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3:2 | View | Mary R. Bailey
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Contemporary Virginia Literature's Classical Composer:
The Musicality of Kelly Cherry in The Society of Friends
Mary R. Bailey
I always knew from before I had words to state it that there was a beauty in the world. Early on, I wanted to make people feel what I feel when I listen to music —from an interview with Kelly Cherry
Leading up to the 21st century, the literary landscape of the later half of the 20th century lay strewn with the refuse of numerous wars, of generations lost or otherwise directionless, of writers cognizant and sometime complicit in the moral decay and decadence pervading American culture. Some of our best and brightest writers sought a balm for the soul of humanity even as they were scribing truths about a world gone awry, a world losing touch with the rhythm of its people and its past. Caught up in the quickening pace of daily life, humanity struggled for the synchronicity of earlier generations. There was a pace to life, a rhythm in tune with the turning of the world, with the rising and setting of the sun, with the ebb and flow of the tides, that seemed to be losing its grip in the wake of mass industrialization followed by mass information. The distance among people and places, though technologically closer with the advent of the computer and cell phones, seemed an ever-widening gap in a society rife with acquaintances, but few friends. Serving as the backdrop for author Kelly Cherry's works, this modernized and mechanized world where the isolation of the individual is painfully evident – the old adage Ôlonely in a crowd' comes to mind—pervades her work, yet cannot overpower the unique beauty with which she writes—a beauty forged from, and directly related to, the sound and sense of music.
Mankind has a predilection for music. Since the dawn of time, our proclivity to communicate in some manner, beyond mere words, has taken on the form of beats and rests, of nuances and rhythms, of a measure for a measure. Einstein, father of the nuclear age and unequivocally one of the greatest scientific minds in recorded history, understood the relevance of music to our lives and the universe. "If I were not a physicist," Einstein once said, "I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music."
Music is the oldest form of language, the language that breaks all barriers, predominant before time recorded. Species ranging from birds to humpback whales use musical strains to warn each other of danger, where food can be found, or in a sweet mating song. From Swahili tribal beats to modern reggae, music continues to caress the soul – continues to stir a longing for a greater understanding of ourselves and for some kind of connection – a universality as it were – with our fellow man. Jack Nicholson, who plays the devil Daryl Van Horn in the movie The Witches of Eastwick, comments that, as the devil, he "knows music. It's the one thing that makes me humble."
Ever since her declaration at the tender age of twelve that she would become a writer (an official declaration that caused "all hell to break loose" in her household), Virginia writer Kelly Cherry has concerned herself with the written word: "My parents would have liked for me to become a scientist. Living a life as a classical musician generally leads to a life of poverty. But they loved what they did and that's what rubbed off on (me)" (Cherry, unpublished interview). With the echoes of her declaration still ringing in her ears, Cherry began to immerse herself in the written word. Too young to see herself as a writer, Cherry nonetheless began to read extensively, patterning herself after her brother, a writer, who "had read all of Shakespeare's works by the time he was nine or something like that" (Cherry, unpublished interview).
Enrolling at Mary Washington College upon completion of high school, Cherry studied mathematics and science but was vastly unhappy and uninspired. She moved on to graduate work at the University of Virginia, where she met the writer George Garrett, "tinkered with writing on the side," and worked to save money for a trip to Europe. Before leaving for Europe, a friend informed Cherry that he was enrolling in a writing program at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. Upon her return from Europe, she enrolled and received her M.F.A. In her early thirties, Cherry finally began to write in earnest with the idea of becoming a published writer. Her earliest works to be published were poems accepted by The Carolina Quarterly and The Hollins Critic. In 1971, when her first story was published in Commentary, Cherry remembers it as being "a major breakthrough" for her.
Though perhaps best known as a southern writer, Cherry's writings transcend regionalism through the qualities in her work concerned with general humanistic forces. Her ability to create literature that is something greater than the sum of its parts, has its lineage in music as a result of her parent's string quartet days and her love of music, particularly Beethoven. She also recalls having "had a conscientious recognition of Shakespeare early on . . .": his necessary use of music and language to express the whole, to expose mankind for all its frailties and limitations as well as its triumphs. The infusion of Shakespeare (from her readings) and Beethoven (from her parents' string quartet days) early in her life allowed Cherry to develop a sense about, and an understanding of, "the process of developmental passages and change" (Cherry, unpublished interview).
