tumbling

4/13/2001

     Tumbling was the first book published by literary scholar, Kermit Moyer. This collection of short stories, written in the mid 1980s, was published in 1988 by the University of Illinois Press. This match of writer and publisher was made when that organization's short fiction series was searching for appropriate writers and found the works of Moyer.
     The book is an exploration of how the imagination mediates experience. It is a journey through seven related worlds ranging from the fairy tale reality of a toddler through to the symbolic reveries of a college sophomore, with many stops on the way. The book paints with themes of blooming sexuality, companionship, male versus female sensibilities, love, and adolescent fantasy. The product is an emotional voyage colored by hues of incest, pregnancy, guilt, dependency, and heartbreak. This literary vessel is kept buoyant by large doses of imagery, symbolism, and self discovery.

    The first story in the collection is titled "In the Castle." This third person view of the blurry, concealed world gives us only tidbits and snapshots of the thoughts and inner feelings of the main character, a four year old girl living in a gigantic, castle like hotel on the beach with her parents and her father's brother, Uncle John. The furniture of this hotel residence plays a special role in this girl's life - they are her friends, all frozen, says her imagination, by a magic spell. "But," the reader learns, "if she can break the spell, all her furniture friends will come unfrozen, they'll all move and dance once again and the world will be filled with their happy, singing voices." (2) And, so we learn that this little girl is actually "a princess magically imprisoned in this gigantic castle" (2) by the constraints of
the imposed reality of adults and physics.
     In this deeply insightful writing, we are indeed worried when one night the moon comes to the little girl's window as she falls asleep, but is alerted when that moon, a symbol of her fantasies itself, tells her that it must eat her father. We understand the girl's relief at the sight of her father the next morning, not turned into a fish by the moon. The girl's hidden identity being divulged to the reader, that she is a princess magically imprisoned, helps us to understand why the girl knows secret of science: that the stars are the moon's babies. And, while this girl's fantasy create these adolescent understandings of the dreamy images she sees in her life, so it shelters her from the pang of confusion and betrayal that the reader might feel if they were looking through the keyhole to see Uncle John slipping his hand under the dress of her mother, as she did. Indeed, the reader hides in the veil of fantastic distraction with the little girl.
     Late in the story, the little girl is alone on the beach building a sand castle. She is adding a new meaning to the title. Now, not only do we have the twin meaning of the parents' rock and mortar imprisonment and her fantasy castle, with enchanted furniture and an all knowing moon, but we have also this sand world created by the girl's own hands. As the sea, once receded to its distant low point, comes slapping at her contructing heels, she hurriedly digs a moat around her new world. But, as the sea comes to claim her creation she feels the pressure of a full bladder and, stepping back into the shadow of the large, imprisoning castle; the enchanted, magical castle, we see the last of her own sand world washed away. But, "Above the ocean's horizon, the moon itself is so pale it could be a whisper." (9) But, it is a whisper not to be forgotten as we will hear it throughout the rest of the book.
     In the very next world, the title story, we borrow the senses of Jill, a 15 year old girl. Jill, and her brother Jack, have run away from their mother's home in search of their
father because Jack walked in on their mother and another man. From Jill's own point of
view we see her closely following her trusted brother to a distant region of the country where they believe their father to be. Much of their world is a made up illusion: "Anytime we talk to somebody," Jill says, "I have to wait and see who we're going to be this time. Real life is always so ordinary on the one hand and complicated on the other, but Jacky's stories can make it all seem just as simple and easy as filling in a coloring book." (12) And so through adventures they travel, coloring as the go.
     The use of symbolism is rampant throughout the text of this book. Surely not all of it was intended by the author, but the writing lends itself to a rich bounty of interpretations. In "Movements of the Hand," we enter the world of Kenny. Kenny is a college student who has been involved in a relationship with Dana. Though the relationship has been breaking down, Kenny is trying desperately to repair it. He had just inherited a Studebaker from his recently deceased grandfather. He thought now that he had the car they could escape from their school in Illinois and go down to Florida to relax and spend time together - escape from their troubles together.
     He takes the new car to show her and she sits in it with him. They are parked, with another car parked in front of them and they talk about their relationship. She says it has become too serious and overwhelming. So, he explains his plan:

              Maybe if we could just lighten the mood, be easy with each again instead of
              being so gloomy all the time - because if you ask me that's what's killing us - "
              Dana flinched. "It's not something anybody chose, though, is it?" she said in the
              clipped voice she got when she was angry. Her head was tilted down so her eyes
              were in shadow, but the other car's brake lights gave the edges of her face a faint pink
              glow... I slapped the steering wheel with the palm of my hand, then reached out and
              switched off the ignition.(92)

