August 6, 2019

Another Review:

JUNE 23, 2019 CHARKINZIE
REVIEW: The Falls of Wyona by David Brendan Hopes

Official description: In The Falls of the Wyona by David Brendan Hopes, four friends growing up on the banks of a wild Appalachian river just after WWII discover, almost at the same time, the dangerous, alluring Falls and the perils of their own maturing hearts. Seen through the eyes of his best friend Arden, football hero Vince falls in love with the new kid, Glen. They have no context for their feelings, and the next few years of high school become a tense, though sometimes funny, artifice of concealment. The winner of Red Hen’s Quill Prize, The Falls of the Wyona is the first of three achieved (and several more projected) novels by this author imbued with the magical atmosphere of Appalachian culture.

My thoughts bit: This book felt like many things to me. The story is one long, campfire tale… or an epic poem of old. It’s beautiful and sad and bears witness to times we shouldn’t be quick to dismiss or forget.

Hopes takes readers on a journey to the world inhabited by young boys just after WWII. The tale is told by Arden, looking back on his youth from his adult life. Perhaps Arden’s reminiscing is colored in some ways by the life he’s lead since his youth, but the memories seem vivid as he begins his tale.

Arden, Vince, and Tilden are inseparable as young men. About the time Arden realizes Vince is his best friend, Glen arrives on the scene. Vince is immediately drawn to Glen in a way that Arden doesn’t really understand. He accepts the new closeness, even when he’s a little envious or feels left out.

The boys come together at Wyona Falls. It’s a location that the town doesn’t speak about really. People have died there, it’s dangerous, but for the boys, it’s a right of passage. The falls are like a secret because bad things can happen there – but that just seems to make it more important that they are found and shared only with close friends.

“Undifferentiated cloud of young male energy.” – Hopes in the Falls of Wyona

Vince invites Glen to the falls and when Glen does a reckless handstand on the edge of a cliff high above the falls, Vince feels different for the first time in his life. He sees Glen in danger and can’t put into words the way the emotion whirls dangerously inside him. Arden sees his friend’s discomfort and realizes that there is a bond between Vince and Glen that is unique… even if he’s not equipt to understand it.

As the boys grow older, their relationships ebb and flow. They make misguided choices. They don’t always understand the consequences of their actions. They become young men in a post-WWII world that still has very tight definitions of masculinity.

Hopes’ writing is artful and poetic without ever straying from its intended course.

I’m at a bit of a loss as to how to describe this book. It’s a story about the raw and unbreakable bonds of young friendship, it’s about the love between two boys during a time when it wasn’t accepted at all, it’s about becoming a man, learning to be passionate about things and realizing things aren’t as ideal as we wish they were.

All the characters in this story are on their way to becoming someone different, whether it’s a legend, a tragedy or a man reminiscing about his youth.

This book is full of the heat of almost-forgotten summers, the spark of first love, and the fierceness of friendship. There is misplaced hope, family bonds, promises, and adventure.

The warnings bit: Please be aware, I’m by no means an expert on what may or may not have the potential to disturb people. I simply list things that I think a reader might want to be aware of. In this book: depictions of mental illness, homophobia, homophobic speech, toxic masculinity, discussions about suicide, descriptions of dead bodies, descriptions of decomposed bodies.

I received an ARC of The Falls of Wyona by David Brendan Hopes from Red Hen Press via Edelweiss in exchange for an unbiased review.

Didn’t mention that the Residence Inn across from my hotel had a book shelf. I snuck a copy of Wyona onto it. When I have done this in the past (such as at the Russell in London) they have been found and retrieved by people I know. Ludicrous.

August 5, 2019

Perhaps I should have introduced Wyona to the family by pointing out it’s dedicated to grandma and grandpa Summers and that the name of the main family in it is Summers. Nobody seems to have noticed that so far.

Took the Prius to be serviced at Fred Anderson, and ran into the unexpected loveliness of redneck courtesy. Don’t know how much of it was company policy and how much of it was genuine neighborliness, but it made me feel a little ashamed of my formality and reserve.

Three plays revised.

Considering at the end of it, an almost perfect day.

August 4, 2019

The Summers reunion happened at a handsome old country club on a windy lake in, I think, Green Township. I met or was reacquainted with scores of cousins, second cousins, first cousins one removed on my mother’s side of the family. Plenty of kids, but no actual babies until Jonathan showed up with his beagle puppy. One first cousin once removed is Adonis. He works in a bar I passed on the way there, and it crossed my mind. . . but no. . . . In that crowd to say, “Well, I just published a new book that is getting sweet notices,” would have been difficult to contextualize. I picture them trying to think of the correct thing to say. Most of the talk was actually of various people’s tragedies and ailments, but everyone already knew the stories, so it was a community chirp, like birds in the trees, to keep the contact constant. Good time, but an odd time to me, something you see in movies but never quite feature for yourself. Good to see Linda and Jonathan, and Aunt Barbara maybe for the last time. I kept remembering experiences with her that she didn’t remember.