The Society of Friends, a compilation of thirteen of Cherry's short stories, weaves a hauntingly musical tale of the loves and losses experienced by members of a small community in Madison, Wisconsin. Published in 1999, this collection is set in the American heartland, a place Cherry spent a number of years while working as a professor at University of Wisconsin. Of the thirteen stories, six revolve around Nina Bryant. Nina, a writer and professor at the University of Wisconsin, has a number of challenges in her life including her relationship with her adopted daughter, the death of her parents and the ensuing emotional stress, as well as vivid, haunting recollections of sexual abuse as a child. Other stories in the collection feature the lives of Nina's neighbors. As a microcosmic depiction of a macro-society, Nina and her friends and neighbors represent a musical score— a literary landscape— building from one voice: stock characters to be fleshed out on the page and then, with musical precision, growing in complexity as each piece progresses. And behind this progression, always the steady beat, the underlying tone of death and finality, the end game of lives that must be lived out to a structured score incorporated by Cherry in her stories to bring harmony and resolution to an otherwise chaotic world.
In "The Prowler: A Prologue," the first story in The Society of Friends, Cherry sets a rhythmical beat for the entire collection. Something lurks within the neighborhood as people go about their daily lives— something they can neither see nor identify— a presence they only feel and hear. In the evening, there is an unsettling feeling in the neighborhood. Dogs bristle and lights turn on as neighbors young and old become aware of a singular presence in the neighborhood. By daylight, friends speak to one another, often pointedly asking "Did you hear that noise last night?" (Cherry 3). The noise, it turns out, is the "prowler," the steady rhythm of life, the measures ticking off toward that final cadence when the score is complete.
It is in this first story in the collection that we are introduced to the Midwestern neighborhood, to Nina and her adopted daughter Tavy, and to a number of Nina's acquaintances. Cherry masterfully establishes the steady beat of the prowler as a backdrop to the rhythm of the lives of Nina and various characters. Each musical pulse is directly related to the stage in life of each character represented. For example, the protagonist Nina and her young daughter Tavy go to the Square, where the state capital stands, to look at, and listen to, a calliope. Tavy, young, innocent, four-years old, is unaware of the presence of the prowler, and during the day enjoys the joyful exuberance and innocent strains of Bach as it flows from within the calliope. For Nina, the first to become aware of the prowler in the neighborhood, this experience is a way to shield her child from the fear the adults feel when they sense the prowler, as well as a way to calm her own fears. Later in the piece, however, it is Nina, with age and experience, who fears her answering machine filling up with useless and "unidentified staticky radiosignals, a DJ spinning patter onto the incoming-message tape" (11). For Nina, the useless sound represents the static that pervades her adult life, the responsibilities for the mundane and unfulfilling tasks of daily life that threaten to drown out the music of her life. The story closes with the sound of sirens, and young teenagers "open(ing) the sunroofs on their parents' Preludes and turn(ing) the four-way speaker system up full blast" (12). Teenagers on the cusp of adulthood, these young individuals are becoming aware of the prowler, yet not quite so aware as the adults around them. In their youthful arrogance, their nothing-can-happen-to-me James Dean attitude, they turn up their radios in order to shut out the steady beat toward finality that the prowler represents. Theirs is a musical score still in progress. Interestingly enough, Cherry uses a particular car, the Prelude (which musically is the opening piece that sets the tone for the rest of the music), in the first story in this collection, setting the tone for the upcoming stories as well as the rest of the book.
