6 Min read

True story vs story; fact vs fiction

2 Book recs

On poverty

On music

Toolbox, ages 9 to 99

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Well, I never been to heaven. But I been to Oklahoma, where The LOKAL makes Indian Tacos and has live music on Thursday. We joined the crowd and the setting sun was so bright I held the menu up to block the rays as it dropped behind Yukon’s Best Flour Mill, right there on Route 66.

The LOKAL with its OK in the middle boasts modern Okie cuisine, from fried deviled eggs and bison meatloaf to chicken fried steak. I ordered the Indian part of the taco, the frybread. That’s a lot of fried food, but that frybread was puffy and delightfully warm . Plus, the music was a nice surprise. The musician sang and shut his eyes from the slice of sun hitting his face. His voice was smooth, the words clear, from Three Dog Night, to Johnny Cash and modern country. The music of one man with his guitar and an amp filled the outside picnic tables.

Dining alfresco in Oklahoma is different than dining alfresco in the Northeast, with bistros cramped along street barricades and elbows touching in narrow restaurants. In Yukon, Tulsa, and Oklahoma City the outside dining was as big as the inside dining. Hitting the 90s in early October days, nights were in the 60s and 70s, no heaters needed.

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Macabéa 

The flight from LaGuardia to Oklahoma City on an Embraer 170 with its two and two seating meant no middle seat with lots of reading time. I read the centennial edition of Clarice Lispector’s The Hour of the Star on this trip. It pulls me in with a quirky narrator whose ongoing engagement with the reader is kind of like talking to Clarice, the author herself. Except the narrator is a man whose idea of a character he openly discusses as a writer might, with what details to include and the narrative he should write. Some think it’s a book on writing, which all books are to a degree, but this one is more explicitly so.

The main character, Macabéa, eats only hotdogs and is homely, poor, and living so downtrodden an existence that you might imagine her unhappy. Except she is not.

That girl didn’t know she was what she was, just as a dog doesn’t know it’s a dog. So she didn’t feel unhappy. The only thing she wanted was to live. She didn’t know for what, she didn’t ask questions. Maybe she thought there was a little bitty glory in living. She thought people had to be happy. So she was.

The Hour of the Star, p. 19

Her sort-of boyfriend tells her such things as this.

Your face is more important than your body because your face shows what you’re thinking. You have the face of somebody who ate something and didn’t like it, I don’t like sad faces, try to change–and he said a difficult word–try to change your “expression.”

The Hour of the Star, p. 43

Is it true, to speak this way to others? There’s more. Her boyfriend leaves Macabéa for her friend and he “almost wanted to say something nice” so he tells her:

—You, Macabéa, are like a hair in the soup. Nobody feels like eating it. Sorry to hurt your feelings, but I’m being honest. Did I hurt your feelings?

—No, no, no! Oh please I want to go. Please just say goodbye!

The Hour of the Star, p. 51

Surely now you are curious to learn about this abject being who doesn’t know to be sorry for herself, yet suffers such affronts on top of a life without parents and an aunt who is as mean as her boyfriend. Though her aunt found her a job as a typist.

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Dave Grohl

Macabea’s story takes place in Brazil and is far away from Oklahoma and the musician Dave Grohl--of Nirvana and Foo Fighters fame–and news of his extramarital child and lover. He wrote a book which I discuss in an earlier TreeHouseLetter though I didn’t know about the affair. It’s a memoir which is not autobiography because a memoir is about a part of a life, not about a life in full. His part was about storytelling and music. Was he dishonest? The book didn’t focus on the lovers in his life, mostly the music and his career.

I mention him because Grohl subsisted on hotdogs too. “Kurt [Cobain] and I were literally starving and living in complete squalor.”

At the time, I had figured out how to survive off a three-for-ninety-nine cents corn dog special at the ampm gas station across the street. The trick was to eat one for breakfast (at noon) and save the other two for a later dinner after rehearsal, holding me over until the hunger pangs set in again and I was forced to shamefully wander back into the fluorescent glow of the convenience store lights with another crumpled dollar bill in my hand.

