So Long, See You Tomorrow

When I got home from school I did what I had always done, which was to read, curled up in the window seat in the library or lying flat on my back on the floor with my feet in a chair, in the darkest corner I could find. The house was full of places to read that fitted me like a glove, and I read the same books over and over. Children tend to derive comfort and support from the totally familiar – an umbrella stand, a glass ashtray backed with brightly covered cigar bands, the fire tongs, anything. With the help of these and other commonplace objects – with the help also of two big elms trees that shaded the house from the heat of the sun, and the trumpet vine by the backdoor, and the white lilac bush by the dinning-room window, and the comfortable wicker porch furniture and the porch swing that contribute its creak…creak…to the sounds of the summer night – I got from one day to the next. (pgs. 9-10)

I seem to remember that I went to the new house one winter day and saw the snow descending through the attic to the upstairs bedrooms. It could also be that I never did any such thing, for I am fairly certain that in a snapshot album have lost track of there was a picture of the house taken in the circumstances I have just described, and it is possible that I am remembering rather than an actual experience. What we, or any rate what I, refer to confidently as memory – meaning a moment, a scene, a fact that has been subjected to a fixative and thereby rescued from oblivion – is really a form of storytelling that goes on continually in the mind and often changes with the telling. Too many conflicting emotional interests are involved for life ever to be wholly acceptable, and possibly it is the work of the storyteller to rearrange things so that they conform to this end. In any cases, in talking about the past we lie with every breath we draw. (pg. 27)

William Maxwell’s last novel, So Long, See You Tomorrow, is replete with references to houses and in the changing landscape of memory, they serve as anchors – reference points for the uncertainty of life. This is something I can totally relate to – the houses I have lived in serve as touchstones for me, even appearing in my dreams and meaning certain things. I too have memories of sitting on the floor of my grandmother’s house and I too have to wonder if my memory is correct or if it is a photograph that is implanted in my mind.

Memory is so important in this novel, as the narrator, in his middle age, recalls a tragedy that took place in his small town. A farmer was murdered by  the estranged husband of his lover and the husband then committed suicide. In such a small town, events like the one described, have such ripple effects – two families torn apart – children the collateral damage – the whole town abuzz with speculation and gossip.

At the same time, the narrator talks of the uncertainty of memory saying “In the course of time the details of the murder passed from my mind and what I thought happened was so different from what actually did happen that it might almost have been something I made up out of whole cloth.” (pgs. 32-33). When that happens, you need to turn to “other sources” and the touchstones of physical objects like houses. Memory can serve as a comfort but one must always bear in mind that memory is a mixture of what is real and what is imagined.

The narrator has a sort-of friendship with Cletus, whose father eventually murders his best friend and then commits suicide. A few years after these events, the narrator has moved to Chicago and has a brief encounter with Cletus and this encounter, and his own lack of action, haunts the narrator – the book serves as “a roundabout, futile way of making amends.” And in the telling of this tale, the narrator relates his own tragedy, the death of his mother leaving behind three boys, one a mere infant. The narrator is a very sensitive boy and the loss of his mother shakes him to the depths of his being. The first half of the novel is a peon of the narrator, mourning the loss of his mother and how that loss shook the core of his identity.

The second half of the novel is the narrator imagining how and why the murder took place detailing the dreams and conversations of the two families involved, the two lovers and their spouses, his friend’s thoughts, even the dreams of the dog. All the time the reader is forced to contemplate once again, the loss of identity due to tragic circumstances beyond one’s control. This is particularly true of children who have little power to effect their own will on what is happening to them. Maxwell, through the narrator asks the reader to contemplate losing your home and everything that means from the physical objects, the smell of dinner in the oven, the daily routine of your life and what are you left with? “In the face of deprivation so great, what is the use of asking him to go on being the boy he was. He might as well start life over again as some other boy instead.” (pg. 113)

Maxwell, a former editor of The New Yorker, is brilliant at sentence construction, painting a picture for the reader in short strokes, a few words that shows the sum is indeed more than the parts:

Other people with, with nothing at stake, see that there is a look of sadness about her, as if she lives too much in the past or perhaps expects more of life than is reasonable. (pg, 71)

When she gets into bed and the springs creak under her weight, she groans with pleasure of lying stretched out on an object that understands her so well. (pg. 64)

There was enough self-control in that household for six families. (pg. 46)

So Long, See You Tomorrow is a very short novel, originally published in two parts in The New Yorker. The theme of the loss of one’s mother appears in much of Maxwell’s work as he had lost his own mother in similar circumstances to the narrator’s.  I learned abut the novel through Rachel’s (The Book Snob) beautiful review and I am grateful to her for bringing such an evocative gem to my attention.  It is definitely a novel that is well worth reading and I am looking forward to reading his other works.

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