In "Tell Her," the second short story in this collection, Cherry begins to lay the motifs – in literature, recurrent thematic ideals, in music, repeating ideas or repetitious fragments of music – for the remainder of the book. With the introduction of Guy and Jordan, a couple in a troubled marriage, Cherry unveils the idea of discord present in each character and the manner in which the characters bring this dissonance to some type of resolution. Guy, a small bookstore owner, has taken out a home equity loan on his house to expand his business in order to compete with larger book store chains moving into the area. Complete with a stage where poets and writers can read their works as well as a cappuccino machine, Guy's business should have, on some level, turned around. The small scale of his business, however, cannot compete with the larger stores, and he is on the verge of losing his house: a small band trying to compete with the strains of an orchestra. Throughout the story, Guy repeats the fragment "tell her," because he knows he must tell Jordan they are about to lose their home. Guy and Jordan waltz within the same musical sphere – that of their married life – but to distinctly different motifs. The contrast in their motifs causes the discordant tension in their lives and ultimately threatens to unravel the melodic threads that weave the tapestry of their relationship. In fragments, we learn that Guy and Jordan no longer have a sexual relationship, that Jordan is more interested in talking with her gay friend Dooley than with her husband, that Guy and Jordan are afraid to attempt real communication with one another. Cherry represents this feeling of fear, this fragment of a life in danger of falling apart when Guy, safe in his bookstore, daydreams and believes "(h)e can almost hear the harpsichord, something by Scarlatti or Mozart. The man and the woman beginning to dance, moving toward each other, moving away" (15). The music and the dance, each represents his fragmenting marriage to Jordan. Cherry resolves this piece to some extent by the end of the story, but not in the manner the reader would imagine. Guy returns home after a particularly trying day at the bookstore to find his wife dancing in their living room as Dooley looks on. As he walks in, Guy tells Jordan he has something to tell her. Dooley decides it's time to leave while Jordan continues to dance, telling Guy "Dance with me" (29). As Guy moves toward Jordan, the discordance of the various motifs begins to fade as this couple, for this moment, dance to the same harmonious strains. Repetitiously, Cherry has the piece end with Guy putting his arm around his wife and thinking, "The man and the woman beginning to dance, moving toward each other, moving away," bringing the story to a resolution while leaving the fragments of their lives behind, if only for one brief harmonious moment. Cherry, however, leaves the reader with the understanding that all is not resolved for this couple, and that if their relationship is to survive, they must hear a new melody and create an intertwining duet whose inherent beauty lies in the dependence of each part on the other. In this modernized, mechanized, super-sized world, Guy and Jordan face the isolationism created by an ever-evolving society where more, rather than less, is more.
In "Not the Phil Donahue Show," Cherry once again uses a fragmented idea, a motif connecting two individuals in a score who would not typically be brought together. Shelly, a nurse, has recently been told by her daughter Isabel that she is a lesbian, "This is not the Phil Donahue show," Shelly thinks in the opening lines of the story. "This is my life" (41). Devastated by the news, Shelly tries to resolve the conflict she feels over Isabel's revelation. At work the following day, Shelly gloves her hands and goes to Reed's room. Reed, a gay man, is dying from AIDS. Shelly, still feeling the discord over who she thought her daughter was and who her daughter truly is, cannot help but ask Reed if he is sorry he is gay. Before Reed can answer, a doctor and several interns enter the room. One of the interns asks Reed how he feels, to which Reed responds "Okay" (50). The young female doctor, not satisfied with Reed's response, leans over him "so close it is as if he has no boundaries at all, lean(s) into his face" and says, "[W]e know you have feelings you want to talk about. It's natural. If you like, we can ask a staff psychiatrist to stop in to see you" (50). Reed, overwhelmed by the lack of sensitivity in this woman, tearfully replies, "Why are you interrogating me about my feelings like this? This is not the Phil Donahue show! This is my life!" (51). At that precise moment, Shelly cannot believe what she has heard, and loses track of "which one of us is me" (51). Cherry intersects and overlaps the lives of Shelly and Reed in a way unimaginable to either of them just the day before. Like an unexpected chord the notes of which meld together with unanticipated sound that jolts the listener, Cherry masterfully weaves this surprising revelation into the layers of the story. It is also in this piece, as well as in "Tell Her" that Cherry continues the methodic steady beat that first began with "The Prowler," for none of the characters involved in these stories can escape the final cadence.
Polyphony, or the layering of many voices, gives texture to musical pieces. It is this texture, this juxtaposition of many voices against one another, always there, always building in the background that truly gives life and musicality to Cherry's works.
