In the second part of Happyland there is an incredible scene that J. Robert Lennon sets up by introducing the Mayor of Equinox. Archie Olds is the proud owner of an apple orchard in town and started the enterprise of selling apples by setting them out on the side of the road near his home and selling them on the honor system. To his surprise, people paid for them and left him money. Lennon takes us through a town meeting and we get to see Happy Masters discuss aloud her hopes at capturing the town’s Americanness and she is on stage to defend her decision to buy up the town. But this little slice of Main Street USA is delivered with such honest poise, a kind of miraculous ease and simplicity, it’s a marvel to read. In one swoop Lennon introduces a man, shows his salt of the earth qualities and then injects Happy Masters into the conversation which is where things go slightly sour. She is corrupt to the core, and no one in charge really cares.
Turns out Archie and the librarian, Ruth, are comfortable with each other between the sheets and this could be a narrative thread which will have ramifications down the road. At the same time Janet Ping, the wide eyed college girl who is working for Happy is shown to be more like a bunny rabbit in the wolf’s den then an actual woman on the way to adulthood. She’s lived in the world of Happy Masters since she was a child, collecting her dolls and reading her books, she is as much a creation of Happy Masters as the dolls Happy makes. Happy sees this and utilizes it. But Happy also starts to pit the towns people against themselves, a mysterious man named Kevin Russell enters the picture, via Dave Dryer’s local bar the Goodbye Goose, a bar that Happy has promised she will eventually own, destroy and remake, despite what Dave Dryer has to say. The theory rings true, “everyone has a price.”
Kevin is enlisted for the paltry sum of $100 to fix Happy’s boat, and then she hires him to do her dirty work. There is a mysterious disaster at the library, described in panoramic detail by Lennon, right down to the building inspector, (a slivering character, but effective), it’s very simple, but it’s wonderful how mind boggling easy Lennon makes this look. Meanwhile Ruth likens the people of Equinox to the frog in a bowl of boiling water science project that all students are familiar with. Happy has turned up the heat on the citizens of Equinox and everyone is too stupid to jump out of the problem that’s surrounding them. Happy starts to appeal to the pillars of the community through donations and then into the margins of the colleges lesbian elite, which she mysteriously endows with a lump sum of cash which helps them achieve a disruptive goal.
Reeve Tennyson arrives…again, and it’s a lush little section. He’s likeable in the sense that he’s too dim witted and lazy to be unlikeable. Somewhere in his past he ran afoul of a race issue and now it’s being used against him, (this little seed was planted in chapter I) and he can’t do anything about the college structure collapsing, even though he’s trying, it’s like shoveling water. The lesbian angle works him into a tizzy and before you know it we’ve got nearly a half dozen story lines in play. The chapter stretches back to Dave’s bar and the implosion Janet Ping brings with her when she tries to connect emotionally with anyone around her. Janet is even courted by Happy’s husband in an earlier scene and she is deluded enough that she thinks this man who is old enough to be her grandfather actually likes her. Happy and her husband are using Janet, in equally secretive ways. Happy is slowly turning Equinox into Happyland. With the trustees on her side, money in her pocket, a faithful henchmen and idolizing teenager in her court, there is nothing that can stop Happy from achieving the physical reality of Americanness.
Jason Rice: Can you broaden the idea of Americanness? You describe it in general terms, but there seems to be a theme in this second chapter that essentially begs the question: “What is American?”
J. Robert Lennon: That’s one of those nebulous, impossible questions people love asking writers! I think the notion of Americanness is far too broad to define, and complicated by the fact that self-invention is built into the concept. It can be anything an American says it is. And on the flip side, it can also be anything anybody else says it is. Which perhaps is part of why we are simultaneously admired and reviled worldwide: we are the nation upon whom any idea can be reasonably projected.
JR: You’ve introduced a lot of characters in the first two chapters of this book. You say you like creating characters, and it’s clear you’ve got each of their essences down to a science but I wonder what it’s like to create characters in short moments, like you did in Pieces for the Left Hand. How do you work in such a small place and then grow it out Happyland?
J.R.L: Ultimately, if I had my way, I might only write characters who appear on the page for a single scene, and then disappear forever. I suppose I’m kind of a romantic–you know, the type of loser who can fall in love with a girl on the subway, get over it by the next stop, and find somebody else by the next one. The notion of evoking a person with a few short strokes–using the right details, not a lot of details–greatly appeals to me. In the novels, though, I usually start with someone rather flat, then build them up gradually, so that they can absorb some of the ideas I have as I work through the book. Eventually they take on a clearer shape.
JR: When you’re writing in this multi-character voice, a widely weaving narrative, how do you stay true to each character. Obviously, you’re speaking through them but how do you keep your voice out of the narrative?
J.R.L: I think my voice is in there at all times, at least in part. But really, it just comes from being interested in other people, in figuring them out, being delighted by their flaws. I truly enjoy submerging my embarrassingly large ego in the swamp that is other people–it is a relief to be someone else for a change.
JR: The town of Equinox is changing, slowly from old and worn down, to newly revitalized. What is it about America that fascinates you? Things change, people never do, as the saying goes, but do you see changes in your town where you live, and do you think that American of old, say from the 60′s and 70′s is better off for the changes that came our way despite our best efforts to keep everything as we fondly remember it?
J.R.L: No, I think things are better now, in most ways. The world’s wonders are more accessible, and life has more of an opportunity to be fascinating. Of course, as before, we generally squander these opportunities. One thing I do miss about the seventies was the relative lack of drive for personal improvement, wealth, etc…the notion of the American as greedy and cruelly ambitious hadn’t yet fully taken hold. It was OK to be a bit poor, OK to grow out your beard and take off your necktie. That’s the America I grew up in, and I found the eighties (and especially the 90′s and 2000′s) kind of dismayingly *directed*. I think we’re in for a new seventies though–at least I hope so, since the other, quite horrifying, possibility is a new thirties.
Look forward to more conversations with J. Robert Lennon in the coming weeks, and my reviews of Part III and IV of Happyland.
-JR
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