Outside Reading 2

Annotations on Hubert Butler’s “Aunt Harriet”

“It is a very brief story but nothing at all if I do not convey the closeness I felt to that body in the box.  Love?  Affection?  Admiration?” (394).

           

This passage intrigued me because Butler refers to his aunt as a “body” dead in a coffin, yet he still expresses such grand emotions toward her.  I feel that this explains the disconnect one often feels when mourning death and seeing their dead loved one in a coffin.  The experience is unexpected and confusing.  Butler loves and admires his aunt, but can’t see past the grotesquness of the funeral traditions.

“I have left Aunt Harriet in her coffin a long way behind, but I am thinking of the memories she took with her; they were all unimportant but the past is a mosaic of tiny pieces, a fragment of a larger picture…” (396).

Here, Butler takes a step back from his previous observation to take in the larger picture and remember his aunt as a person and a loved one, rather than simply a body in a box.  He also tries to relate to her personally, by speculating on the pieces of her life she took with her in her death.

“I spent the rest of the night wrestling with this problem even after the tapping had stopped.  What worried me was the thought that in some supreme effort of faith she had half-conquered death, which like a wave in an ebbing tide had left her stranded half-alive on the foreshore” (400).

Here, Butler is voicing his concerns and fears, subtly twining in the irrational fears that death and loss can conjure.  I thought this section was beautifully written, while not being over done.

“Aunt Harriet was self-effacing and considerate.  She would sooner have gone through the ordeal of death a second time than be resurrected in a blaze of newspaper publicity” (400-401).

Butler is able to silence his fears because he remembers the personality and strength of his aunt.  This is another instance in the piece where Butler is able to disconnect / relate death from / to the person who passed.  I like the complexity and confusion in that; it relates to the experience of mourning well.

“Students come there to learn about the flora and fauna of the Nore valley.  The cows there produce special cheeses and the pigs special sausages.  It is still a place where it is easier to believe in happiness than in pain” (402).

The closing of the piece finally explains why the setting was so important for Butler to continually describe.  In it, he can remember his aunt and find “special” memories that are “easier to believe in” than pain.

Outside Reading 1.

Luc Sante’s “The Unknown Soldier” is probably one of the best examples of the “creative” in creative nonfiction.  This is a piece that teeters on the border of fiction and nonfiction, as it tells the story of many lives from Sante’s perspective.  The aim of the piece is to express a universality, a common humanity in death and how or if we remain once we die.  Certainly, as one of the human race, Sante has a voice in that, but only one voice.  And only a speculating one.  He is not dead, has never died, but his experience as a human who has observed and likely mourned death grants him a voice in the discussion.  Though the piece may be quite experimental and unique in its composition, it still expresses Sante’s emotions and perspective, therefore it is still nonfiction.  The subject matter is grim and dark, but also calls upon a common experience of the human life and so is accessible by many readers.  Death, sadness, and grieving, are common themes for literature of all kinds, nonfiction included.

Stuart Dybek touches on the themes of death and common suffering in his piece, “Confession.”  This piece is more recognizable as nonfiction.  It is told in the first person point of view and details a specific instance from Dybek’s life.  We understand that this is a personal story, an essay of an event that happened to the author, yet the importance of the piece is not the author’s emotions, but the emotions experienced by a secondary character.  Confessing to his priest all of his trivial sins, Dybek gives an offhand reference of suicide.  Making jokes of his narcoleptic priest and seemingly going through the motions of an outdated tradition, the tone is quiet light hearted.  But with the last line of the piece, “Go in peace, my son, I’m suffering enough today for the both of us,” we see the pain and suffering beyond the coughs of Father Boguslaw.  Again, we are confronted with an author discussing the emotions of others in order to tap into the common humanity in us all, proving creative nonfiction does not have to be limited to the experiences of the author.

Sebastian Matthews “Kind of Blue” is another piece that explores the pain of someone else.  Matthews writes of his father, a man who cheated on and possibly left his mother, attempting to understand the older man’s motivations.  By distancing himself from his own opinions and experience Matthews can try to really understand the feelings his father had and perhaps have a different outlook on a personal experience.  Perhaps he is also hoping he can feel differently about his relationship with his father after his writing.  The topic is still Matthews’, he’s just exploring it from a different, more creative angle.

These three essays show how creative nonfiction doesn’t just have to be a regurgitation of facts.  These authors explore events in their lives or emotions they feel the need to express in unique and creative ways, expanding the possibilities of a nonfiction piece.