In polyphony, each voice, or instrument, represents its own entity. And just as we think of these individual entities as layering into a whole, harmonious score, so too do the individual voices in Cherry's work layer from singular isolationism into a complete score. The protagonist Nina, a single mother to her adopted daughter Tavy, feeds the first layer in Cherry's collection as her character builds in complexity through each succeeding story. Upon meeting Nina in the first story, "The Prowler," the reader begins to understand the common rhythms that flow through, and from, Nina's life – rhythms that underscore the musical quality of Cherry's compilation. Having never been married, Nina nonetheless takes on the responsibility of raising her brother's daughter, Tavy. As Nina begins to sense the presence of the prowler, she prays "the fear she was feeling, the fear her dog was feeling, was not finding its own way upstairs into her daughter's dreams. She had wanted her daughter to know no fear" (1). An isolated moment in Nina's life, but a moment draped in the wishes of humanity – that at the prelude of life there is a clean slate, a score yet to be scribed on the individual's sheet, a score that can be without flaw, flowing freely from the creator in complete harmony with the world. A wish for a life unaffected by isolation and discord.
As Nina tries to protect Tavy from the fears to be found in the world, we find she, like each isolated individual, is unable to orchestrate the concert of life going on around them. The polyphony so crucial to music finds discord in the literary lives of Nina and Tavy. In the collection's title story, "The Society of Friends," Rajan, a man whom Nina hopes will fall in love with her and be a father to Tavy, becomes engaged and married to Lucy. Tavy, who loves Rajan like most four-year olds and would love the steady presence of a father-figure, finds discord in her own innocence as she is forced to come to terms with the fact that Rajan will not be coming to her house to play, or to eat, or to bring presents. Tavy's layering and Nina's layering are inextricably intertwined in the mother-daughter relationship, and no matter how much discord is present, they, like others in their small community, must struggle to find the ever-elusive harmony of life.
Nina and Tavy again deal with discord in "As it is in Heaven" when Nina's mother Eleanor (Ellie) becomes ill and Nina and Tavy fly to England to be with her during her last few months of life. Isolated and lonely since the death of her husband, Eleanor longs for the layers of discord and harmony found in the life she and her husband, who both happened to be violinists, spent together. The longest and most complex of Cherry's stories in The Society of Friends, the narrative describes Nina, Tavy and Eleanor creating multigenerational layers full of the lasting notes of discord and harmony. Moving in and out of balance with one another, Nina and her mother struggles with Nina's decision to adopt Tavy. Nina reflects, "My mother had never liked children. Sometimes she would act as if she did, for the sake of her reputation among neighbors or coworkers . . . but she would tell her own children, speaking about children-in-general, ÔThey're more trouble than they're worth. After all, what are they going to be when they grow up? People!' Her contempt for children was minor compared with her contempt for adults, to which it was teleologically related"(65). With regard to her own grandchild, Tavy, Eleanor notes, "'She's a cute kid,' my mother said, but then she couldn't keep from adding, Ôas kids go.' She closed her eyes again. I stood there a moment, looking at her – my mother, a creature of such complexity that it had taken me years even to begin to figure out how to untangle my self from hers . . . I wished she would consent to understand this. I wanted her to believe, with me, that in adopting Tavy I had not been betraying her or her ideals, that I was merely being true to myself" (66). Tavy also experiences moments of discord with her grandmother. Not understanding her grandmother's condition at all, Tavy innocently asks, "Are you going to die?" whereupon her grandmother responds that Tavy must be a necrophiliac (65). Cherry layers the contrasting generational lives into one coherent story, but it is the with the following lines that Cherry demarcates the fact that, while even the lives of family members are intertwined in one story or score, each member has a part to play uniquely his or her own. In a conversation with her departed father, Nina notes, "'There are solo sonatas,' I said. ÔThere are records with one part missing. When Mother was busy, you used to practice by yourself. I stayed in my room, listening. In the hallway, listening. For years. In the end, you said, every member of a string quartet is responsible for himself. Or herself. Nobody can play your part for you'" (95).
