Light of Day (35 page)

Writing
Light of Day

I
REALLY DON'T KNOW WHY
I wrote
Light of Day.
I don't have children. I've experienced very little of what I write about in the novel. While I was interested in the character I named Danny Owens and wanted to explore the reasons he might have had for killing himself, I was really starting with a tabula rasa and slowly filling in the blanks. It was very much like an improvisation: establish a premise, then create actions around that premise.

I tried to structure
Light of Day
as organically as possible, starting with the opening scene establishing the motifs of time and memory. The past is personified as the decrepit remains of life. Old men limp down the street. The air is filled with sulfur, a remnant of the burning coal that fixes sunlight in sepia tones like a daguerreotype—daguerreotype being one of the earliest methods of photography. I follow the transit of this theme to the steadily decaying ruins and to the river, which is both a symbol of resurgence and destruction, past time and future time; its rank and humid air is slowly destroying the ruins, the broken “monument to a past that was, if not efficient, certainly ambitious.” We can also say this about Jack and Anne in their lives and relationship.

Old-timers limp with age. Sulfur ages the air right before your eyes. Ruins of an abandoned Depression-era project rise at the river's edge. Rivers, like one's memory, like one's past, flow with the detritus of time and decay. The past was never as wonderful as we remember. It is old bones and desiccation, something we manage to survive or transcend; in Jack's case it is something that holds the seeds of his own destruction.

Jack explains to Danny that memory is what makes people moral. Memory is also what connects us to our humanity, to who and where we are and from whence we come. Without memory, without our pasts, we have no frames of reference for what we feel, what we love, what we fear. Everything in this story refers to the past and remembrance; even when Jack is looking forward, he is looking back: “There would come a time when he would look back at that moment.” He calls himself “the man from the past.” Even when he leaves town and drives into the future, he looks toward the past.

In keeping with this theme, the structure of the story reflects the workings of memory. Time is broken up into asymmetrical and nonlinear pieces because this is how our memories work. I wanted what we know of Jack and Anne and Danny, the discovery of who they are and were, to unfold gradually and build toward a complete picture; I hope this makes for a more interesting narrative.

While the baseball references are few, I like to think they are important. The game of baseball is about getting home safely; Jack certainly tries to provide his son with a safe home in which to live and grow up. Baseball figures prominently in Danny's life. He nearly pitches his high school team to the championship: a near miss in a novel filled with near misses. There's a scene during the annual softball game that Jack organizes for Danny and his friends: Jack's current love interest Maggie Brighton stands on third base, ready to “come home,” only to be quite literally stranded.

And then there's Marcel Duchamp. Duchamp was one of the great artists and art philosophers of the modern era. He was very generous in sharing information, telling what he knew about art and perception. By so doing Duchamp lifted the lid on the artist's tricks that create the illusion of a third dimension on a two-dimensional surface, which is what painting, photography, and film really are. Duchamp attempted to demystify, to explain why we see what we see. Paradoxically, Duchamp is one of Anne's heroes; demystification also runs counter to what Jack is about. He creates mythologies about Anne, about Danny, and about himself and his life.

I reference Pablo Picasso's famous
Guernica
when Jack has a dream in which he lifts his head in a silent scream. This is also the final scene in the 1965 film
The Pawnbroker
; the character played by Rod Steiger falls to his knees on a street in New York's Harlem and lifts his head in a silent scream (Steiger's performance in
In the Heat of the Night
is also referenced). The actor said in an interview that he was thinking of
Gurenica
when he decided not to scream audibly in the film.

Anne refers to the short story “For Esmé—with Love and Squalor,” by J. D. Salinger. The eponymous Esmé is a British girl dealing with the horrors of World War II. I like to think this is a story that would have attracted Anne while growing up in postwar England.