What was I doing while my family was learning one another? I was searching for THEM. THEY could not be found. This leaves me wildered and alone, but I do not regret it. To have found THEM would have been earthly bliss, and even the vain search was engaging.

Against all expectation, American got me home without incident.

August 3, 2019

Breakfast at the hotel, at a window overlooking a thin margin of green ash and then a huge truck lot. Some festival at the Pro Football Hall of Fame packs the hotels and the roads with one-time football players. They are very big. Even the old ones have not forgotten they were big.

Lay down before 8 PM and did not rise until after 6 AM. Intense dreams.

Yesterday, Hiram, then trek down Tallmadge Avenue. For two summers I drove that way every day to man the summer playground program at King School. Drove on to Stan Hywet, stately home of the Seiberlings. The last time I’d been there was to the gardens to shoot photos for Mike and Diane’s wedding. Stan Hywet is Akron’s Biltmore House, much less grand and considerably more liveable. I remembered certain features from tours I had as a schoolboy, such as the cartoons of the Kaiser and of Hitler in the boys’ bedroom. I was able to brag that I knew Julie Seiberling Shaw, who was professor Shaw’s wife. Our guide says she is still alive, “though getting up there.”

August 2, 2019

In Hiram, in the corner of the Kennedy Center that used to the Squire Hill Restaurant. But which is now the Hiram Bistro. It’s closed, and the tables empty, giving me a place to write in peace. Looking down on the playing fields and the field house, and tress that were but 2/3 their age when I first looked upon them.

In the flight from Charlotte a flight attendant did not show up. Another flight cancelled, saving us, for their team could add to our team. American Airlines.

Dreamed of Hiram last night, except that it was a vast city through which I wandered at night, every now and then coming upon a place important to my history, which were lit as if anticipating my arrival. I was leaving Hiram the next day, in the dream, and wondering how it would remember me.

Thoughts of John Shaw standing on the porch of Bonney Castle, forbidding the bulldozers to tear it down.

It’s a year and a week since I’ve been here. I’m a couple hundred times better off this time.

Passing through the Akron/Canton airport, I remembered that there in the business lounge I began The Falls of the Wyona. Perhaps I remember and note that every time.

Crazy Chicken Sports Bar on Arlington Street. Feeling of knitting together and on blessing, as though I could look out and see the edges of the garment I’ve been weaving, almost recognize it, almost put it on. My room at the Holiday Inn Express looks out on a rough, round pond ticket between it and the traffic of I-77. It is the most beautiful thing.

August 1, 2019

Yet another summer day divided between sunshine and thunder. Finished the revision of The Handsomest Man. Gave money to Glenis’ Go Fund Me enterprise to help fight her cancer. One likes to help. One also is infuriated that people have to go on line begging friends and strangers for help when they are ill. America has so much wrong with it right now that it makes one sick thinking about it. Getting ready for the flight to Akron. It looks streamlined, doable, keeping in mind that American Airlines is capable of bollocksing anything. In charge of a school crossing they’d likely lose the children. You swear never to use an airline again, then discover they’re the only ones that go where you’re going. Sleeping heroically. I think the tension of fighting Title IX and finishing Jason released all at once. Maud sits on my foot as I type.

July 31, 2019

Coughing fit burst a blood vessel in my left eye. That’s going to be attractive on the plane Friday and at the Reunion. I look like a TV alien. Sitting on RS’s discernment committee, amazed at the depth of his thought on things that, generally speaking, never cross my mind. People don’t appreciate how much of a wild thing I am, hurling forward mostly on impulse. For an artist this is a good thing. Some mercy has kept it from being a disastrously bad thing in other ways. For the most part. I also recognized that missing from my life has been frequent (even periodic) in-depth discussion with my peers on serious matters. We’re always flying past one another, sending out code meant to suggest our points of view. Sometimes with Jack, though that’s not frequent anymore. Sometimes with my students, though the differences in age and experience render that not quite a confabulation of peers.

Being freed (so I think) from all that Title IX mire has lifted my spirits and my energies. Worse than coping with a terrible mistake, in some ways, is being right and having that matter not one bit. I must remember perseverance. I must remember that the mills of the gods grind slow, but they grind exceeding fine.