I am introducing a series to be featured in this blog: Summer Reads! This will feature a brief write-up on books I read this summer; including an overview of major themes, author criticisms, questions, and favorite quotes. In this process, I hope to think more critically about novels and integrate major themes between books.
A note of irony: A little strange that as soon as I graduate, and complete the period of my life where I am required to write about what I read, I voluntarily decide to write about the books I read for fun. Guess I'm a freak.
Summer Reads
The Monsters of Templeton
Lauren Groff
Currently in a stage of post-graduation limbo, I related to some themes in The Monsters of Templeton. Whimsical and at times outrageous, this story speaks of unexpected disruptions in life’s course. The protagonist returns to her small upstate NY town of Templeton when her education, relationship, and expectations about her future are all suddenly uprooted. At first, she is gripped by anxiety and paralyzing self-pity. Slowly, her frustrations thaw as she enjoys time with her mother, old high-school friends and delves into a study of her family’s and Templeton’s history.
Throughout the protagonist’s time in Templeton, author Lauren Groff explores the value of introspection during an unnerving transitional stage. Often, a look backward to one’s past can be more insightful and self-illuminating than a ponder about one’s present state and future.
Through her study of her family’s history, protagonist Wilhelmina Sunshine Upton’s (Willie’s) personal dramas are placed within the great relativity of generational history. In doing so, Groff nestles the protagonist’s dramas, dramas that appear catastrophic and life altering in the present, within the expansive horizon of histories. She demonstrates the repeated human ability to persevere and return to a path of success.
Human perseverance captured by The Running Buds “Even still, we run. We have not reached our average of 57.92 years without knowing that you run through it, and it hurts and you run through it some more, and if it hurts worse, you run through it even more, and when you finish, you will have broken through. In the end, when you are done and stretching, and your heartbeat slows and your sweat dries, if you’ve run through the hard part, you will remember no pain.” P. 147
This passage on page 131 captures it beautifully, the concept of everlasting humanity, relativity of your dramas in the grand scheme of things. During an emotional low-point, Willie tries to express how Templeton is static in her mind, that “if the ice caps melt and all the cities of the world are swallowed up, Templeton will be fine. Wed be able to make do. Plant vegetables. Bunker up, sit it out, whatever. But it doesn’t feel right anymore”
Peter retorts “you’re a romantic, you know. I never thought you’d be a romantic, always thought you’d be hard-boiled somehow. Listen everything changes, Willie, whether we want it to or not. I mean look,” he said, gesturing vaguely across the lake at the hills bristling with pines. “See that hill? Before this area was settled, that was all huge, old-growth hardwood. Maples, ash, oak. Not so many pines to speak of. A century later it was all hops, not a single tree. I mean at one point, he said warming to his subject, turning pink “There were passenger pigeons in the Northeast, these spectacular, gentle, black and white birds who’d flock in the millions, all at once. In a few years, they were completely exterminated. Now the only pigeons you’re going to see is one of those,” and he pointed to a mottled bird plucking at a crushed Styrofoam cup on the grass.” “you get what I mean?” he said
“Willie, all I’m saying is that worrying about it isn’t going to fix anything. The only thing we can do is keep on with our own small thing and try hard to be good and make life better, and know that if it all ends tomorrow that we were at least happy.” (131)
Peter’s viewpoint contrasts with how Groff presents Willie. Willie, raised under the go-get-em, you can do anything if you try attitude of Vi Upton, very much sees man the maker of his future. This is partially why her personal dramas become such life-crippling catastrophes, because she is suddenly not in control of her own direction, and her mistakes are responsible for unhinging her path to professional success. Peter presents a different viewpoint, one that is visually captured by the expansion and reduction of plant and animal species. In the larger picture of humanity, man’s decisions make little impact, it is only the conglomeration of many, many decisions over many years that changes the landscape, or build a town etc.
Which viewpoint do you thin Groff favors? Are human beings actors in forging a new path to success, or are their decisions minor in the larger swath of human history? (“Secretly, in our deepest of our deep hearts, we think it is the monster’s fault. As soon as it died, our lives spiraled down” p. 147) What viewpoint is preferable for approaching life; The small lens of one’s own immediate life history, or the larger lens of generational history?
