IT'S ALL ABOUT RELATIVITY: EINSTEIN'S BEACH HOUSE

This beach house story is a tale told by an eleven year-old girl, Natalie Scragg, who lived with her parents and younger sister Nadine at 2467 South Ocean Avenue in Hagers Head, New Jersey. The American Automobile Association posts that Albert Einstein spent his summers at that address. Even though at the outset, the first sentence indicates (with no authority) that Einstein spent his summers at 2647 South Ocean Avenue. Appel's opening paragraph is a succinct setting for the entire story as seen through the eyes of the older daughter.  Natalie speculates as to whether this statement by AAA was a typographical error, or that maybe the editors had some basis to think it was the correct address. 

Right away, we learn through Natalie that her parents, Bryce and Delia, are mismatched. Her father is a dreamer, and her mother is an unrepentant realist. When strangers appear asking for a tour of Einstein's summer cottage, the mother angrily tells them to get lost, but Bryce sees it as a cash cow to alleviate their dismal financial circumstances. As the consummate dreamer, he had been laid off work at Bell Labs working on a translation device to understand cats and dogs that had no traction with his employers. 

Bryce devises a plan to hold tours of Einstein's Beach House for twenty-five dollars a head. Delia will have no part of it, and spends her time fuming at what she regards as Bryce's ineptness and fuzzy thinking.

The Scraggs believed the house had been in the family as a summer home, and then the crash of 1929, forced Bryce's grandfather to give up his townhouse in Washington Square Village and move to the beach house as a permanent residence. It had been in the family for years.

Bryce bumbles along with the tours, inventing stories about Einstein and enjoying revenue growing to the amount of $2200 a week. It was enough to warm the cold heart of Delia, causing her to admit that the money had made it possible to pay their taxes on time for the first time in their life. Natalie sees her parents kiss "passionately" and remembers this as their happiest moment.

Of course, paradise unravels when Einstein's niece from Germany, Dora Winterer, visits them at the Beach House to claim her inheritance from uncle Albert: the beach house that Bryce thought had been in his family for years. Checking his safe deposit box, he fails to find a deed to the property.

We last see the Scraggs with Bryce changing a flat tire as they are on the road, without a home, on their way to live with Aunt Claire in her Virginia row house.

Here is a story of a relative of Albert Einstein, evicting the relatives of the Scraggs from Einstein's Beach House, a house they believed had been in the Scraggs family for generations. 

Maybe the real story is how did Grandpa Scraggs end up in the wrong house?

Appel writes a tight narrative, but there are a lot of loose ends. What is convincing is his sharp delineation of many characters that appear in the story: family members, boarders renting the lower floor, many visitors to the museum, and finally the dagger in the heart: Einstein's niece, Dora Winterer, sporting her memory of visiting uncle Albert in that very home and clutching the official deed to the property.

Whatever. This story has lots of relatives. Clearly adhering to a theory of relativity.

THE QUESTION OF STRINGS

FIRE MAN succinctly asks about the story "STRINGS" resonated with me, but I think I already covered that in my Blog "NO STRINGS." 

The situation of playing truly new music is always a conundrum for musicians with traditional training. When composers such as Charles Ives present totally new concepts, it is difficult to find musicians who can articulate those ideas for the first time. Consequently Ives made his living selling insurance. We didn't learn of his genius until after he had passed away, and scores of new music were found in his studio. 

John Cage solved the problem by mostly performing his own scores with like-minded colleagues. Today it is a bit different as musicians today are generally eclectic in styles, having been exposed to so much new music. 

I still do my electronic compositions mostly for my own amusement and edification. I seldom post any of my electronic dabbling.

I do wish FIRE MAN would get in the habit of using Verdana font, medium, so we have consistent style to this Blog. I guess this is the third time I've mentioned it, so maybe FIRE MAN is not as serious about this Blog as I am. I thought it would be an opportunity to learn together, and maybe in some subtle way it is.

ANOTHER QUESTION

Appel is not a musician, but he creates some vivid scenes about music in "Strings." Being a musician and academic, how did the story resonate with you? You talk about musicians being more incoherent when they give ambitious instructions to play something that is conceptually complicated. How do you relate to the musicians in Strings?

DELIVERANCE FROM LIMERENCE

I have considered this project of studying Appel's short story techniques through reading of his collection EINSTEIN'S BEACH HOUSE, a limited study with another writer, The Fire Man. Consequently this commentary on the stories and Appel's technique and style will come to a close about a month from now. I had hoped this blogging experiment would be helpful for the Fire Man, a talented and aspiring young writer, but I think he is finding it to be more of a task than a joy. For myself, I discovered the act of reading a powerful, subliminal teaching tool, and I was hoping our readings and response to each other would be a source of motivation and inspiration.

While waiting for my colleague's response to "Strings," I have moved on to "Limerence" the fourth entry in this eight-story collection. Of all the stories, this one had, perhaps, the most impact for me on a personal level. Limerence, as a psychological condition was not recognized until Psychologist Dorothy Tennov published her study in 1998, Love and Limerence: The Experience of Being in Love. Limerence is described briefly as obsessive thinking about the object of your affection, irrational idolizing their attributes, emotional dependency, and lastly, (and most importantly) longing for reciprocation.