The layering of the lives of Nina, Eleanor and Tavy continues throughout the story with the rise and fall of feelings of insecurity and inadequacy, of understanding and, in some fashion, reconciliation, until the evening Eleanor dies. "As It Is In Heaven" crescendos to its resolution when Nina relates how her mother and father are joined once again in a duet when Eleanor leaves, carried in the arms of her husband, "over the threshold of this world into the next" (98). The score is not complete, however, with Eleanor's death. It is but another layer intertwined in the greater score of humanity.
With Eleanor's death there is also the echo of an earlier death in the book. In The Prowler, Nina's neighbor, Sophie, has recently lost her husband and longs for his return. When the phone anonymously rings late one night, Sophie wonders if it is not Leland trying in some way to contact her because he misses her, too. Cherry lays this initial foundation of death and loss in the first story, then expands upon it through Eleanor and Eleanor's subsequent death. In this short story Nina also takes out a carving knife when she believes there is an actual physical prowler outside her home. She thinks to herself that the knife "could carve a roast, or a man" (1). Sophie echoes this sentiment when, pondering the death of her husband, Leland, reveals that it was "(a)s if her heart had been cut out, she had felt as if her heart had been cut out with a carving knife" (4). The motif of the knife is the literary musical thread that is essential to adding yet another structured layer to Cherry's work. Literary overlapping of common human experiences is ever present in her work, adding structure and universality to the stories' literary score.
There is the glimmer of hope in The Society of Friends, a reprieve from the isolationism and discord felt among the characters, a layering of the old and the new weaving in and out of life like the players of Shakespeare's The Seven Ages of Man: "All the world's a stage/and all the men and women merely players/they have their entrances and their exits/and each man in his time plays his part/his act being seven ages." In "Love in the Middle Ages," Nina finally finds love while at the same time coming to a resolution about her sexual molestation at the hands of her brother when she was a child. The recollection of this abuse, layered in italicized writing inserted between passages of the current story, allows Nina to come to terms with the old stanzas of her life while becoming freed to embrace the new.
Nina's love, Palmer, another professor at the University, happens to meet Nina one day at a parade in the town square in a story aptly named – in the context of Nina's middle-aged life – "Your Chances of Getting Married." For Palmer, it is love at first sight. For Nina, more cautious after a lifetime of scars and scores, Palmer is a layer of hope for a new love, for a new beginning, even in the middle ages of life. Although Tavy does not like Palmer at first and wishes for the return of Rajan, even she begins to accept this change in the tempo of their lives, the hope for a different future full of unsung melodies.
As symphonies are composed of many different movements, each a complete work in and of itself and able to stand alone, so too are Cherry's stories in "The Society of Friends." Beethoven's "Ode to Joy," the final piece of his 9th Symphony and arguably the most recognizable piece from this symphony, can, and often does, stand completely alone. Generally, symphonies have at least four movements marked by a contrast in style and tempo among the movements. Cherry's collection, like a symphony, contains movements, or stories, that contrast in style and tempo, able to stand alone while also serving as smaller parts of a larger musically literate whole.
In the short story, "Chores," the protagonist Conrad is still reeling from the loss of his wife and son in a car accident. Conrad laments their deaths, and at one point even thinks "if they had been walking not driving; the freezing rain turned the Subaru into a bobsled," maybe they would still be alive (58). His life, one continual discord after his loss, revolves around work and trying to keep his home in the manner his wife did. He is constantly amazed at the amount of work to be done; all the things his wife did that he took for granted without even realizing it. It is during this time of struggle that he places an ad in the local paper for someone to shovel snow from his driveway and sidewalk during the winter months. Expecting a young man to answer the ad, Conrad is somewhat taken aback when Milena, a young Czechoslovakian graduate student, shows up at his doorstep to apply for the job. Not wanting to be sexist, and sensing the need of this young graduate student to have a paying job, Conrad hires her. Later, as the young girl comes and shovels snow, Conrad looks out the window feeling somewhat guilty that she is removing the snow rather than him. Later, Milena brings her mother to help her, telling a somewhat distressed Conrad that "It is good for her health" (59). Conrad looks on as Milena and her mother work "in concert, a New World symphony" (59). It is in this story that Cherry brings the full orchestration of a symphony to bear. While Conrad so painfully feels the loss of his family and the resulting discord in his life as that which is familiar and dear to him is forever lost, we hear the building strains of another part of the orchestra, that of Milena and her mother, both most likely yearning for their homeland while doing chores in this strange new landscape, the new strains of a different symphonic America. "Chores" represents the musical weavings of the landscape of modern day America, where the prowler continually lurks. In "Chores," as in "The Prowler" and "As it is in Heaven," time marches on, drumming the symphonic pulse of life.