While these core themes are strong and well crafted, the naivety of the author is apparent in character development. The beauty of subtlety is lost on Lauren Groff. In an effort to make strong, dynamic characters, Groff wavers in making her human characters as unrealistic for the reader as the resident ghosts and lake monsters of Templeton. The shock factor is overvalued, and characters are forced to fulfill their label entirely: the hippie mom, the outspoken, feisty protagonist, the tow-truck actually genius high school crush. All the characters in the protagonist life seem to have some outrageous life story, a fact that distinctively contradicts with the idea of small, quiet hometown.
Even the small hometown has an outrageous personal history filled with baseball fame, murder, and scandal. The mysticism and fantasy of this novel could have shone more brightly and beautifully against a backdrop of subtlety (show, don’t tell). But instead, the reader is confronted with stream after stream of improbable and exaggerated characters and actions. Little is left to the imagination of the reader to fill.
With that said, Lauren Groff is ingenious with metaphors. Certain passages and one-liners capture emotions and environments brilliantly; quite unique.
I love this description of Vi as she is convincing Clarissa to stop her “alter-nut” medicine and come to Templeton to rejuvenate. “I watched Vi as the sunshine crept across the ground, and spread up her thick legs, up her trunk up her face until she was glowing, golden. She seemed to expand in a way that good people do when they’re being great” (161)
And the closing paragraph, the conclusion to Willie’s time in Templeton, her recovery complete and outlook to the new future:
“But then the road uncoiled long and shaded before me, the good, glorious world in its perpetual rot, in its constant downswing, the whole world before me in its headlong, flaming fall, and I still didn’t know when the dark ground would rush up toward us. Just then, I couldn’t care. My town glimmered at my back. The asphalt hummed underneath. And the last sunlight sparking off the lake winked through the spinning trees.” (351)
I have a soft-spot for airplane environments, high in the air, far-removed and in some geographic transition; they often fertilize self-reflection or inspiration. In Willie’s case, it was excitement and rashness that spurred a moment of inspired I love this description:
“In the podlike bathroom, the engines droning on around us and the ranks of businessmen snoozing out beyond the door, I could have looked up to an expression on the last face I ever expected to see it on, and find myself beginning to fall, and heavily” p. 61
Some of my favorite sections were her description of the beautiful, angelic monster formerly resident of Lake Glimmerglass in Templeton. The novel begins with the great beast’s death. Templetonians feel an indescribable sadness, like a part of them has been lost forever. What exactly is the lake monster a metaphor of? Maybe that indiscernible space in one’s heart that a sense of ‘homeness’ can only fill. That elusive concept of belonging, partnered closely with the comfort of childhood memories.
Here is one of her strong visual descriptions of the monster:
“I saw clearly and in my mind’s eye, the monster ina cold cement warehouse, split open like a fruit. I saw cranes digging among the dead flesh, humans crawling on scaffolding around the corpse like Lilliputians across the body of the poor ship-wrecked Gulliver, the head bent back so the mouth flopped open and three rungs of shining black teeth bared to the ceiling. Offal extracted and studied and photographed, the creamy skin turning black at the wounds’ edges.
It was such a terrible image, in such tremendous contrast to the idea I’d held of the monster- the silky white of the beast swimming in the black depths of Lake Glimmerglass, the happiness of limb through water, the joy of the wondering eyes, the hands grasping for a fish-that I put down the journal, and I couldn’t keep my eyes from overspilling” (341)
And finally, the theme of renewal and rebirth that Groff leaves the reader with. With Willie driving away, returning to Stanford freshly washed of her mistakes, guilt, and broken heart, the tale of a new monsters born in the lake revives hope for the Running Buds and, unconsciously, all Templetonians.
“Big Tom’s meth head daughter swimming alone at three in the morning, sleepless in withdrawal, swears she went under the dark water once. She opened her eyes. She looked in the person-sized face of a small white monster, staring at her curiously and waving its fish tail. She says it was much like our mosters, our vast haul that morning in July, but miniature. The girl forgot to tread water, sank lower and lower, adnt he monster sank right along with her. The girl looked at the big, bulging belly. The dancer’s neck. The feet with articulated phalanges. The little monster opened its mouth with its inkblack teeth, and Big Tom’s girl swears it smiled. …
So. We ponder this as we run. We have a monster in the lake again, a baby, an offshoot of our old one.. I is ours, Templeton’s. We will keep it close. (354).
