Jump to content

JASONMAUROP6

Members
  • Posts

    4
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by JASONMAUROP6

  1. Algonkian Assignments:

    First:

    Did Fran’s long-ago dead sister introduce him to miracles, or torture him out of her own terror?

    Second:

    Carol, 10-year-old Fran’s older sister, kept her impending death a secret from him.  But between March and December of 1972, between the time of her prognosis and the time of her death, she took Fran under her strange, painful tutelage. On their final “adventure” up to the peak of Maine’s Mount Katahdin, Carol leaves something hidden, telling Fran it is for him to find “later.”  Now, forty years later, Fran is torn between two visions of Carol—the deceiving, sadistic, “sick-in-the-head” Carol who lied to him, scarred him with chains of cigarette burns, drugged and tormented him out of her own sheer terror.  Or the Carol who introduced him to a world that everyone else seemed to ignore--a world of catastrophic awe, and terrible beauty whose presence only she seemed to see.  Fran is stuck in the gap between the facts he now knows about Carol, and the story from so long ago that he is just starting to remember.  Fran, reluctantly accompanied by his own sixteen-year-old delinquent son, re-ascends Mount Katahdin, to find the message Carol left behind, and determine which Carol is the real one. 

    Third:

    Fangs

    A Mountain I Will Show You

    Moriah

    Fourth:

    Comparables:

    Mostly Dead Things—Kristen Arnett. 

    Like Arnett’s Jessa Lynn, Fran is desperate to resuscitate his stalled life, and his relationships with his wife and son. The only way to do it is to look into and through the eyes of the dead.  Mostly Dead things too is a story about how a small shift in perspective can cause a life changing quake.  

    My Absolute Darling—Gabriel Tallent. 

    Tallent’s Turtle and Fran are both torn between two visions of the most important person in their lives--are they divine, or are they the worst kind of demons? Turtle’s hyper-alert young eyes reveal how beautiful and seductive pain can be. 

    Fifth:

    Between the facts a man knows about his dead sister, and the story he is starting to remember, a chasm yawns into which everything he loves might fall.

    Sixth:

    Inner—Fran poisons a joyous Fall day with his wife and nine-year-old son Noah by picking a fight at the recycling center.  There, his wife and son have found an unlikely pumpkin, growing on trash.  Their glee is met by Fran’s accelerating resentment that turns to rage.  Reflecting on it, years later, Fran begins to see that what angered him was the sight of pure, spontaneous glee, as he has long ago buried his own.  To reclaim it, he needs to face the shock and loss that is entombed with his own childhood glee.  

    Secondary—On his return to ascend Mount Katahdin, forty-five years after his sister’s death, Fran is forced to take along his delinquent sixteen-year-old son, Noah.  Fran dislikes what Noah has become--a boorish, hulking and angry brat—he is also ashamed of disliking him so much and hopes that somewhere beneath his contempt is something like love. But it is hard to find.  Fran tries to engage Noah in the story that has brought them here, as they make their way up the peak, and is rebuffed and ridiculed at every opportunity. 

    Fran--“I want to tell you something about your Aunt Carol.”

    Noah-- “Who the hell is that?”

    Fran—" You know about her. She died when I was ten.”

    Noah—“Then she’s not my aunt.”

    Every step up is friction that eventually ignites.

     

    Seventh:

    Much of this takes place on the dual ascents up Mount Katahdin—one in 1972 with ten-year-old Fran and his older sister, and one in 2011, with adult Fran and his sixteen-year-old son Noah. Both ascents occur when the rocky peak above tree line is technically closed for climbing because of fog and impending storms. But both times they sneak around ranger stations, and trail blockades, and climb anyway.  Katahdin can generate its own weather, spawn its own storms, strong enough for large hail on what would be a calm summer day at the base.  A mile high, the peak is stark and forbidding. Though neither ascent occurs along the famous Knife Edge Trail—an impossibly narrow trail across what looks like the back of a stegosaurus, where one misstep can have you fall hundreds of feet--in the fog, Fran must venture out to the Knife Edge to look for Noah.  Other locations: a dump in Greenfield Maine, where bears used to come feed in 1972, but has long been bulldozed over: a fast river along Vermont’s Long Trail, where Carol takes young Fran for a weekend, and teaches him to “swim;”  railroad tracks along the Connecticut marsh, where vultures feed on the flattened carcasses of raccoons and opossums,

     

     

×
×
  • Create New...