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Madame Fate
by Marcia Douglas Firrar, Straus, & Giroux Just the other day, my friend Tertullian was saying that woman is a temple built over a sewer. Now, I won't say to all the men who want to feel good about themselves that they might run out and buy a copy of Marcia Douglas's Madame Fate. And I certainly won't tell how should they stand on it, well-voila! -- then they'd be hovering over refuse too! Everyone deserves to feel nice sometimes.... I should have known. In the acknowledgements, our author thanks the state university at Binghampton. This is strange, as there is no state university at Binghampton, NY. There's a Binghamton; and you are left to decide for yourself if a frantic typesetter somewhere is trying to tell you something ("Stop! Turn back!" most likely) or if the writer just isn't quite sure where she went to school. The table of contents announces four parts, and these fall on page 00 to 000. Right there you can tell we're in for a very long, very, very lyrical ride. And I, who have suffered awfully for you, am warning you now: There is very little more lyrical on this earth. Note well that this is before any actual "book" has started-page minus one and counting, if you will. To be fair, my copy is an uncorrected proof (my boss being cheap, cheap, cheap). But how much better could it get? How, pray tell, might they "correct" it (and no fair chanting: "Burn it! Burn it!")? How, for instance, does one fix the hit-you-over-the-head-with-a-ton-of-bricks opening where the author craftily teaches us that God is a woman? In the beginning, there was laughter. God was lying down at the bottom of the sea, taking an afternoon nap-her plaits set in motion by the rhythm of warm water, seaweed brushing against her skin. She was minding her own business as God often does.... God turns out to be really petulant. She's upset about all the nastiness that the discovery of the New World and-what we used to call, in those old, cold, uneducated days-progress are going to cause. If only we were still feudalistic and eating dirt. Oh, if only.... To tell the truth, I'd considered reading no further, chucking the whole thing and having a nice quiet evening, just Tom Collins and me. And yet-for you, damn it-I slogged on. ‘Twas a fairly easy read: most of the later chapters run less than a page (so don't believe you're getting no 272 pages for your 24 bucks, nosiree!). As a technique, this is most effective: Things fall apart, you know. The language and structure fall apart, the characters fall apart. Under all that lyricism-and phrases like "heart-ears," "spirit-sorrow," and "nuff-nuff" ain't helping no one's case, Missy-maybe the author wants to say that everyone's just fucked. If that's the case, I have got to have a lot of respect for MF, but as it is, I can't tell-and so, naturally, I assume the worst. I mean, what would you make of women who talk to fruit? Such is the main action of the novel-when they're not burying umbilical cords, that is. And just when you want to say, "I identify with that plucky little girl," well, suddenly there's a poem about flowers or womyn or something. MF is told in what we used to call the epistolary form-that's letters, kids-or sometimes the characters are, like, talking to you. ‘S hard to tell. Anyway, you can (if ya like) trace their lives in Jamaica (which used to be called, we learn to no point, "Xamaica"). Apparently, everyone on the island does talk like they're in Cool Runnings. A fantastic ethnological study, that. But: Muriel then moves to New York and hates it. She writes to her daughter, Gracie, left behind on the island. Gracie wants to spit her sorrow out-no, that's Bella. Bella's a slave who turns into a lizard;-- or does her skin burn off? I know that Ida's insane; but of course she got that way because spirits talk to her out of a cornhusk. No; that's not quite right either. Andrea meets Muriel in NY. She says they went to school together, but, naturally, she had to make that up because she sold her baby to the preacher's wife. Someone is looking for her mother, and someone else has periwinkles growing out of her quim (it's right there on page 000, so don't start!). Frankly, they all turn pretty nutsy, and I of the "whom the gods would destroy, they first drive mad" school cannot find any real edification in the musings of the insane. Like children, they might look nice on TV, but once you've got one of your own.... There are only three men in Jamaica, which is just as well as men are awful anyway. Why, when l'il Gracie looks around for some Madame Fate (it's a flower. I know! I know!) she-well, what ordinarily happens to plucky little girls when they go picking flowers alone? Much of the time, MF is a study in what we call "context clues." While I'm okay with "good-good" and "plenty-plenty," "facety" goes right past me, and "a small winjie voice" causes my head to pivot aimlessly. As for swollen eye-bags "big as nutmegs," well, I'm out to sea, hemming God's skirts with that one. Then occasionally, we'll read "any- and everybody." That hyphen there, that's pretty sophisticated punctuation, that: Why, this writer, she does know what she's doing. She's just trying to trick us, that's all! Did I mention the different fonts? Did I mention how I once slit my wrist because of different fonts? Anyhow, you wanna read this? You go ahead; don't listen to me. ‘Course, listening makes your ears grow long. Right down to the ground...! I read about a woman whose breasts sagged so much she flung them over her shoulder. Townspeople laughed and jeered, but she knew, oh, she knew.... I've read a lot about odd girly things lately, somewhere.... But I don't know. I just don't know. -Dan DiLandro |
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