|
Elizabeth McCracken's new novel, NIAGARA FALLS ALL OVER AGAIN, stars Mike Sharp,
straight man of the comedy duo Carter and Sharp --- vaudevillians, movie stars, radio and
television personalities, best friends. As Sharp recounts a lifetime of experiences,
nearly all of which are refracted through the prism of his relationship with fat funny man
Rocky Carter, he takes the reader through the history of comedic entertainment in the 20th
century. But Sharp's story is essentially about tragedy, not comedy. Although Carter and
Sharp are enormously successful, Sharp's reminiscences reveal how a lifetime of
disappointments, large and small, can alienate a person from those he most loves.
McCracken has given her narrator a memorable voice, equal parts lighthearted and
melancholy, which he employs to explore the rise and fall of Carter and Sharp, both as a
team and as individuals.
Mike Sharp, nee Mose Sharp --- a Jewish kid growing up with six sisters in Valley
Junction, Iowa, in the early part of the 20th century --- didn't originally have a voice
at all. In fact, the first version of what would become NIAGARA FALLS ALL OVER AGAIN was
told in the third person and didn't involve a comedy team. That all changed, McCracken
said, when she "got really interested in one particular character."
A comment made by a relative, while McCracken was looking through old family photographs,
recreated that character and, ultimately, the book itself.
"I actually have a Great Uncle Mose," McCracken said, "and I was looking at
old photographs of him when one of my relatives said, 'Poor Uncle Mose. If he'd been born
into a different family, he'd have gone into vaudeville and been a comedian.'"
Originally, McCracken thought she had just been given an idea for the book to follow the
one she was working on, but eventually she mined the 200 pages she had already written for
material she could use in her novel about a straight man and his partner.
"If you'd asked me a week before I made the decision, I'd have said there was no way,
that it was too hard (to rewrite the book)," McCracken said. "But at the time I
made the decision it seemed effortless and the solution to the book, so I tried to write
as quickly as humanly possible."
Along the way, she spent hours watching and listening to comedy teams like Abbott and
Costello to get a feel for the material she would eventually write for Carter and Sharp.
"It was sort of great," she said of her research. "It was one of the things
that got me energized about the book."
That's not to say, however, that many of Carter and Sharp's "famous" routines
made it into the finished novel.
"There used to be a lot more comedy routines in the book," McCracken explained.
"People who read the drafts told me they weren't very funny, and I would say, 'Yeah,
but that's sort of the point,' and they would reply, 'Well, you displayed that
admirably.'"
NIAGARA FALLS ALL OVER AGAIN is more concerned with relationships than with script
transcription. It is in some ways reminiscent of McCracken's acclaimed first novel, 1996's
THE GIANT'S HOUSE. As McCracken put it, both novels are "mismatched love stories, as
are several of the stories in my short story collection (1993's HERE'S YOUR HAT WHAT'S
YOUR HURRY)." In THE GIANT'S HOUSE, the narrator, librarian Peggy Cort, falls in love
with a young man whose large size confines him within increasingly small boundaries.
McCracken is aware that both her novels are built around unusual relationships. "In
both books the quieter member of the couple tells the story of his or her life with the
larger–than–life character," she explained.
Although Mike Sharp manages to keep one surprise for his readers to discover late in the
book, foreshadowing is a key element in his storytelling. The tragedies that befall him
are all clearly revealed prior to their chronological place in the tale. Of those
calamities, only the first --- the death of his beloved sister and first
"partner," Hattie, who falls from the roof of the family home --- is
particularly unusual in its details. But McCracken's decision to reveal them before they
are fully explored is what gives her, via Sharp, the opportunity to examine them in moving
and richly textured language. Rather than focusing on surprising the reader with the
twists and turns of his life, McCracken's narrator is able to unlock the hidden details
and emotions of each experience:
"At the sound of my voice," Sharp writes, recalling his sister's accident,
"she turned, then wobbled. For a minute I thought her clumsiness was a joke. She
wheeled her arms in the air. In her white dress against the gray sky, she looked like a
movie, dappled and imprecise, clearly an actual person but not really moving like
one."
Occasionally, McCracken's characters intone phrases that seem a bit too practiced.
Consider this exchange between Sharp and his wife's brother:
"Didn't they listen to the show?" They always listened to the show.
"No," he said. "They weren't in the mood for comedy."
"Me neither. Sometimes you have to force yourself."
"Forced laughter," said Joseph, "is no kind of laughter at all."
With Sharp telling the story, however, it's easy to forgive --- even relish --- these pat
responses. After all, the man is a lifelong storyteller unlikely to be adverse to tweaking
the details of a tale to improve its telling.
It is difficult to imagine this story being told any better than McCracken tells it.
NIAGARA FALLS ALL OVER AGAIN reminds us that the relationships that bring us the most joy
and those that bring us the most pain are often one and the same.
--- Reviewed by Rob Cline (RJBCline@aol.com)
© Copyright 1996-2010, Bookreporter.com. All rights reserved.
|
