compressed in As I Lay his children ("I won't be visiting the children," Dying; the organization is tighter, the center he says in response to Pearl's plea—10) and then more narrow and defined. Although as one critic returns for her funeral, full of himself, claiming has suggested, the reader cannot be sure to whom his family and telling his grandchildren as he the title of Faulkner's novel refers, who the "I" "moved down the line beaming," "I'm your is4, the title of Tyler's novel clearly points out long lost grandpa." (289) Both women married from Pearl Tull, away from death, and toward men who were not their social equals. Now that the healing family dinner. he is "free," Beck Tull is thinking about remar• rying just as Anse has. The echoes of Anse are Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant is not, everywhere; the reader waits for Beck to say, then, a contemporary retelling of the Bundren "God's will be done...Now I can get them teeth." story. The parallels between the two are sugges• (51) tive rather than exact, and they call attention to the deeper thematic resemblances and dissimi• He does not say this, of course, and Dinner at larities of the two novels. the Homesick Restaurant is not As I Lay Dying. Pearl is not Addie. She is much softer, much less Both are unsentimental portraits of family perverse. She is given more opportunity to and the bonds which join people, bonds which speak, allowed to live and change throughout seem to have little to do with affection. Even the novel; Addie, we recall, is central to her need is an inadequate explanation, although it novel, but she speaks (from beyond the grave?) plays a role in the reliance of members of both only once and becomes, rather than a fully real• families on each other. In each case, the author ized character, more of a narrative focal point. seems to suggest that the bonds are mysterious, Pearl's anger is more specific, tied to her having beyond or beneath articulation (at least by these been abandoned by her husband, left to support people, although Darl and Cody are sensitive to her children alone. She tells her son Cody that and comment on the relationships within their she was once "special," and asks "Do you really respective families). Forces stronger than indi• suppose I was always this difficult old woman?" viduals keep them together. Cody, thinking over (141) She sees herself trapped in the consequen• the many unsuccessful attempts Ezra has made ces of her one great mistake. Although her anger at "family dinners" at his restaurant, wonders affects the children and leaves them scarred, she why they all go every time, knowing it will not does not have the power that Addie has nor the work out.