therea Alison Lurie’s first novel, Love and Friendship, was published in 1962. Critical responses to her novels and work are as many and varied as the personalities and subjective preferences of the critics who have reviewed it. Likewise, reader responses to Ms. Lurie’s work are dependent upon the subjectivity of the readers themselves. On September 3rd Ms. Lurie celebrated her 75th birthday. She has been writing for more than four decades. It is now appropriate to ask: how might Alison Lurie like readers and critics to view her work?

athere The first indication appears in Real People¹. In the journal she is keeping during her stay at Illyria, a New England writer’s and artist’s retreat, Janet Belle Smith writes,

there I don’t mean I want to tell the literal truth. I don’t - not because it would be too much, but because it wouldn’t be enough. A writer has to alter his material - but by addition, not by subtraction as I’ve been doing.
there The only reason for writing fiction at all is to combine a number of different observations at the point where they overlap. If you already have one perfect example of what you want to demonstrate, you might as well write nonfiction. Indeed, you should, because any changes made just to avoid similarity to persons living or dead, or for other reasons, are bound to be wrong.
there But ordinarily you don’t have a single perfect example. Instead, over the years you’ve noticed, say, something about the way children behave at their own birthday parties, but none of your examples is complete in itself. So you invent a children’s party which never took place, but is ‘realer’ in the Platonic sense than any you ever attended. Fiction is condensed reality; and that’s why its flavor is more intense, like bouillon or frozen orange juice.hithere(RP, 145)

therea In creating fiction, Janet is not attempting to create either ‘real’ situations or ‘real’ characters, but characters and situations that embody an underlying reality, that in essence are more ‘real’ than the people and situations that exist in everyday life. As they are clearly not intended to be realistic in the conventional daily sense, but rather ‘real’ in the Platonic sense, they might rather be viewed as forms or models, possibly even archetypes or stereotypes. In his study, Alison Lurie (1992), Richard Hauer Costas has referred to them as ‘caricatures’ (Costas, 1992:35).

therea Criticisms that Ms. Lurie treated Wendy unsympathetically in The War between the Tates (Jebb, 1975:127) have led to the conclusion on the part of some critics that Ms. Lurie is not a feminist. But if Wendy is seen in the light of Janet Belle Smith’s children’s birthday party comments, then what does Wendy represent? Or, to put the question in another way, what doesn’t Wendy represent?

therea In The War between the Tates, Erica perceives both the larger war between the sexes and the smaller, more personal war with her own husband. She is aware of all the advantages which have accrued to him by virtue of his being born male rather than female: an interesting and prestigious job with a good salary, little or no responsibility for his own children, no responsibility for the tedious household chores which have to be done again and again every day. She sees Brian as irresponsible and selfish. And Erica is well aware that in the war between the sexes, men are clearly winning the major battles: better jobs, better salaries, no household responsibilities. As Katherine Rogers says, Alison Lurie’s ‘focus is on men’s routine exploitation of women in marriage. She brilliantly exposes the obtuseness of otherwise intelligent, sophisticated men toward their wives’ (Rogers, 1989:126).

Wendy, unlike Erica, is young and naive. She fails to perceive Brian as the enemy. She would do anything for his ‘Great Book’, and in spite of Brian’s thoughtlessness towards her, persistently blames herself rather than blaming him. Wendy continually parrots the opinions of the different men in her life: Brian, Zed and Ralph. Wendy ‘parroted Brian’s arguments, acquiescing in her own defeat. She didn’t reproach him for anything - only herself, for having caused him inconvenience (WT, 195). Again, after meeting Ralph, Wendy says, ‘Like Ralph says, you know either of you can split any time . . . The world isn’t telling you you hafta stay with that dude. . . .’ (WT, 300).