Leave it to Appel, who among his many advanced degrees holds a doctorate in psychology, to clarify my adolescent life that continues to haunt me even today. His story about Jesse's obsession with Lena, pales before the obsessive compulsive behaviors of my adolescent years from junior high school through my years in college. Want to know about "Limerence"? I can give you stories...in spades. But, that's another Blog.

Appel's story of Jesse Neerman growing up in Connecticut with an obsession for Lena Limpetti is well-crafted. Lena had moved to the house across the street when he was in the seventh grade. She was also in the seventh grade, and Jesse's father asked him to show her around and introduce her to friends.

Lena's stepfather was in jail for having killed her mother, and she had come from California to live in Connecticut with her father. We learn these facts abruptly as an element of surprise, as almost everything about Lena is endearing, edgy, with abrupt swings of mood. But she was a stunning beauty. She turned heads, no matter where she goes. She hung out with older boys and enlisted Jesse's help to smooth over and back up her alibis about her whereabouts and boyfriends.

When Lena abruptly leaves for California with a tattoo artist to visit her stepfather who has just been released from prison, Jesse finally gets the courage to write Lena a letter declaring his love for her.  Upon her return, Jesse asks Lena if she received his letter, she replies "I wish I could write like that."  When he asks about the visit with her stepfather, she tells him he hanged himself the day before she arrived.

Years pass, and Jesse marries and has daughters of his own, and after pursuing his law degree at Yale, becomes a Connecticut judge. He has lost touch with Lena, and on a rainy day, Lena's father calls with concern about Lena in Greenwich Village and her refusal to communicate. 

Although he had not seen or been in touch with Lena for years, he agrees to check on her situation in the village. When he arrives, he sees Lena at the cash register. She doesn't recognize him. He walks up to her and says "Lena...it's really you." Suddenly she recognizes him and hugs him, and all of his feelings for her from the past come flooding back into his memory.

She goes through a rush of emotions, becoming angry that maybe he thought he still had a chance with her. She tells him he wasn't the only guy that wrote her love letters. She begins fuming that her father had sent Jesse, screaming, "I don't owe him anything." 

They sit for a few moments, when Jesse says, almost angrily, he has to get back to Connecticut. As Lena reaches for his hand, he avoids her and makes a quick retreat, presumably leaving Lena stunned.

Outside in the "drizzle and mist," Jesse clutches his umbrella, somehow hoping that Lena Limpetti would come "chasing him through the rain."

This is the most complex narrative in this set of stories thus far---passages of time and histories of characters unfold quickly in this story that takes Jesse Neerman from the seventh to twelfth grade in high school, to being appointed to the bench midlife, his limerence holding him captive to a dream that could never be.

NO STRINGS

Appel's "Strings" is one of the better written stories in this Beach House collection. Just look at how succinctly he sets the stage in the first sentence:

"RABBI CYNTHIA FELDER WAS NEWLY MARRIED, and in her pulpit only six months, when a former lover asked to borrow the sanctuary." 

Note the use of caps in the opening phrase, like a headline, screaming "emancipated woman here" and a rip in the conventional fabric of society. All at once we have Gays, Lesbians, and Koreans gathering in her tabnernacle, but the thought of 400 musicians (cellists!) invading her sanctuary seemed the height of effrontery. At the pinnacle of this impudence was the fact that a female was the ultimate arbiter of the use of God's space.

The description of the new music concert led by ex-lover Jacques Krentz was so accurate that Appel surely must have seen such a spectacle. I've seen many such concerts of new music where the conceptual framework challenges musical convention leaving the audience stunned, and rendering the musicians somewhat incoherent.

"No Strings" was the name of a musical by Richard Rodgers, and while the title suggested a romantic relationship with no obligations, it also described an orchestra for the musical that had no string instruments in the ensemble. For some reason, this story title reminded me of that musical, and there is a tone in Appel's writing that "Strings" seems to resonate metaphorically for Jacques remaining attached to Cynthia, the newly married rabbi. But instead of NO Strings, it is actually ALL STRINGS, 400 Cellists!

This story emerges as a comedy and a statement of a world fluctuating in artistic and social change, Appel leaves us smiling, perhaps thinking the world isn't so bad after all. It's a tight, well-knit narrative, attempting to celebrate the grandiose, and recognizing that bigger is not necessarily better.

WILL TRY ONE MORE TIME

Will try one more time to make this blog work. Will read strings tonight and write blogpost tomorrow

WHY---INDEED, WHY?

 "WHY? "is a good question to ask yourself. 

I believe you are mistaken that the story "resonated' with me. I wanted to explore it to see why, in my estimation, it was flawed. This is a story in which Appel is showing off how bright and intelligent he is. I find the dialogue and story line somewhat tedious. I was a bit annoyed that he was using the battle between the couple to take us to no resolution. 

As for the sections, it seems obvious from his cinematic ending that they are the equivalent of "scenes" in a film. This is not a practice exclusive to Appel. Different authors use similar devices to denote either the passage of time or the ending of one scene and the beginning of another.

Even so, I can't concoct a better ending than the one Appel offers, even though it leaves me a little bit angry that I bothered to finish reading this affair of the tragic sadness of hedghogs...indeed, Josh and Adeline are just a couple of hedgehogs marinating in the tears of their own sad lives.