The Storyteller, p. 135

Life is stranger than fiction because fiction has to be believable. Who would choose hot dogs for sustenance? Macabéa and Dave Grohl.

I’m not here to turn you off on hot dogs. I eat an occasional hotdog and knew a perfectly respectable hotdog stand owner–once executive–once professional basketball player. He was much beloved and he took himself out with a pistol after he was diagnosed with terminal cancer. He made a deposit of his extensive coin stash beforehand. True story. And, he lived on hotdogs, in a way, too.

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The Creative Mind

Macabéa may have been based on the author’s observations when she lived in Brazil. Grohl I take at his word. The first is story and the second is true story. Or, fiction versus fact. The thing about fiction is that authors must make the story authentic enough that the reader is willing to go along with it. The nonfiction writer can share truth stranger than fiction. Why? because it actually happened.

The hotdog diet got to me, the connection surfacing days later after I returned home. Huh. Living on hotdogs.

At the saloon, Whiskey 918 , the bouncer checked my identification at the entrance. I had to smile as one of the oldest patrons to enter. Writing it here gives me a bit of a boost because it’s proof of the little vanities which sustain us. Of course, I don’t have to mention that they were checking everyone’s ID. Paid the five dollar cover and entered the dance hall.

And here’s where I got to thinking about people. In a large, paddock-style ring encircled with a high bar, most were sitting and watching. Tulsa locals two-stepped, and line-danced to Brooks and Dunn, the DJ working his magic in the hayloft above.

Oh, heel toe docie doe come on baby let’s go boot scootin’
Yeah, Cadillac, Black Jack baby meet me outback we’re gonna boogie
Yeah, get down turn around go to town boot scootin’ boogie

Boot Scootin’ Boogie, Brooks & Dunn

In the cavernous hall, with its backdrop bar, all types got onto the floor. Boots and skirts, denim and shirts, oxfords and hats, beards and tats. No size too big and no size too small.

Dancers were on display, dressed for the night. Bodies moved in tandem, knowing the steps, feeling the rhythm. Some felt the music in a kind of euphoria, a bit of help from the bar or the dispensary.

I’m not sure any of them were on a hotdog diet. The dancers are in my head, in the way that Macabéa is. What you eat and what you do may be a conscious choice, and reading about her on this Okie trip I find her character more likeable than Grohl’s. Or more compelling, like the woman in high-waisted, bell-bottom jeans, dancing on her own, flopping her head in a circle as her long hair cascaded like a top. Or the over-sized partners moving along the ring, in promenade.

The dancers had confidence, or maybe it was nonchalance. It took most of the evening for me to get out and dance. Grohl strives and thrives, escaping a life of corn dogs and squalor, to become wildly successful, able to seduce multitudes. Macabéa does not rise above circumstances or think to do so. She finds a form of ease, a contentment in the most horrifying life.

I’m not sure there’s a lesson in the Okie saloon, among the dancers, or among the disparate and the desperate, coming together that one night. Maybe, like Macabéa, we’re all a little bit sad and alone. And, music helps lift us up.

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FOOTNOTES

*Toolbox, ages 9 to 99. Lispector’s figurative language is powerful, stinging. As a dog doesn’t know it’s a dog. The face of somebody who ate something and didn’t like it… You are like a hair in a soup. All easily grasped and common, but not commonly used. And Grohl’s syntax with its hyphens, three-for-ninety-nine cents, instead of 3/99 cents. And the ampm gas station, with the abbreviations touching (ampm) as time morningandnight run together, in this exhausting and difficult period.

*Clarice Lispector. The Hour of the Star, 1977. Centennial edition. New Directions books, 2011. With forward by Colm Toibin, dedication by the author, and reminiscence by her son.

*Dave Grohl. The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music. Dey Street, 2021. I laughed a lot and learned a lot in this book about music I do not follow, but did grow up with. Memoir is selection and omission. A life is an infinite series of events and decisions, the video cam as old as the author. Grohl chooses what to tell, to share, and how to connect the dots into a story. He’s the storyteller of his own life, in notes and words.