‘I see your point,’ Erica replied gently, but with some restraint, thinking that again - and probably not for the last time - Wendy was repeating as her own sincere opinion statements made to her by some man for selfish ulterior purposes.thereaa(WT, 300)

therea Wendy has not yet noticed that there is a war taking place. She comes down clearly on the side of ‘sexual freedom’ and an irresponsible attitude toward the production of children, attitudes which benefit men. She confuses freedom with the shirking of primary ressponsibilites. And although it is Wendy who is more inclined toward overt sympathy with conventional feminism when, ‘dressed for revolutionary action, in jeans and boots and an old fringed cowboy jacket with peace symbols blazed on the lapels,’ she rushes off to join Sara, Jenny and Linda Sliski at the demonstration in J Donald Dibble’s office, (WT, 253), this inclination is extremely superficial. Wendy fails to side with women. While Erica could not be described as a ‘feminist’, the learning process she goes through when she and Brian separate deepens her sympathy for women. She is on their side.

therea Alison Lurie’s books do not centre primarily on womens’ relationships with other women or on women’s communities. They do not celebrate lesbian partnerships as an alternative to marriage. Jenny does not leave Wilkie in the end (LR). Ms. Lurie is not a feminist writer in the conventional sense of the word. But, in a more profound sense, Alison Lurie is most certainly a feminist. She depicts the inequalities that lie behind marriage. She details Brian’s and Erica’s separate ‘spheres of influence’ and the discrepancies that this inequality brings into their separate lives (Rogers: 1989:121). As Katherine Rogers points out, even the ‘perfect marriage’ is an unequal bargain. ‘While Brian does interesting, prestigious work, she, with similar mental capacity and training, is expected to devote her days to the cheerful completion of routine tasks’ (Rogers, 1989:121).

therea Alison Lurie ‘deflates’ female complacency and male posturing (Rogers, 1989:122). Her female protagonists do not seek change, but when it is thrust upon them they adapt to it and eventually begin to enjoy it (Rogers, 1989:125). Her male characters actively seek out change with ‘virile adventurousness’, but when it comes they are ‘discomfited’ by it (Rogers, 1989:125). Brian feels uncomfortable at the pot party to which Wendy drags him (WT) and Paul is ridiculous disguised as a beatnik with Ceci in a Venice coffeehouse (NC). While Katherine, after her initial horror of Los Angeles, adapts to the anonymity it gives her and eventually decides to remain there (NC) and Verena is last seen on the front page of the New York Times (IF).

therea In this broader sense, Alison Lurie expands the choices open to women. She plants the seed of more equitable status for men and women in marriage (WT) and of potentially successful same-sex partnerships (LR). In Ms. Lurie’s work, marriage is battered, but survives, not as a citadel of erotic passion, but as a working partnership (WT, LF, LR). As Erica says, ‘But marriage isn’t only sex: it’s a social contract’ (WT, 300). Katherine Rogers maintains that it is this ‘concern with awakening her heroines to look critically at their lives’ that ‘makes Lurie a feminist author’ (Rogers, 1989:126).

therea Another indication as to how Ms. Lurie might like her work to be viewed appears again in Real People. In reference to her writing, Janet acknowledges that she has been censoring herself because she ‘didn’t want to depress her readers; she didn’t want to make them uncomfortable. She didn’t want to expose her family, her friends or (above all) herself; she didn’t want them to be laughed at, or pitied or condemned - not even when they were in fact ridiculous, pitiable and wrong’ (RP, 146). In the last two paragraphs of the book, she goes on to say:

. . . . you can’t write well with only the nice parts of your character, and only about nice things. And I don’t want even to try any more. I want to use everything, including hate and envy and lust and fear.
there Not only do I want to - I must. If nothing will finally survive of life besides what artists report of it, we have no right to report what we know to be lies.’ (RP, 146)

thereaAssuming that Ms. Lurie concurs with Janet Belle Smith’s comments, which in fact are given additional emphasis by their placement at the conclusion of the book, it would be appropriate to evaluate Ms. Lurie’s work on this basis: does Ms. Lurie ‘use everything, including hate and envy and lust and fear’?

therea Speaking at a reading and book-signing at the National Film Theatre on the South Bank in London shortly after the British publication of The Last Resort, Ms. Lurie described Only Children as the most closely autobiographical of her novels. It is significantly the only novel to focus on a child’s point of view. Mary Ann Hubbard discovers what is feels like to be considered ugly when she overhears her mother call her, ‘. . . mah poor ugly ducking’ (OC, 139). She learns that she is not ‘marriage material’, but will end up the old maid in the pack, the card that nobody wants. She will never get a chance to name her children, names she had chosen in a happier, more innocent time. ‘But nobody would want to marry Mary Ann, and so Theodora and Edward and Anna and Arthur will never be born’ (OC, 143). In Only Children, Alison Lurie is parrelleling the truth. Damaged by a high forceps delivery in 1926 (Costas, 1992:1), she lost hearing in her left ear and ‘atrophy of the facial muscles . . . pulled my mouth sideways whenever I opened it to speak and turned my smile into a sort of sneer’ (‘No One Asked Me to Write a Novel’).