     The reference to her mother was because she has cancer and this makes Dana upset. The breaklights of the car in front of them seem to symbolize the roadblock they have reached - their inability to escape. He resigns to this momentarily, turning off his tool of escape as he stops the ignition. And, by taking his focus from escape in the car, the attention is slapped onto the fact that they are not addressing their problems: "In the new silence of the car, my voice sounded loud and insistent." (93) She then communicates her desire not to hurt him and says, "'Kenny, please. Please don't do this.'" In response he fantasizes about her, first in his desired destination, Key West. Then, in a memory when they had spent the night together. His desire for escape is then renewed: "'We could go anywhere we wanted to' I said, opening my eyes and twisting the key in the ignition."(93) The ignition is like a barometer of his feelings. He then pulls her to sit close and shows her his grandfather's pocket knife. But, then as she closes it she catches his hand in the blade and cuts him so that he bleeds badly. This accidental, faultless injury parallels that which she is causing him through their relationship. In response to the cut she panics and leaves, insisting that he be careful. It is clearer to the reader than to Kenny that that is what is happening in their relationship as well.

     Through these two stories we have see a recurring theme of escape. In "Tumbling" we see what may be a sign of imagined escape as the little girl builds her own world, the sand castle, which she would control. In "Life Jackets," Billy, our 12 year old point-of- view character, is escaping first from what he believes is a cruise ship on fire and second from his guilt about not telling one of his mother's friends about that believed fire after he walked in on her in the bathtub. In "Compass of the Heart," another 12 year old boy, James, is trying to escape his guilt for the way he has treated his brother because he
believes that brother is going to die. He is also trying to escape guilt for fantasizing about
his father's girlfriend and peeping on them as they have sex. In "Movements of the Hand,"
as we have seen, Kenny is trying to escape with Dana to save his imagined image of their relationship. And, in "Ruth's Daughter," Rebecca Rachel is trying to escape from her own accidental pregnancy.

     Most of the main characters in these stories are alone. They are dependent on other characters or forces, but generally go through their experiences with a basic sense of loneliness. Michael, the college sophomore who is the point of view character in "Coming Unbalanced" is living with his sister. His sister and Blanco are in a relationship together, but Blanco suspects Candice, the sister, to have been cheating on him with a friend. All of this goes on around Michael, but he is alone throughout. Indeed, none of these relationships directly impact him. He has no action of his own. He doesn't actually do anything at any point in the story until the very end when he decides that he can do something. But, throughout the story he is alone and actionless.
     In "Tumbling," we find not only themes of blooming sexuality of Jill as she finds herself being touched sexually, but also of her being alone. First she is touched by Major, the man of the household where they spend much of the story living under the story that she is actually Jack's pregnant bride. She does not flee from the touch of his fingers under her shorts but they are interrupted by Jack. And, Major never touches her again at all. By the end of the story, Jack has sex with her in the attic of the house while calling out for "Sissy." But, by this he does not mean Jill. He means another character, a mature woman whom he lusts after, named Sissy. Jill liked having him so close and inside of her during sex, but she thought that it was her that he wanted. When he started talking about Sissy, Jill began to cry. Later she says, "Jacky's gotten real self-conscious about any kind of touching at all. It seems like we might be strangers - that's the worst part about the whole thing." Each time she gives in to the temptation of love, touch, or companionship she is punished by being made more alone.

     The stories in this book flow together as if they were one. We have different characters in different worlds but there is a clear continuance among them. In "In the Castle" we have a character with no worries or responsibilities. The things she doesn't understand she explains with her imagination and there is nothing to really bother her. In "Life Jackets," Billy takes his little sister to the deck of the boat to watch a movie. This small bit of responsibility becomes gravely serious when there is a fire alarm and Billy sends his sister to the lifeboats and goes looking for his mother. Instead of his mother, he catches a glimpse of one of her friends stimulating herself in the bathtub. In "Compass of the Heart" James fantasizes about his father's girlfriend. And, one night on a camping trip, he sneaks out of the tent he shares with his brother and goes to where he can see into the father's tent. He then catches them having sex. He tries this again the following night but instead finds them having a conversation in which he finds out that the girlfriend's mother is dying. The plots mature yet again as in "Ruth's Daughter" Rebecca Rachel finds herself pregnant from a boy she had been dating and she and her mother go to Philadelphia to get an abortion. It is as if we live one dramatically developing life through the senses of these many worlds and characters. It is a deeply emotional and often beautiful voyage to go on, after which one feels that one coherent and complete story has been experienced.

Back to Reviews page

Ryan's Writings main page