University of South Carolina Scholar Commons Theses and Dissertations 1-1-2013 Red, Yellow, Blue Lauren Elizabeth Eyler University of South Carolina Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd Part of the Creative Writing Commons Recommended Citation Eyler, L. E.(2013). Red, Yellow, Blue. (Master's thesis). Retrieved from https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd/2315 This Open Access Thesis is brought to you by Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. RED, YELLOW, BLUE by Lauren Eyler Bachelor of Arts Georgetown University, 2005 Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing College of Arts and Sciences University of South Carolina 2013 Accepted by: Elise Blackwell, Director of Thesis David Bajo, Reader John Muckelbauer, Reader Agnes Mueller, Reader Lacy Ford, Vice Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies © Copyright by Lauren Eyler, 2013 All Rights Reserved. ii ABSTRACT Red, Yellow, Blue is a hybrid, metafictional novel/autobiography. The work explores the life of Ellis, Lotte, Diana John-John and Lauren as they wander through a variety of circumstances, which center on loss and grief. As the novel develops, the author loses control over her intentionality; the character’s she claims to know fuse together, leaving the reader to wonder if Lauren is synonymous with Ellis or if Diana is actually Lotte disguised by a signifier. Red, Yellow, Blue questions the author’s as well as the reader’s ability to understand the transformation that occurs in an individual during long periods of grief and anxiety. Redemption drifts through the stories, but the conflicting accounts of the main characters leave the reader wondering if anyone will find a way out of the chaos caused by life’s uncertainty. By the last story, they will wonder if the author will discover a path, which leads out of the labyrinths she has created. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT .......................................................................................................................... iii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION..................................................................................................1 CHAPTER 2: LAUREN, YOUR EX-LOVER IS DEAD .................................................................7 CHAPTER 3: KILLING LOTTE ...............................................................................................10 CHAPTER 4: KILLING LAUREN ............................................................................................37 CHAPTER 5: THE BATH .......................................................................................................67 CHAPTER 6: (0-9)................................................................................................................76 CHAPTER 7: PERISCOPE (HART CRANE)..............................................................................82 CHAPTER 8: GREY ALPHABETS...........................................................................................89 CHAPTER 9: BENT BLUE ...................................................................................................108 CHAPTER 10: UNTITLED....................................................................................................133 CHAPTER 11: DETAIL OF THE LAST SUPPER......................................................................151 CHAPTER 12: LIFPURSUIT. ............................................................................................167 CHAPTER 13: GREEN CAR CRASH.....................................................................................179 CHAPTER 14: LAND’S END................................................................................................185 CHAPTER 15: DIVER..........................................................................................................204 CHAPTER 16: WATCHMAN ................................................................................................227 CHAPTER 17: CONCLUSION...............................................................................................232 iv CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Four years ago, a French author by the name of Laurent Binet sat down to write a book in which he lays out Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš roll in the 1942 assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, notorious for his participation in the Wannsee Conference, infamous for his treatment of the Czechs as the Acting Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia. The Czech government-in-exile assigned Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš the task of killing The Butcher of Prague. And yes, the book, HHhH, is an account of Gabčík and Kubiš, but Binet disturbs the reader with intermittent comments throughout, which address his inability to accurately portray the two assassins. Binet wants the work to be a memorial to the men, but he argues that it is impossible because he must make up inner dialogue, conversations with fellow members of the resistance, the direction the wind was blowing. He is distraught that he does not know the name of the tram that Gabčík hears as he falls asleep at night. He cannot know what goes through the men’s heads as they die in a firefight with the Nazis. He yearns to write a piece of non-fiction that pays due respect to the men, the heroes, but alas, he feels he fails because he includes artifice, the color of coffee mugs, the barking of dogs, the way Heydrich’s Mercedes 320 looked through the eyes of Gabčík and Kubiš. Things he could never know. We’ll never know. 1 In Binet’s attempt to accomplish this wholly non-fictional account, he actually writes a piece of non-fiction: the account of Binet’s struggles with the artifice of writing. The plot, an author fighting to write an historically accurate book about an historical event when it is impossible because artifice and subjectivity guide every word written by the writer. Do I dare call Binet’s work non-fiction? Yes. Do critics call it a novel? Yes. Post-modern? Yes. There is what they might perceive to be a metafictional element. Is it? No because the writer is writing the account of how artifice plagues the truth. I will not use the space here to chronicle my attempts to strip Binet’s book of its Prix Goncourt du Premier Roman. Let us say that the French are confused about what is and is not a novel. Let us say that the French are silly. Perhaps, I should say that after three years I’d never received a response. I’d spent close to eight hundred dollars on the various letters and packages I had sent. Finally, I realized that I was writing those letters instead of my next book. I stopped caring about categorization, about artifice and, most importantly, the French. The letters I was writing at the point that I stopped caring about Binet did not consist of complaints or invectives. I had filled them with my own grief. I did not possess any sort of grace when it came to the art of losing. Most of the letters were in blue ink and filled with large splotches from letting the pen rest too long in one place. Some had been soaked in beer. When the blue pen ran out, all I had left were ballpoints filled with black ink. I was five beers into the day at eleven in the morning and I looked at what I was writing and found the metaphor. 2 Here my own history had taken whatever color I had and turned it into black and white. I was capable of smoking and drinking and, at the time, if I were a poet, I could have described my pulse as being the pulse of a thousand dead men. But fortunately, I was not a poet. Three people died. Three, all in one year, which may not seem like much, but these were people I knew and the first was suicide. You get that call at eleven at night. You are twenty-three and all of your grandparents are alive. This man, who is forty, gets a gun. You can’t possibly believe this happened, the grief of that one and, in the same year, the grief of the others weighed too much. And with the weight of the two coffins and ashes comes the heaviness of the girl leaving you. You stand next to her looking at the Pacific Ocean you’ve never seen before. You look at the waves and walk up and feel the water. It’s too cold to get in. You never look at her and she doesn’t look at you, but in that not looking you know that you will get on a plane in Oakland and fly back to Washington, D.C. and everything will have changed. It has changed for the worse. I sat down in the fall of 2009 and I wrote the first story I’d written in two years. And the story was true. I named it 5150. I wrote about the way it feels to ride in handcuffs to a hospital. I wrote the color of the walls were sky blue. I wrote about my roommate who discussed the ways in which she was going to kill herself once she was discharged. I wrote about the psychiatrist who broke the Caduceus in half and slept with me. When I was finished, I shared it with a few friends. My fellow writers informed me that it was cliché and boring. This stuff happens all the time. They told me no one wants 3 to read stories they can find in newspapers. “But this happened to me,” I said. “How can I tell this story?” The answer: fictionalize it. When I calmed down, I called a friend who writes creative non-fiction. She was discussing her latest book in which she meditates about her evangelical background and the abuse of her stepfather. I commented that it must be nice to write about such things directly. She asked me what I meant