therea In Only Children, Ms. Lurie has courageously explored the question, ‘What does it mean to be ugly?’ (OC, 141). Although she has not told Lester Goldberg’s truth (Costas, 1992:25), nor Rachel Cowen’s truth (‘The Bore between the Tates’), as Alison Lurie says, ‘ . . . . it was part of the truth, my truth’ (Costas, 1992:29). Julian Jebb goes further; ‘Vonnegut, Updike, Mailer, Philip Roth may lay claim to greater literary inventiveness - but none of them tell their truth with the sophisticated directness of Alison Lurie. . . .’ (Jebb, 1975:128). In The War between the Tates, ‘There are no lies . . . .’ (Jebb, 1975:128).

therea A final indication as to how Ms. Lurie might prefer her work to be viewed appears in Don’t Tell the Grown-ups: Subversive Children’s Literature. In her Foreward, Ms. Lurie states that there are two kinds of books for children (DTG, ix). The first are books written from the adult point of view. They are the books which adults want children to read: books with information about the adult world, books about history and science: ‘how electricity worked, or who George Washington was’ (DTG, ix). They are instructional and present an accepted ideology and world view. They help to maintain national myths and reinforce conventional assumptions about the world and life.

therea This first type of book also includes books that teach ‘manners or morals’ (DTG, ix). Books about little bunny rabbits who learn that Mama and Papa Rabbit give good advice about the world. Books about little train engines that persevere and eventually succeed in climbing hills. In these books, grown-ups are friends to children; they are kind and right and good. And these are the approved books that adults want children to read. They are often (though not always) the recipients of children’s book awards (DTG, ix). They urge children to be obedient, compliant, and respectful of adults and adult institutions: parents, the church, the police, government, schools.

therea There is a second kind of book, Alison Lurie claims (DTG, x). These are written from the child’s point of view. And it is these books that truly celebrate childhood. They celebrate disobedience and imagination. They celebrate the naughty child who does not comply with adult wishes and expectations: Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, Peter Pan, Little Women, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (DTG, x). These books celebrate ‘daydreaming, disobedience, answering back, running away from home, and concealing one’s private thoughts and feelings from unsympathetic grown-ups’ (DTG, x). They celebrate values that are not consistent with the protestant work ethic and mass market capitalism, with the ‘shopping mall and the corporation’ (DTG. xi). ‘They mock current assumptions and express the imaginative, unconventional, noncommercial view of the world in its simplest and purest form. They appeal to the imaginative, questioning, rebellious child within all of us, renew our instinctive energy, and act as a force for change’ (DTG, xi). They are subversive. And it is these subversive books that capture the imagination of children and become classics.

therea In effect, for children there are the books that instruct and inform and support the status quo, books that depict accepted adult behavior, norms and beliefs; and there are books that celebrate the imagination and disobedience and being naughty. It is precisely with this juxtaposition that she plays in her own adult fiction. Her novels start off with ‘good girls and boys’, with faithful wives (Jenny Walker, Erica Tate), with respected professors (Brian Tate, Wilkie Walker) and sociologists (Tom McMann and Roger Zimmern). Erica is a devoted mother in spite of her obnoxious children (WT); Katherine is faithful to Paul and has accompanied him to a city that she hates (NC); Jenny is devoted to Wilkie and concerned about his health (LR); Roger is about the embark on a group-interaction study which he hopes to write up for a prestigious journal in the field (IF). But circumstances soon begin to impinge on these ‘good girls and boys’. Erica reads a letter for Brian ‘marked URGENT PERSONAL in mercurochrome red’ (WT, 20), Katherine discovers that Paul is having an affair (NC), Jenny sees Wilkie kissing Barbara Mumpson (LR), Roger finds himself attracted to and very nearly ‘rapes’ his principle subject (IF). Alison Lurie’s good girls and boys metamorphose. They become naughty and disobedient. They rebel against the strictures, often their own ‘prisons of inhibitions’ that confine them (Rogers, 1989:119). They experience ‘inappropriate’ sexual desires and commence adulterous affairs. Verena progresses from ‘passively catering’ to her audience toward attacking their cultural norms (Newman, 1990:117), and her ‘vengeance is thus both a class revenge and a sexual retaliation’ (Newman, 1990:124).