Ambivalence, irony, and paradox figure prominently in this novel. Jack Owens and his wife Anne Charon are ambivalent about having a baby. After Danny is born, Anne's series of paintings
One foot on the platform, one foot on the train
reflects her ambivalence and conflict about being the mother Danny deserves and the artist her talent demands; Anne considers leaving Jack and Danny; Jack too has his moments of ambivalence. He wishes he could walk away from the responsibilities of being Danny's father. Would his life have been more satisfying if Danny had never been born? He even expresses some ambivalence about his relationship with Anne; Jack wonders if even without Danny's birth the marriage would have caused conflict for Anne.

The name Anne Charon references Charon the Boatman of Greek mythology, who transports souls across the river Styx to the land of the dead. Jack refers to the Wabash River's stygian journey. Anne, of course, will give birth to a son who kills himself.

Of the many paradoxes I include in
Light of Day,
two I'm quite fond of involve Jack. Believing that he has reconciled who he was before Danny's death and who he has become since, he considers: “This is what it's like when you aren't who you are.” The other paradox transpires during the night scene in Jack's backyard when he imagines the huge ocean liner rising in the field: Are the passengers laughing or calling out for help? Are they safe or in danger? There is no way of telling. Yet Jack cannot dismiss the magnificence of the vessel, the magnificence of all the paradoxes that comprise a lifetime. There is, of course, the irony that the very moral guidance Jack provides Danny is the same moral guidance that creates Danny's irreconcilable conflict. Jack is someone who always does “the right thing,” yet everything goes terribly wrong. Jack betrays that same morality in the end. He leaves the falsely accused Joseph Rich to go to jail, allows Danny's friends to remain unpunished, and finally betrays Dr. Owens. Jack's answer to Danny's question “which is more important, honesty or loyalty?” creates a mythology surrounding Danny that does not include the accidental murder of Lamar Coggin. Remaining loyal to Danny necessitates the destruction of Dr. Owens.

Film References in
Light of Day

I
COULD HAVE COMPILED A LIST
of books and movies that influenced me, but it is much more in my nature to explain why I feel things are important and why everyone should feel the same way about them. I discovered this facet of my personality when I was a guest professor at Yale, thanks to wonderful students who taught me as much about myself as I taught them about the craft of writing.

Since Jack is a professor of film studies, there are many references to cinema in
Light of Day,
some a little more subtle than others. When Jack is in his office he sees the slow appearance of students on the quad as a time-lapse film. Jack uses the words “not as a stranger” (the title of a film made in 1955 starring Robert Mitchum) to refer to Marty Foulke. And there are the more obvious movie references, most of which have something to do with memory and the past. If
Light of Day
is “about” anything, it is about how memory and the past keep us connected to what we are and to what and who we love.

Blade Runner
(1982), an extraordinary science fiction film by Ridley Scott and one of Danny's favorite movies, is all about how memories and a past are what make us human. Without them we are empty, robots, literally replicants, whether spawned from the laboratories of geneticists or from the wombs of our mothers.

In the Heat of the Night
(1967), a film that holds racism and bigotry up to ridicule, is a great “buddy movie” about characters with disparate personalities who become good friends, much like Jack and Marty Foulke.

Last Year at Marienbad
(1961), one of the films Jack and Anne see after they return from France, is also a film about memory. The great auteur Alain Resnais plays fast and loose with events of the past. Incidents recalled by the narrator may or may not have happened; if they did happen they may not have happened like this, and even if they did happen like this perhaps they didn't happen at Marienbad. This theme also reflects Jack's memories of the life he shared with Anne. Was it as idyllic as Jack remembers? Or was it just a part of Jack's mythology of Anne? Was Anne as wonderful as Jack remembers or the creation of his “hubris and self-image?”

Federico Fellini's film
Amarcord
(1973) is referenced in the night scene when Jack imagines the huge ocean liner rising magically and majestically in the field behind his house. Such a ship also magically and majestically appears in Fellini's film, the title of which translates to “I remember.”
Amarcord
is also a film about the friendship of four teenage boys.

Along with the films already mentioned there are a few more that need to be noted, if only because they've been subtle influences on my sensibility and you might like them as well:

• My Man Godfrey
  (1936): “All you need to start an asylum is an empty room and the right kind of people.”
  
