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The Clarinet Polka (Thomas Allen $32.95)
Keith Maillard has taken aim at the ever homogenizing North America with his seventh installment in the Raysburg series, The Clarinet Polka (Thomas Allen $32.95).
World War II Poland; the Vietnam anti-war movement; Catholicism; Polish-American music. In this novel Maillard is a history teacher veiled behind his down-south talkin' narrator, Jimmy Koprowski: "Our house was pretty much like everyone else's... you've got to turn sideways to squeeze through to the kitchen where we eat dinner around the old beat-to-shit blue table, crammed in so tight we got our elbows in each other's ears half the time.";
Jimmy Koprowski's no rocket scientist, but we trust him. Right off the bat, Jimmy makes it clear that Raysburg, West Virginia is far from glamorous. "You'd come out of the church at night and look south toward Millwood and the sky'd be lit up blood red from the blast furnace... every damn thing would be covered with this fine red dust from the iron ore. My mom must have spent half her life sweeping that red dust off the front porch and the front steps.";
Apart from being Polish, Jimmy feels he's ordinary kid, back from Vietnam with not much of a future. He works at a TV repair shop, drinks too much and argues with Old Bullet Head-his father.
Before things get better, they get worse. Jimmy gets mixed up with Constance Bradshaw-a married, half-crazy mother who pops too many pills and uses Jimmy as a distraction from her lonely, upper-class life.
Their weekly get-togethers typically end in Constance throwing a drunken fit.
"It's so quick I just sit there and watch her go-this girl, completely bare-ass naked, running off into some farmer's field, screaming her head off. It's late in the season and the corn's ready to harvest, and she's crashing the stocks and knocking them over, and stumbling and falling down, and scrambling up and running and crashing into more stocks. Screaming the whole way-no words that I can make out, just this horrible wailing, loud, and I keep watching it like a movie, and I'm thinking, Christ, I wonder where the farmer is.";
During the routine insanity of the 'Jim and Constance Show', Jimmy meets his sister's friend Janice Dluwiecki-a conservative sixteen year-old who wears knee-socks and pig tails.
"[Janice's dad] was a strict old-fashioned papa straight from the old country, a real tyrant... On Sunday nights they read out loud to each other from the great works of Polish literature, and if they mispronounced anything, old Czeslaw was on them like a shot.";
Jimmy's sister starts a polka band with Janice-much to the dismay of Mr. Dluwiecki-and Jimmy, by default, becomes the manager. Painfully aware of her age, Jimmy finally takes an interest in Janice.
"If I'd had half a brain in my head, I would've known what was happening, right? But I'm the king of denial... About all I'd admit to is that I couldn't think of anything in the whole world anywhere near as pretty as Janice Dluwiecki's hipbones.";
Keith Maillard teaches writing at UBC. Just for the record, he isn't Polish. 0-88762-100-7 (2003)
[Jeremy Twigg / Spring 2003 BCBW]
World War II Poland; the Vietnam anti-war movement; Catholicism; Polish-American music. In this novel Maillard is a history teacher veiled behind his down-south talkin' narrator, Jimmy Koprowski: "Our house was pretty much like everyone else's... you've got to turn sideways to squeeze through to the kitchen where we eat dinner around the old beat-to-shit blue table, crammed in so tight we got our elbows in each other's ears half the time.";
Jimmy Koprowski's no rocket scientist, but we trust him. Right off the bat, Jimmy makes it clear that Raysburg, West Virginia is far from glamorous. "You'd come out of the church at night and look south toward Millwood and the sky'd be lit up blood red from the blast furnace... every damn thing would be covered with this fine red dust from the iron ore. My mom must have spent half her life sweeping that red dust off the front porch and the front steps.";
Apart from being Polish, Jimmy feels he's ordinary kid, back from Vietnam with not much of a future. He works at a TV repair shop, drinks too much and argues with Old Bullet Head-his father.
Before things get better, they get worse. Jimmy gets mixed up with Constance Bradshaw-a married, half-crazy mother who pops too many pills and uses Jimmy as a distraction from her lonely, upper-class life.
Their weekly get-togethers typically end in Constance throwing a drunken fit.
"It's so quick I just sit there and watch her go-this girl, completely bare-ass naked, running off into some farmer's field, screaming her head off. It's late in the season and the corn's ready to harvest, and she's crashing the stocks and knocking them over, and stumbling and falling down, and scrambling up and running and crashing into more stocks. Screaming the whole way-no words that I can make out, just this horrible wailing, loud, and I keep watching it like a movie, and I'm thinking, Christ, I wonder where the farmer is.";
During the routine insanity of the 'Jim and Constance Show', Jimmy meets his sister's friend Janice Dluwiecki-a conservative sixteen year-old who wears knee-socks and pig tails.
"[Janice's dad] was a strict old-fashioned papa straight from the old country, a real tyrant... On Sunday nights they read out loud to each other from the great works of Polish literature, and if they mispronounced anything, old Czeslaw was on them like a shot.";
Jimmy's sister starts a polka band with Janice-much to the dismay of Mr. Dluwiecki-and Jimmy, by default, becomes the manager. Painfully aware of her age, Jimmy finally takes an interest in Janice.
"If I'd had half a brain in my head, I would've known what was happening, right? But I'm the king of denial... About all I'd admit to is that I couldn't think of anything in the whole world anywhere near as pretty as Janice Dluwiecki's hipbones.";
Keith Maillard teaches writing at UBC. Just for the record, he isn't Polish. 0-88762-100-7 (2003)
[Jeremy Twigg / Spring 2003 BCBW]
Submitted on June 2, 2003 in By David.