therea It is precisely this juxtaposition between the good puritanical children they are when the reader first encounters them and their later liberation from their own rigid self-control, from their own narrow expectations and strictures that Alison Lurie depicts so brilliantly. She mocks the responsible grown-ups the reader first encounters by depicting the ways in which these grown-ups still think, feel, act and behave precisely like children. Janet tramples the ferns in a temper (RP). Wilkie behaves like a petulant, spoilt child (LR). Paul Cattleman commences an adulterous affair with a California waitress, expecting his wife to remain faithful to him (NC). People behave like naughty children, and men shamelessly exploit women.

therea Alison Lurie, who has made a study of subversive childrens’ literature, is herself subversive. She sets her characters in the context of a ‘bankrupt capitalist system’ (OC, 184), and a government which taxes whiskey to support ‘corrupt government’ and kill ‘people in Vietnam’ (WT, 231). Unlike too many North American novelists and writers, she neither ignores the North American class structure nor pretends that it does not exist. She rather incorporates it into the daily lives of her characters. She juxtaposes the stylistic elegance of Emily Turner who wears ‘dark, formal, expensive clothes’ to dinner at the the Fenns (LF, 22) with Mrs. Rabbage riding on a mail truck in her ‘men’s black galoshes with flapping tops’ and ‘pink plaid coat and a flowered scarf tied under her chin, showing that she was a member of the non-academic classes of Convers’ (LF, 7).

therea She delineates the ways in which women are exploited. Her characters spend their thirties and forties attempting to learn to live with choices which they made while they were inexperienced with very little knowledge of the world:

. . . That is the worst thing about being a middle-aged woman. You have already made your choices, taken the significant moral actions of your life long ago when you were inex- perienced. Now you have more knowledge of yourself and the world; you are equipped to make choices, but there are none left to make.
there What Danielle said is true, Erica thinks: it is better for men. Brian has an important job, he makes decisions, he uses his knowledge, he gives lectures and writes books and votes at meetings for or against and lies on his floor on top of graduate students and gets up again. But for her there are no decisions, only routines. All she can do is endure. thereaa(WT, 46)

therea Alison Lurie’s novels are subversive: they begin with respectable grown-ups, then slowly metamorphose. ‘All day the grown-ups have been getting dumber and younger’ (OC, 160). And although the grown-ups ultimately turn back into grown-ups again, like good children’s literature, Ms. Lurie overturns ‘adult pretensions’ and makes fun of ‘adult institutions including school and family’ (DTG, x). As Judie Newman says, ‘Art is not . . . . in the service of cultural transformation; it is cultural transformation’ (Newman, 1990:305). And in ‘Another Dangerous Story from Salmon Rushdie,’ a review of Haroun and the Sea of Stories in the New York Times, Alison Lurie says,

If there is one encouraging conclusion to be drawn from the recent fate of Salman Rushdie, it is that literature has power -- so much power that it is dreaded by dictators. A single storyteller like Rashid is more dangerous to a tyrant than an army. ‘What starts with stories ends with spying ,’ says Khattam-Shud. ‘Stories make trouble.’ So they do; that is one reason we need them.

therea Like Jane Austen who gives Elizabeth three ‘rejection’ scenes in Pride and Prejudice, scenes which reach the pinnacle of comic perfection: the first with Collins, the second with Darcy, and the third scene with Lady Catherine, which signifies to Darcy Elizabeth’s willingness to accept his proposal of marriage (Tomlinson, 1997:167), it is pure genius on the part of Alison Lurie to give Erica Tate three ‘discovery’ scenes and Wilkie Walker three ‘suicide’ scenes.

