To All Appearances A Lady - University of British Columbia

protagonists. These protagonists are generally
his narrators and give his stories the
perspective of children, of middle-aged
men, and of elderly men. They are straight,
gay, and bisexual. They appear in settings
as diverse as an orchestra pit, a therapist's
office, a park, China. Despite their diversity,
each protagonist lacks connection with
his peers. They all feel like observers in
their own life, try to overcome that by various
means, and fail to do so. In the title
story, "Goodnight, Sweetheart," Steven's
family must decide whether to put his
grandmother in a home. Steven pushes his
mother toward making that decision, and
then proceeds to make a documentary of
the grandmother's removal to the Eldorado.
His logical and reasoned motivations tempt
his mother to suggest he "'[f]ilm [his]
divorce'". The appropriateness of her advice
becomes evident as he experiences a surge
of unresolved emotion following the completion
of the film. In fact, such advice
would be appropriate for most of the characters
in this collection who, throughout,
seek for resolution to pain they will barely
admit to feeling. Their consequent detachment
from their lives tends to alienate the
reader from the character as much as the
character is alienated from himself.
"Goodnight, Sweetheart" uses this technique
most effectively because Teleky offers
the reader details of Steven's life in conjunction
with details about the other characters.
The combination of information
provides a context for Steven's tone, as does
his profession. Teleky treats documentary
film as the last fortress of objectivity and
then proceeds to tear down its walls.
This story sets the tone for the collection
when it suggests to the reader that Steven is
a product of his past; there is a forced realization
of the dilemma of imposing judgement
in a relativist world. Other stories in
the collection do not provide the reader
with those explanations for the character's
personality; instead, these narrators are
introspective and still opaque. Reading
these stories leads to an extrapolation of
relativism until the reader reaches the same
state of alienation and paralysis that the
characters seem to be in. Curiously enough,
the stories without this effect are the ones
in which the reader is given even less detail.
These stories do not suggest they will provide
characterization, and therefore, the
reader does not feel like a detective searching
for insight; the surfaces are more
important than the depths behind them. In
"Notes on Parking," Teleky creates an
atmosphere—not a story or a character—,
and this piece is successful although sometimes
melodramatic.
J. Jill Robinson's collection, Lovely in Her
Bones, also manipulates surfaces but, unlike
Teleky, her style does not obscure the
theme that threads through her work: the
importance of unsettling the past in order
to resolve past traumas. Robinson makes
evident these discoveries of the past's effect
on the present through relationships that
seem familial even when they are not
between family members. Often, some
component of the relationship is missing or
damaged and often it is that component
which can be traced to a past experience of
the protagonist.
Robinson, throughout, writes of these
relationships by describing their surfaces.
As Robinson endows her surfaces with
intensity but not always with complexity,
her symbolism is overt. In "Waters of the
Heart," Leslie remembers the pain of a
friendship she is trying to maintain while
swimming: "the water stroking her,
stroking her." Deciding the friendship is
detrimental to her, the rhythm of the wind
soothes Leslie, and wakes the next day to
note the "water taps with their big lying
signs: WATER." I was reminded of one of
Teleky's stories in which a character, after a
diving accident, says: "There's no such
thing as an accident."
Robinson's tone matches her subject mat-
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