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The Disloyalty of Elizabeth Hay:Reading the Autobiographies

2004; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 35; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

1920-1222

John Scheckter,

Irish and British Studies

Midway through Small Change, her book about arriving at middle distance in middle age (186), Elizabeth Hay describes herself watching a movie. At a party, she meets an old friend who recalls The Browning Version, a 1951 British school drama about an unpopular master who uses his retirement speech apologize for wasting his life. (1) Other friends have told Hay that Leonard was once in love with her, here, seated next her, he recites part of the dialogue and is undone (119). Several months later--spontaneity has little value in Hay's world--both the layering of her memory the hard edge of her current voice are clear as she watches the film, recounts the plot, puts herself bed with warm milk a sleeping pill. She awakens repelled by Leonard's tears. The teacher is an abject figure, be sure, but both the screenplay Leonard have used his admission of wasted opportunity for the cheaper sake of pity: the schoolboys applaud the speech, reinforcing ideals of fair play forgiveness, while Leonard tries force his memory of their relationship over Hay's own, scripting the past around himself. These dramatists, she says, how they set us (120). Wary as she is of set-ups, the dramatic does not figure highly in Hay's autobiography, which occupies four volumes previous her outright fiction: Crossing the Snow Line (1989), The Only Snow in Havana (1992), Captivity Tales: Canadians in New York (1993), Small Change (1997). The works are variously labeled poetic history, documentary novel, or some blending that reflects a distaste for categorization suggests a high level of shaping. They are not long on sustained plot, certainly not on demonstration; rather, they seem resist the linear configuration of life story offered by the classic locations of autobiography. There are few references her childhood in Ontario, her early career in radio, or the births of her two children. While such events offer major plot structures writers, Hay uses them as points of reference, not be relied upon for continuity or meaning in themselves; this foremost disloyalty, a resistance conventional sites of importance, necessitates the focal stylistic developments that follow. From the outset, she arrives with fully adult scales of value responsibility: her self-characterizations favor analysis over event slow metaphorical development over secure recognition. Crossing the Snow Line begins with a loss. Hay's marriage is collapsing, she sends their dog a new home: We shed Stan because we shed each other (11). The dog's long coat is linked the fur trade thus Canadian historical development (Canada was founded on the desire for warmth [11]) then Hay's identity as a Canadian (one day, after picking wild blackberries, I plunged my hands into his fur, soft against all the scratches [11]). The cross-linkage of public personal, set up in an experience that very rapidly develops into metonymy, establishes both a strategic an emotional range that will handle a large part of Hay's recollection. We shed Stan because we shed each other. How do we shed missing? (11). She will answer the question in part by suggesting a plenitude in which meaning is generated by perceived connection among disparate elements. Stan is named for the jazz musician Stan Getz, the shiny metal of a saxoph one becomes the chrome trim of the car that nearly kills the squirrel-chasing dog (CSL Crossing 22): event becomes technique, the writerly connection apparent within the act of naming. In 1954 Stan Getz was arrested in Seattle for holding up a drugstore. That goes into the screech of his saxophone (CSL Crossing 23), that, in turn, goes into the dog owner's always listening for the screech of brakes. Much later, in New York, Hay will broaden the connection cope with a friend's miscarriage after heavy activity: to want something so badly then almost deliberately give it up. …