• Anything directed by Preston Sturges, but most certainly
  The Great McGinty
  (1940),
  Sullivan's Travels
  (1941), and
  The Lady Eve
  (1941).
  
• Billy Wilder's
  Some Like It Hot
  (1959), starring Tony Curtis, Marilyn Monroe, and Jack Lemmon, is a lesson in flawless storytelling and structure.
  
• The Hustler,
  with Paul Newman and Piper Laurie (1961).
  
• A double feature of Jean-Luc Godard's
  (One Plus One) Sympathy for the Devil
  (1968) and Richard Lester's
  A Hard Days Night
  (1964).
  
• Sergio Leone's
  The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
  (1966).
  
• Bernardo Bertolucci's
  The Conformist
  (1970) and
  Last Tango in Paris
  (1972).
  
• Roman Polanski's
  Chinatown
  (1974).
  
• Hearts of the West,
  starring Jeff Bridges (1975).
  
• Alain Resnais's
  Providence
  (1977).
  
• John Cassavetes's
  Opening Night
  (1978).
  
• The Coen Brothers'
  Fargo
  (1996).
  

Author's Picks

T
HE WORK ETHIC
of George S. Kaufman
(Once in a Lifetime
[1930],
You Can't Take It with You
[1936], and
The Man Who Came to Dinner
[1939]) has been no small influence on me; anyone interested in Kaufman should read any of several biographies. Moss Hart, one of Kaufman's collaborators and considered by most to be his best, also influenced my work. It is unfortunate that no biographies of Moss Hart do justice to this brilliant and courageous man. One can learn a lot about Hart, however, from the Kaufman biographies and from his autobiography
Act One.
(Franklyn Lenthal and his lifetime partner James Wilmot, two talented and generous men who owned the Boothbay Playhouse in Boothbay Harbor, Maine, introduced me to the work of Kaufman and other great playwrights and made the theater exciting and accessible.)

Although some of his work is dated, Ring Lardner is another master of story and story structure. His piercing, dark humor is timeless. Avril Stone, a friend of Jack and Anne, writes a play titled
“Shut Up,” He Explained.
The title quotes a Lardner short story about a father and son.

Howard Nemerov, e. e. Cummings, and Wallace Stevens should be read aloud over and over again, sometimes to someone else in the room.

Jack's ride home with the moon over his shoulder is an homage to T. S. Eliot's “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” In some primitive Western religions the half-moon is a symbol of death, which is why it is a half-moon that follows Jack home that night.

I used as my epigraph a passage from Robert Penn Warren's
All the King's Men,
a masterpiece of American literature and no small influence on the sound and structure of
Light of Day.
F. Scott Fitzgerald's
Great Gatsby
has also been a huge influence. Everyone should read both of these books at least four times throughout his or her life, as well as Philip Roth's
The Great American Novel.

I suggest reading any translation of
Beowulf.
The themes of duty, heroism, and greed and the transition from paganism to Christianity are integral to Western literature. That this is a great epic written by a conquered people extolling the bravery and heroics of their conquerors adds wonderful complexity to the poem (as though a descendent of Crazy Horse had written an epic celebrating the heroics of American frontier cavalrymen).

The late A. Bartlett Giamatti, former president of Yale University and Commissioner of Major League Baseball for five months in 1989, was the sport's philosopher king. His baseball writings are collected in
A Great and Glorious Game.

If Giamatti was baseball's philosopher king, Thomas Boswell of the
Washington Post
is its poet laureate.
How Life Imitates the World Series
and
Why Time Begins on Opening Day
are both beautiful works of baseball literature.

Art figures prominently in Anne Charon's life, as it has in mine.

There are a lot of worse ways to spend time than viewing the works of Paul Cézanne and visiting the Arensberg Collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Cézanne's paintings have always intrigued me. Along with what I discussed in
Light of Day,
Cézanne anticipated the modern era and the Cubist movement. His play of light and pigment, refraction, and space offer great insights into art and perception.