therea In the first discovery scene, Erica discovers that Brian has been having an affair (WT, 21-22), ostensibly with a very beautiful blonde student. In the second scene which takes place in the Zimmern living room with Danielle, Erica ‘discovers’ that there was not just a beautiful blonde but also a moon-faced girl ‘with sad blue eyes and stringy bleached hair’ (WT, 72). In the final scene with Wendy, a comic masterpiece in which Wendy vomits into Erica’s kitchen sink (WT, 111), Erica finally sees the ‘three images blend into one. The beautiful blonde . . . . the pudding-faced ugly one . . . . and the weary, overwrought young girl who now stands in her kitchen’ (WT, 108).

therea Likewise, the failed suicide scenes with Wilkie Walker are masterpieces of comedy. In the first scene, poet Gerry Grass accompanies Wilkie to the beach and effectively prevents him from carrying out his plans, causing Wilkie to contemplate murder as well as suicide, ‘We’re far enough out now; there won’t be any witnesses. A quick choke hold from behind, and if I’m lucky we’ll both go under. Let him find that unity with nature he was gabbling about last night’ (LR. 80). In the second scene, a young man dying of AIDS actually commits suicide while Wilkie is there, and Wilkie, rather than being allowed to peacefully swim out to sea from a deserted beach, is forced to participate in a rescue effort. As Wilkie’s final suicide bid approaches and ‘Wilkie Walker was killing time until the time came to kill himself’ (LR, 188), he is suddenly seized by agonizing pains. Wilkie is rescued and taken to hospital by Barbie Mumpson, a young fan whom he detests, who then proceeds to tell him that she has been thinking about going down to Higgs Beach to drown herself (LR, 201).

therea In conclusion, it is interesting to note that although much has been made of Wendy’s ‘unsympathetic’ portrayal in The War between the Tates (Jebb, 1975:127; Costas, 1992:82), little has been mentioned about Zed’s (formerly Sandy, or Sanford Finkelstein) near total ignorance of Buddhism, a subject with which, as proprietor of Krishna Bookshop, he is purportedly familiar. Zed had spent a year in Japan. ‘I worked hard all year there, and when I got back to America I wanted to take the next step. I wanted enlightenment; I felt entitled to it, even . . . .’ (WT, 276-7), and the Krishna Bookshop offers courses on Zen Buddhism (WT, 50). But ‘God doesn’t care,’ (WT, 273), ‘I can’t get to God,’ (WT, 278), and ‘God’s will,’ Zed repeatedly says (WT, 164, 240). Zed has an idea of a ‘non-Santa Claus God who had no toys in his bag, but was watching Erica all the time to see whether she was still doing the right things without thought of reward . . .’ (WT, 274). Of the major world religions, Buddhism is the only nontheistic religion. There is no belief in a creator god (Sangharakshita, 1980:429; Khema, 1997:9); the Buddha mocked such a concept. Further, though Zed has apparently told Wendy, ‘we all live many different lives’ (WT, 86), Buddhism also negates belief in an eternal soul (Sangharakshita, 1980:429), while belief in rebecoming (or reincarnation) is optional and some would say culturally determined. Appropriately, the shop is called Krishna Bookshop, as Hinduism does not maintain this antitheistic stance. Erica is right, ‘she had been right all along. Sandy was like an ostrich, hiding his head from the world in the sands of mysticism’ (WT, 303). Zed also seems to have missed the first premise of Buddhism. The Buddha was not part of the European philosophical tradition. He did not posit: I think therefore I am. He simply said: Pain (suffering) exists (Khema, 1987:154). Who wants to argue with that?

therea Alison Lurie acknowledges that life is painful, that it is impermanent. At the end of The War between the Tates, Brian and Erica are ‘.... ugly, foolish, guilty and dying’ (WT, 310). In The Last Resort, Wilkie, Molly and Jacko all confront their own deaths. Wilkie imagines death as an Ingmar Bergmanesque grim reaper (Miller, 1998), while Molly thinks of death as a flying red dinosaur swooping down to snatch up its victims. To Jacko, death is a ‘small, very ugly man all in black, his pale face marked with purple splotches’ (LR). Alison Lurie recognizes that with poverty, illness, old age and death, life is not quite satisfactory. Some 2,500 years ago, the Buddha said: as the ocean tastes of salt, whatever is dhamma (teaching) tastes of freedom. And Alison Lurie’s work has that taste of freedom.