Cherry brings The Society of Friends to a close with "Block Party," a story that revolves around the friends in this collective work gathering at the end of the day for a neighborhood social occasion. In the midst of the event, Nina is introduced to Hugo Gutsmer, a freelancing ethicist. Upon hearing what Gutsmer does for a living, Nina begins a mental journey involving ethical questions she has about any number of situations in life such as who should receive a heart transplant? an older man with a family or a young man with AIDs who hopes to have a family?; is it right to steal bread for your seven starving children or, if your enemy came to your door and was starving, would it be okay to steal for your enemy? As Cherry weaves Nina's thoughts in and out of the general conversation of the group, she slowly builds the story until Nina is faced with an ethical dilemma of her own: her dog, who has been with her longer than Tavy or her husband Palmer, has two tumors, is in pain and, as the doctors say, should be put to sleep. Nina struggles with the thought of letting him go, of letting this particular movement in the symphony of her life close, but in the end knows the only ethical thing for her to do is to let him go. The cadence has arrived, the final beat of the prowler has been played. When Nina arrives home without the dog, Tavy immediately realizes what has happened, kicks her mother, and runs to her room. Exhausted, Nina allows Palmer to help her undress and get her into the bed. As the night waxes on, a still young Tavy enters the bedroom and tells Nina she is thirsty. Nina, however, is too deep in sleep to hear. Tavy crawls into bed in between her mother and father, lying straight as a corpse, looking up at the ceiling or where she believes the ceiling to be in the darkness of the room. And she begins to have the thoughts Nina so feared she would have with the steady methodical entrance of the prowler into lived experience. She could not orchestrate the musicial score of Tavy's life and keep her safe from the awareness of the prowler. Tavy "feels the weight of her father on one side of her and the weight of her mother on the other side of her, and the warmth of both of them, and she thinks they need her. They need her to stay here between them. There was no telling who might enter a house when it was so dark you couldn't even be sure the walls and ceiling were there. A monster. A robber. Tavy feels the fearful burden of her task" (191). Tavy's fear continues to grow, continues to drum inside her as she worries that her mother is so deep in sleep that she will be unable to wake her in an emergency. For after all, "There could be a tornado. There could be a big flood. There could be an earthquake. Parents don't always know everything that can happen. There could be someone, or something, out there, in the dark, waiting" (192). One never knows when the final cadence will be played, when the prowler will beat his last.
Often 20th century modern music is atonal; in western music, we listen for a resolution after periods of dissonance – necessary tension within a musical piece – and usually this tension eventually resolves. Our ears yearn for this resolution, for a release from the tension built up in the music created by the dissonance. Much like catharsis in literature, the resolution of music allows us to breathe. Without a tonal center, it's hard to know when the music resolves. Unlike atonal modern music, Cherry's work, The Society of Friends, has a tonal center, the unifying force that shapes the movements into a cohesive larger work. This unifying tonality allows the melodic building up of tempo, tension, and dissonance that resolve themselves through the mini-cathartic moments in her stories.
With the ever-present steady beat of the prowler, the building of motifs, the layering of lives, and the symphonic measures and cadences, the characters' voices and lives seem to, in some small way, give measure to larger universal feelings of isolation and discord, of harmony and hope. Cherry interweaves and overlaps the lives of the members of this small community, building at last a singular representation of what the community of our world has become: a band of loosely joined acquaintances looking for synchronicity through the journey of life until the prowler plays the final beat.
Works Cited:
Cherry, Kelly. Personal interview. 10 June 2007.
Cherry, Kelly. The Society of Friends. University of Missouri Press: Columbia, 1999.
Watson, Alice. Personal interview. 21 and 22 June 2007.