I wish I'd been able to discuss the paintings of Reginald Marsh when I wrote
Light of Day,
but the story did not permit it. Any visit to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, however, should include a long look at Marsh's work in the museum's permanent collection.

An Excerpt from
The First Warm Evening of the Year

Read on for a glimpse at Jamie M. Saul's latest spellbinding story, which explores the complex, intricate relationships between friends and siblings, husbands and wives, and shows that true love can be discovered in the most unexpected places—on sale in April 2012 from William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

 

T
HE FIRST TIME
I
SAW
Marian Ballantine she looked like a burst of bittersweet among the winter branches in her bright red coat and orange scarf, her hair thick and dark, the way certain secrets are dark.

She extended her hand, which folded over mine, and said, “Not what you expected, was it?” Marian might have known that there were more than a few other things to which she could have been referring, besides the circumstances for my arrival. I might have even believed that she was nothing more than a pleasant distraction from the unpleasant purpose for my having to be there, except I was aware of more than just her presence. It was her face, mostly, illuminant from deep within her eyes, and more complete than a simply attractive face, more involved. It was a welcoming face, which made me think for a moment that she'd mistaken me for someone else, or she thought she might have known me from some other time. It revealed the certainty of recognition and familiarity. No one had ever looked at me quite like that before. That's when I fell in love with her.

 

A few weeks before, in the middle of a slow morning in March, I was alone in my apartment. According to my datebook it was the last week of winter, but I was feeling the “damp, drizzly November in the soul” that Ishmael talks about and sends him sailing toward his rebirth of wonder. For the past month or so, the rumblings of discontent, an emotional stasis had settled in. All the things
that used to give me pleasure were unsatisfying now. I had a lucrative career doing commercial voice-overs for television and radio, with the kind of freedom that most of my friends envied; a relationship that allowed me an autonomy that other men seemed to desire—my girlfriend, Rita, was the least possessive person I'd ever known—and that I once wanted, too.

I couldn't quite locate the reason why I now felt so unsettled, as though my collar were always half a size too tight—and it had been a long time, it seemed, since work or relationships provided me much satisfaction.

This morning I'd decided to rest all considerations of heart and mind, feeling that loafing away this delicious lazy day and its unblemished and undemanding time was just what I needed to pull myself out of the doldrums.

Outside my window the sun had broken free of all clouds. A smattering of people crossed the street against the light, hailed taxis, ran after buses, walked the paths of Central Park, beneath the sad, bare trees and dreary lawns. I stood and watched Manhattan's anonymous society and felt a sense of well-being. I was one of them, at peace with myself and the city. The gloom of the morning had passed when the doorbell rang and my doorman handed me a registered letter with a Shady Grove, New York, postmark and the return address of an attorney named Frank Remsen.

I recalled the name Shady Grove, but why, I
didn't know. It couldn't have been from a book, since it was a real place, and I was sure I'd never been there, but a registered letter from a lawyer, even if I had remembered the town, was the sort of thing to fill me with apprehension, which was why the letter remained unopened while I finished my coffee and allowed myself the illusion that this day still belonged, complete and inviolate, to me.

Then, I sat down and slowly peeled open the envelope.

I read the letter once, and a second time, and even then I wasn't quite sure what to think. It seemed like such an unusual request: Mr. Remsen was writing on behalf of Laura Stevenson, who was requesting that I act as executor of her estate. There was nothing in the letter saying why Laura wanted me to do this, and nothing at all about Laura, except that she lived in Shady Grove, New York, hoped I remembered her, was aware that this was coming out of nowhere, so I could certainly decline, and would I please call Remsen with my answer at my soonest convenience.

I stared at Laura's name, not because I didn't remember her, and not because I needed time to make my decision. I knew Laura Stevenson, or had known her, twenty years before, when she was a student at Juilliard, and I at Columbia. Her name was Laura Welles back then. Why would she want me to act as her executor after all these years? And what was so urgent about it?

I walked into my bedroom, opened the
daybook on my desk, and checked my appointments, but I'd already dialed Remsen's number.

