We were brought up on the classics. Our parents told us all the great old American jokes, practically by number…They could vivify old New Yorker cartoons, source of many tag lines. The lines themselves—“Back to the old drawing board'' and ''I say it's spinach and I say the hell with it'' and ''A simple yes or no will be sufficient''—were no longer funny; they were instead something better, they were a fixture in the language. The tag lines of old jokes were the most powerful expressions we learned at our parents' knees.
This quote can be found in an excerpt from a memoir about the author’s childhood and serves as a deceptively profound recollection of profound love and respect for how parents shape and influence their children for the reset of their lives. The excerpt was published as a self-contained essay titled “Jokes” in an expansive collection offering a broad overview of Dillard’s writing selected from all her previous essay collections to that point. When reading this quote one gets not just insight into the truly wonderful and affectionate environment in which her parents raised their children, but is also provided with an unasked question with an answer that should prove quite significant: had little Annie in particular not been brought up by parents who wanted their children to understand not just that something was funny, but why it was funny, would she have all that writing behind her to get to the point where this particular piece was chosen for republication? What makes a writer? It is a question that underscores much of the author’s work even when the topic itself is not about writing.
There were four of us North Americans in the jungle, in the Ecuadorian jungle on the banks of the Napo River in the Amazon watershed. The other three North Americans were big-city men. We stayed in tents in one riverside village, and visited others. At the village called Providencia we saw a sight which moved us, and which shocked the men.
This is the opening line of the essay and exemplifies to great extent her particular style of writing. Exotic places take on a commonplace familiarity while familiar settings can come to seem exotic. Her works are sometimes described as difficult to categorize because they combine observation non-fiction with the autobiographical aspects of a memoir presented with the constructive elements of fiction. This paragraph, for instance, could with absolutely no changing of a single word be transferred over to a short story. The moving and shocking sign alluded to turns out to be one unlikely to be so easily come across in most places in America, but by the end has come to remain equally moving, but not so shocking. And is that transformation which becomes the unexpected point of the entire essay.
The idea of infinity is that it is bigger, infinitely bigger, than our universe, which floats, held, upon it, as a leaf might float on a shoreless sea. The ieea of eternity is that it bears time in its side, like a hole. You believe it. Surely it an idea for minds deranged by solitude, people who run gibbering from caves, who rave on mountaintops, who forgot to sleep and starved.
Another problematic aspect of easily narrowing down Dillard’s writing so that it fits comfortably into a specific generic section suitable for facilitating the arrangement of rows in a bookstore or lists on a website is that almost no matter what the subject matter at hand, eventually there is going to be a digression. Or, more likely, digressions. The longer the essay, the more digressive it is likely to be. Unlike the digressions of Grampa Simpson, however, the Dillard digression is never pointless and ever strays too far off the topic. They can, on the other hand, often be nearly as funny as Abe’s meanderings into dementia. Generally, there is a tendency for the digressive aspects of a Dillard essay tend be philosophical in nature, acting as connotative commentary upon the larger social aspects or broader historical context. This example, for instance, leads into a quite specific topic: deconstructing a Biblical gospel.
Liu Binyan: “Mickey Mouse?
Ginsberg: “You know. Mickey Mouse. With the ears? A little mouse?”
Liu Binyan: “Yes. I know Mickey Mouse. Yes, But the film?”
Ginsberg: “That was a Mickey Mouse film.”
Liu Binyan: “The film we just saw was a Mickey Mouse film?”
Ginsberg: “You know. Hallucinatory. Delusional.”
This is an actual conversation which took place in Disneyland when Dillard and Ginsberg accompanied a group from the UCLA Chinese-American writer’s conference on trip to Disneyland, including muckraking Chinese journalist Liu Binyan. At this point, they all just come from a viewing of a typical Disneyland propaganda movie titled America the Beautiful which featured, for Beat poet Ginsberg, just a little too much imagery of American military might. As they are strolling through the park immediately afterwards, Ginsberg is clearly trouble—the author describes his mood as “gloomy”—and in reference to that abundance of imagery emphasizing the beauty of America’s military power, muses out loud that it was a Mickey Mouse movie.
Consider what a trip Disneyland is like. Even if equipped with VIP fast-track passages, this is still an event going to take up most of the day. As such, the conversations which took place must have been broad in subject matter and have featured tonal changes from the very serious to utterly superficial. And, indeed, as the account moves on, it does feature some additional scenes of dialogue. But this is the one that opens the tale; this is the conversation that Dillard’s attentive writer’s ear focused on as potentially the single most memorable. The transcription above features just the dialogue, leaving out Dillard’s description of such elements as Ginsberg’s putting his hands above his head to represent Mickey’s ears and Liu Binyan’s dignified response in perfect English that he is aware of whom Mickey Mouse is. Dillard’s talent as a writer is on fully display in the complete version as it appears in the published work: her recognition of the power of conversation, her ability to enhance the inherent humor with just enough descriptive explanation and the worthiness of its placement right up front. It is also a worthy display of how she seamlessly fits elements of fiction-writing into her non-fiction.
