All About Lulu

Dennis Haritou: All About Lulu is a coming-of-age debut novel set in California. by an author with a diverse and, I have the feeling, fascinating background including an award winning role as a syndicated talk show host. The ability to talk like a pro has an effect on the voice in this novel which displays a refreshing orality in many of its passages; as if it were being spoken to you rather than just read: a very rare quality in fiction and quite difficult to pull off as it is here, with such ease.
Our hero, William Miller, is growing up in a family of bodybuilders, a passion that he does not share with his father, "Big Bill Miller", a noted competitor and his two rather muscle-headed twin brothers, Doug and Ron. After the death of his mother, Anne, from cancer, the family evolves further when Big Bill marries again, to an old flame, Willow. The new alliance brings Lulu into the house as William's new step-sister. This family history is just by way of prelude. It is William's relationship with his step-sister Lulu, an association that brings to mind some of the more intense aspects of the relationship between Tristan and Isolde that is the caldron in which the plot simmers; with the addition of some very appealing supporting players and incidents along the way.
Jonathan, I must say you tricked me, not once but several times, in that I convinced myself that the plot was moving in a certain direction only to find out that you were taking your characters elsewhere. This is a very good thing. But the first puzzlement that surfaced while I was playing dodge-ball with this text was why William obsessed about Lulu so much. When Lulu's face is described early in the book by a reference to Mr. Potato Head (very funny, I must say) I knew what was working on William was more than just Lulu's looks. I wonder what you, JC and JR, thought of William's obsession with Lulu. Somehow this obsession, including the infamous "Lulu notebooks" that he keeps, helps William to become his own man. Is that the way you guys saw it?
Jason Rice: To be perfectly honest I was riveted to this book until about page 150 and then I thought to my self two things. 1. Why isn’t William more obsessed with Lulu? 2. How does Evison pull off what I’ve been trying to do my self for years? Tell a coming of age story, or have a character of an age under 18 talk like an adult, but still get the story out into the world, and have the kid live a kid life. So many people look at this type of story and say, “A kid wouldn’t talk like this.” No, he would, he’s surrounded by domineering adults, and situations that are anything but fluff and childlike. He isn’t given a second on the pulpit unless he can communicate his thoughts like an adult, to the only other people in the room, his parents. His brothers are just there for window dressing, and to have his character be soulfully alone and pine endlessly for a girl who is pineless. After page 150 I went into a place of shock and awe at how quickly Evison moves from his voice, to William’s and manages to make me believe that this guy is really someone and not just a mouthpiece for Evison. Then I noticed how manipulated Evison was by William. A shocking revelation to be sure. His hero took the lead and started to realize that his adult advice givers were full of shit, porn lovers, whacked out philosophers, and a very base and simple minded father, whom all combine to create a force in his life that is basically a deep well of bad advice, and this is the only place to get a drink of water for a thousand miles. Dennis. you and I talked about Lulu not being the center of this story, it’s a trick that is played on us, and one that was wisely played by Evison. Lulu isn’t more than a few chapters; at her essence she’s easy on the eyes and simple as a kitten. Evison realizes this and lets William drive the novel.
William comes to his senses after he notices that Lulu is basically a Peter Pan like figure that has had some horrible incident arrest her development. His brothers aren’t any better. But William realizes with some cereal box philosophy that life is what you make it. I wanted to see William and Lulu go off in to a death roll like Tim O’Brien’s masterful novel ‘Tomcat in Love’, which I felt William was a descendent of. Coming of age stories tend to go for the sweet and tasty, like a McDonalds cherry pie, this story strays, thankfully, far away from confection. I wonder what you both thought about the educated voice of William and Lulu, they seemed wise beyond their years, mature even, without justification, at times, and I know that’s Evison speaking and not Lulu or William. JC, Dennis, did you find that bothersome or was it something you liked?
Jason Chambers: Really, who would have imagined that any trouble could come from an infatuation with one's stepsister? First, regarding the notebooks, I don't see them helping him become his own man at all. They are a symbol of his obsession and childishness, a crutch that prevents him from living his own life -- a life that, frankly, has little to recommend it in his adolescence outside of the initial friendship with Lulu. Even his life post-Lulu is seemingly filled with diversions until the next Lulu episode comes along. He finds short-term satisfaction in radio, and philosophy, and his entrepreneurial Hot Dog Heaven, but they are only placeholders for his one true goal. No, the book is not all about Lulu, but its about Will, and Will himself is all about Lulu.
Like JR, I was captivated by the voice of Will, but I think I never saw him as sufficiently wise (until perhaps the end) or mature. I think Will was always fooling himself, but never really fooling anyone else. He sounds thoughtful for brief moments, only to see those moments reversed upon him. He announces his great revelations only to realize that either everyone knows, or nobody cares. No, this was not your typical coming of age story. Yes, he grows from a child to an adult, but this is not your typical morality play. The lessons are murky and nebulous and our hero a slow learner.
DH: Dear Jasons, we have again reached a point in our discussion where we are veering off in different directions or listening to different drummers. It doesn't take us long, does it? One point that I would like to make is that William bears some responsibility for leading Lulu to the edge of a cliff and pushing her off it. William projects his own formidable imaginative life, lonely and isolated as he is in a family of philistines, unto Lulu who is a vessel not fit to bear it. I was so impressed that Evison demonstrates William's growing maturity by making him de-mythologize Lulu in the latter third of the book. When William decides to bring Lulu not wine but chocolate milk for a dinner, it's as if transubstantiation has taken place in reverse. Wine has been turned into water. Lulu has now been turned into an ordinary, rather mediocre girl who I guess is what she always was. Toward the end of the book Evison has Lulu given herself "permission" to be ordinary and have very conventional aspirations. It's an act of compassion.