I told him I'd just received his letter. “And it's all very vague.”

There was silence at the other end, as though I'd given the wrong response, but it didn't last long.

Remsen said, “I thank you for getting back to me, Mr. Tremont.”

“My father is Mr. Tremont,” I told him. “Call me Geoffrey.”

“Laura was aware that you'd have a few questions, Geoffrey—”

“She can get in touch with me herself. Even after all these years.”

“She wanted me to ask you, and she didn't want to see you—Well, actually, she didn't want you to see
her
.”

“You said didn't.”

“Laura died,” he said. “A week ago. There really isn't very much—” Remsen began.

I only then realized that I'd turned my back to the phone, and was staring at the floor. “Wait a minute.” I kept looking down. I had a feeling of disbelief, because in my mind, I could recall a girl named Laura Welles, and all I could think, as irrational as it was, was that girl should still be alive.

“Can you tell me how she died?”

“Cancer. Lung cancer.”

I took a moment before saying, “What about her husband? When I knew her she had a—”

“Her husband passed away some years ago, as have both parents. Laura had no children.”

“What about the brother?”

“You know Simon?”

“I've met him.”

“Laura hadn't stayed in touch with him.” Remsen cleared his throat. “There was some trouble years ago. She had her reasons.”

I knew about those reasons and remembered the spring in '86, but I said nothing about it to Remsen.

“But that was then,” he was saying, “so who knows? Anyway, I should tell you I notified him a couple of days after the funeral. He wanted to know how to find you. I said I'd have to check with you first. He didn't leave a number or anything.”

I was aware now of the room feeling hot and airless.

“When would I have to take care of this?”

“At your convenience. Of course, sooner would be better than later.” He had the kind of voice that made me think of those men who go bald before they're thirty. “For what it's worth,” he said, “it isn't much of an estate. Her house and furniture. Nothing terribly complicated. All you have to do is make sure the people and charities receive what she specified for them, that her house is sold for a fair market price, and the money's donated to the high school music program where she taught. Basically, that's it.”

“A music teacher? When I knew Laura she was a jazz musician and lived in Paris.”

“She moved back here after her husband died. This is her hometown. She taught at our high school for the last ten years or so.”

I'd already turned around, and had a pen in my hand.

“I'll need her address,” I said, “and directions. I can't leave town until Tuesday.”

Remsen said it could wait until then, and told me how to get to Shady Grove and find Laura's house.

I hung up the phone, sat on the edge of the bed, and tried to remember Laura Welles.

I wish I could say that my mind was ripe with memories, but I hadn't given Laura very much thought in all these years. Although we'd been good friends, close friends, when we were both in school, we hadn't stayed in touch once she'd moved to Paris. I suppose we might have kept up if we'd lived closer to each other or had the convenience of e-mail like we have now. And now there were things that I wanted to remember about her. Not the broad things—how she looked, what neighborhood she lived in, things we did with our friends. The smaller things. What we'd done on a specific afternoon, what we'd talk about late at night over a beer, what was important to her, and what she shook off. Anything that might have conjured Laura Welles for just a minute, given texture to the sadness I was feeling, and held more than this pitiful context.

I am not blessed with the deepest memory—when I was in the theater, I could always remember my lines and cues and
marks, but the exact year of a show, or where we played, I couldn't say—and I didn't do much to keep up with people from my past or any of my old friends from school, including Laura, and all that was left was a smattering of recollections, parties we'd gone to together, nights at the West End, over on Broadway, where we used to eat inexpensive food and listen to jazz. I recalled one night when we seemed to be doing a lot of catching up and gossiping, so it might have been when we'd just come back from summer vacation, and we were laughing a lot; although it could have been almost any time, since the West End was one of our haunts, we always had things and people to talk about, and we always made each other laugh. It might have been just before the start of our senior year, when Laura sublet a studio apartment in the same building where I was living—I was staying in my brother Alex's apartment while he did his residency in Chicago—Laura and I certainly would have been happy about that.