Debriefing A Slipping-Down Life

There is a film theory that no matter what is shown on the big screen, the very quality of projecting the images and the very fact that it is on the big screen add an element of glamour/legitimacy to the characters and actions onscreen. Applying this theory to the film version of Trainspotting, despite the pathetic lives and unfortunate deaths of some of the characters, and despite Renton's positive message to "Choose life" over heroin, the film is nevertheless befuddled because the characters all look kind of cool, relatively attractive, and just plain more appealing than the average heroin addict laying in a gutter or living with his parents.

I have a similar theory about fictional characters in books. They may be messed up, villanous, and miserable but I often romanticize them, though if I lived through the same predicaments I would feel anything but romantic. Well, Anne Tyler creates fictional characters that sidestep any notion of romanticism I had for them. And I love that. She is steering this ship. Her characters tend to make choices I generally would not agree with, but in addition to my romantic notions, they also sidestep my judgment. They are people working with what they've got, guided by their insticts and desires.

A Slipping-Down Life by Anne Tyler is by no means a new book. I chose the book off the library shelf because I liked the other books by Anne Tyler I have read (also because it is fairly short and would fit in nicely to the other 4 books I am still juggling). Evie, an overweight, unpopular teenager, falls for a singer/guitarist she hears on the radio one night and goes to see him perform at his weekly gig. Why Drumstrings Casey appeals to Evie is a mystery, to everyone including Drumstrings it seems. But the otherwise unattractive Evie forcefully draws his attention, and they form a strange connection that is quite begrudging and guilty on his part.

What motivates Evie to make repeated bad decisions and compromise her future for a marginally talented man with a less than sparkling personality? Her relationship with her father is our clue. He cares for Evie, but does not know how to be a mother too. Furthermore, Evie suspects he blames her for her mother's death (her mother "had been the last woman in Pulqua County to die of childbed fever"). But in the end, her father seems to help her grow up a little, to become an independent woman who can start the process of adulthood, which is nothing more than making painfully correct decisions all the time.

Finally, I love the hyphen in the title. Hooray for freedom of grammar! Sure, America will defend freedom of expression, but there seems to be a recently clamorous group of people who speak the English language and want to tell everyone else how horrifying it is that they are using it wrong. Some of these people come from England. To be fair, the clamoring is tempered by a concession to the evolving quality of the language. In my opinion, there is no longer a proper English in the United States, if there ever was. I believe it is important to get the "proper" basics of grammar in school, but then go from there, inventing and riffing on a language that, if strong and sensible enough, will not die.