The Bitter Fruit of "Osage County"

Drugs. Denial. Deception. Suicide. Abuse. Incest and infidelity.

The Weston family has it all, in Tracy Letts' Pulitzer-Prize winning tragic-comedy, "August: Osage County."

Every so often, we come across art, after which are not the same, nor would we be the same without having had the experience.

Oregon Shakespeare Festival Director Chris Moore's rendition of this play is exactly that art. From the opening music to the skeletal set and carefully-cast characters, every element of "August" is rich, significant.

Why am I liking this? we wonder in the dark. What about this is so compelling? And what does this say about us as viewers?

Tension. It's piled up high, like mashed potatoes and gravy. Each character has conflict with every other. There's sharp wit and sharp tongues, and we want to see the actors unravel, to see their resolve. We want to know that we could survive all this, too, should it happen to us. We learn that our lives are not as bad.

We are all human is the message the play delivers. To what degree is unimportant. "There is a little bit of the Westons in each of our families," Moore writes in the playbill.

Pain. Love. Lies. Commitment: "August" explores what makes us family.

Crickets, cello, Violet's creep down the stairs: the exceptional irony in this play is Moore's tying together all the little details to show one family's falling apart.

Not Buying It

When we got to the part of To Kill A Mockingbird where Tom Robinson is found guilty of raping Mayella Ewell, my kids were livid.

"What?!?"

"That's not right!"

"It's not fair."

"This book is so dumb."

"Why did she write it like that?"

It had taken a long time to hook my kids into this read--the catalyst for that would be Boo Radley--and when they were finally willing to settle into setting, to know the characters, Harper Lee blew it for them at the climax.

"Well, wait," I told Dominic (13), Daney (12), and Rees (10). "What do you think this book--the Book of the Century--is about?"

They told me it was whether Tom was let go or given the death penalty.

"Is that everything?" I asked. "What does that have to do with killing a mockingbird?"

This was a different read for our family. It was not fantastical Harry Potter or spirit-of-survival Little House on the Prairie. As the kids get older, we read deeper. The last book we read together was The Boy in Striped Pajamas.

But this--this timeless, timely tale--this was the most slow, the most rich, the most complex (I'm gearing them up for Grapes of Wrath).

"Could it be," I asked, "That this book has less to do with what happened to Tom Robinson than what Scout and Jem think about it? That they felt like you do: that it wasn't fair. And why wasn't it? What does that say about how things were? And are things ever that way now?"

If Tom Robinson were let off, how could we review the essence of human nature? How would we know how difficult, if not impossible, it is to set aside reason from prejudice, even if a man's life is at stake?

What kind of folks will Scout and Jem grow to be? How were they different from most of their community? Why did their dad, Atticus, choose to foster that? Why does it matter?

Again, I believe that the difference between commercial and literary fiction comes down to conclusion. Mockingbird didn't end as we'd thought it would. It didn't end happy. We were dissatisfied, unravelled, even.

Days after we finished, the kids are still talking about the book. Yes, they were glad they got to "see" Boo. Because of that one scene, they raised the book to a B-, A-, A. But they're still walking around, grumbling that Tom Robinson got the chair. And that is why Harper Lee is a genius.

What's Next?

Though the best of the Un-Real is destined to go on, I'm wondering if there will be a shift in the YA market soon. Will the saturation of vampires, werewolves, mermaids, and angels give way to reality-based fiction?

Scoot over, demons and faeries. Seems to me that while lots of young adult readers want to "escape" their lives, many of them, too, would like literature that's sympathetic to their situations. Divorced/abusive/addicted parents, friend disloyalty, drinking/drugs, bad romance, school pressure, high-stakes sports, body issues, comings-out, poverty, homelessness: Teens' reality is often grittier than fiction.

I'd like to see the market open up to books about families affected by the Iraq war, to teens trying to assimilate to cultures overseas, to teens trying to assimilate to culture right here.

While there will always be a fan base for The Chronicles of Narnia, where are the next Are You There God, It's Me, Margarets?

IS YA Getting Darker?

You HAVE to read this New York Times debate between Ship Breaker author Paolo Bacigalupi, who claims that teens seek and deserve truth; Shiver author Maggie Stiefvater, who writes that teens flock to darkness because they'll never actually experience it; and Uglies mastermind Scott Westerfeld, who argues that dark YA grants teens freedom, privacy, and independence.

What do you think?

Hoping/Helping Readers THINK

The kinds of books I like best are the ones that make me think. They stay with me days after I finish them, lingering like a light mist on an early spring morning.

When I drafted Keeping Stats, a slim, YA boy-book about the downsides of being a high school athlete, it was important to me that readers think about it, as I enjoyed doing with other fiction.

But how could I write a complicated novel that promoted evaluation, in less than 200 pages?

So I read Chris Lynch's Inexcusable, and David Levithan's Love is the Higher Law.

I found that first, complexity was in theme--an original, abstruse, contemporary theme--and that theme could be shown in the main character's actions, reactions, thoughts, and dialogue.

Second, the MC had to wrestle with an intricate, intrinsic conflict. Which isn't all fixed at the end. So the reader has to do the work. There would be choice. Would the reader agree? Disagree? Understand?

How would the reader feel?

There would be questions--that the MC asks, that other characters ask of him, and that don't go completely answered. The conclusion wouldn't tie everything up, but would end with an implied projection, or another question, or a scene that would lead to the reader's assumption.

Next, the MC's voice would be unreliable. The reader would have to weigh the validity of the MC's narration to find his/her own truth. Which could be done through dialogue.

And finally, it had to have irony. The trick of all tricks, right?

In drafting Keeping Stats, I came across many more questions about writing than answers.

Does length affect depth?

Do certain genres lend themselves to more critical thinking? Or can any genre provide that possibility?

Do readers want to think? Or would they rather have the writer think for them?

And, is this thing GOING TO GET PUBLISHED???