JC my friend, we must agree, I think, not to be on the same page with regard to William's development. I view William's obsession with Lulu to be as essential to his personal growth as it is deleterious to Lulu's. And I don't see any place-holder's in William's life either. I see stepping stones on his way to adulthood. JR, I know we talked about whether or not it seemed that William was really in Jonathan's voice and whether it seemed realistic for a kid to have complex emotional attitudes like William does. But I didn't see pressure from a domineering adult world forcing William to cop more sophisticated attitudes just to communicate. I saw his surrounding adult world as vacuous and inept and his aesthetic response was the "creation" of Lulu as a necessary soul mate. Perhaps JR, our own childhoods are talking to us through the medium of Jonathan's novel and so we see William and his parents differently as a result.
I wanted to add some crazy stuff to conclude my comments: That Louise/Lulu made me think of Louise Brooks who played Lulu in Pandora's Box the awesome German film directed by G. W. Pabst about an anarchistic innocent who brings men to their doom until she is done in herself by Jack the Ripper. And I noted that Lulu in our novel rips herself up. Also, that All About Lulu reminded me of The Blood of the Volsungs, a short story by Thomas Mann in which inward-looking hyper-cultivated siblings form an incestuous alliance after being inspired by Wagner's opera Die Walkure in which a brother and sister fall in love and produce a child. It's not often that anything makes me think of The Blood of the Volsungs so thanks Jonathan, whether you intended it or not.
JR: It’s very possible that Evison has developed William or in the most likely case, William grew up and out of the author’s control, and we’re witnessing something very subtle. Sure, Lulu is realized by all concerned parties as a bad case of arrested development, but is her revelation, the one thrown on her, or the part about self realization all that traumatic? Really? Self inflicted drama to make her feel alive. “Look at me, I cry after sex, oh I’m so sad, my dad did this, my mom left.” I was imagining something far more sinister than what transpired. But maybe that was the point? Small fires can be put out with spit? William goes from being obsessed, for no real reason other than a woman his age and seemingly available just shows up one day when his dad brings her over, to being an unwanted force in her life. But why? She sounds like someone who always wants to be rescued. Eventually Evison realizes that William has matured through his own magnetizing towards knowledge, pop bottle or not…we all have to start somewhere, and the only place for him is on radio, heard but not seen. His brothers and father are constantly masturbating in public and it closes William down, he retreats towards something he can control, Lulu. But he can’t because she can’t get past age ten, which makes her a very limited character to write about, and nothing more than a rest stop for William.
If I can speak for a second about the voice, which is clearly Evison for most of the novel, I did find it wobbly at first, but then I realized that the author as narrator is more potent than a truly independent voice, and then you get into flights of fancy and lose control. Evison holds onto William for as long as he can, he even does something funny like open a hot dog stand which brings in a troupe of comedians, essentially, to make William sound less wrapped up in himself. What does William achieve in this book? After Evison let’s him go. He realizes that there is a life after the first crush, and to make it, truly make it, no one can really help you. It was nice his father sent him that money, but I suspect William will be fine. He’ll look back on Lulu and these formative years with nothing more than day old nostalgia and a few pictures to remind him of what was.
JC: It's funny how our readings differ so greatly sometimes. For instance, Dennis, I agree that the familial figures are perhaps not as insidious as JR sees them, but rather oafish and clown-like. However, I interpreted Will's bringing of chocolate milk and comfort foods instead of wine, to be the ultimate in manipulation against Lulu, for which he was perversely rewarded. Likewise, her desire to just be a normal person is really a surrender to a harsh reality. That changes in the end, but not convincingly enough for me. I think we can agree about her stunted emotional growth, and about her hyper-drama, but JR is right that the secret at the root of it all is not exactly Oedipal in scope. In fact, what Will does is worse, and that is, in fact, what drives her to her ultimate breakdown.
Growth? I see only a shadow of growth in Will until the final explication by Big Bill, where everything falls too easily into place. Yes, I think he will be fine, now that he understands why he can no longer fulfill his creepy obsession. He has a couple of friends and a plausible career opportunity, and will be able to carry on with whatever new philosophy suits him. Perhaps before he leaves work each night he can spin a recording of Die Walkure and wax nostalgic about that silly childhood crush.
DH: JR, your extended dialogue, really, with the voice of the text brings a writer's instinct into our discussion of how the fiction in this novel works if I can put it that clumsy way. I especially liked your observations about Evison realizing and letting his character go and also that the author is putting his character into certain situations, like the hot dog stand venture, in order to exemplify William getting out of himself. But I still think that the brother/sister duality of souls myth is potent as a trap or a goad to William's development. But it's a much tamer version, I agree, to the really heavy stuff that I alluded to in those German stories about embracing your inner incest. "Magnetizing towards knowledge" ? JR, you rock. JC, it's damn provocative I must say, that even when we seem to agree on key points in the text we still veer off with different angles of vision. But I think we agree that there is an element of exploitation in William's treatment of Lulu that is not pretty. Jasons, thanks for a great discussion. I hope Jonathan will be pleased.