The Key

Abstract / Prospectus for Creative Dissertation (Working Title: The Key) At thirty-two, Bradley still lusts for his fourth grade teacher. The overarching plot summary of my dissertation is Bradley’s quest to re-ignite the romantic relationship he shared with Jacqueline Clemons, his fourth grade school teacher. Beneath this primary plot, there are several other themes or sub-plots which touch upon memory and memoir, sports iconography, gender roles and community. The dissertation explores the specific memories of the protagonist, Bradley Scott. However, at a deeper level of abstraction it is about a collective memory and how we as humans and creative artist continue to grapple with, and attempt to reorder, our memories. Bradley’s story can be classified as post-racial. Although Bradley, the protagonist, is African-American; his race does not inhibit or advance his professional and social life; and race issues traditionally found in African-American literature are not addressed. Since the plot is not driven by racial issues, there is no necessity to racially mark the characters by authorial physical description. Conversely, the reader has a created space to enter the text and superimpose his imagination and any physical description or ethnicity on the characters, without impact on the story. The story is told by an omniscient narrator; but early in the manuscript we get the sense that we are experiencing most of the story (especially the memoir sections, which are narrated in first person) from Bradley’s point of view. My influences are Zora Neale Hurston for her use of imagery and language in Their Eyes Were Watching God; F. Scott Fitzgerald for his exploration of communities and the fragile dark hero in Tender is the Night; and Toni Morrison for her discussion of community and her ground-breaking use of memory as an ancillary character in Beloved. MEMORY AND MEMOIR According to Ron Eyerman, “a traumatic tear evokes a need to ‘narrate new foundations,’ which includes reinterpreting the past as a means of reconciling present/future needs” (4). How does one reconcile memory and somehow restore the imbalance caused by a tear in the foundation of identity? Writers, novelists and poets intuitively know the story is left. Writers have always known the power of their art; and through this creative work of literary memory, they reinterpret the past, and they reconcile memory, restoring the balance and identity stolen through life changing traumatic events. Memorists have a similar task. They craft their memories based on their emotion and how they remember feeling. The genre of memoir may not always be factual; but it is an authentic, personal representation. Bradley is desperately trying to reconcile his traumatic memories from his past and present life. His back story is speckled with traumatic tears. First and foremost, his relationship with his immediate family has always been strained. He finds some solace with his father’s Aunt Birdie, who dies while he is still quite young, leaving an unimaginable void in his life. Owing in part to his failed parental relationship, and Aunt Birdie’s death, he becomes the victim of a sexually abusive relationship with Jacquelyn Clemons, his fourth grade teacher. When Jacqueline abruptly ends the relationship with Bradley, the summer before he leaves for college, he is devastated and immerses himself into sports, particularly football. During a routine practice drill, Bradley is injured by one of his teammates, ending his football career. After college he marries a childhood classmate, Saadiqa, but continues to be haunted by Jacqueline’s memory. When the dissertation begins Bradley is in the midst of a difficult divorce process. According to Eyerman, the only way to heal the pain of memories, is re-remember. Bradley does this through an on-line blog, or contemporary cyberspace memoir, where he recounts memories from his past. When Bradley re-remembers, he is able to create his own memory, bringing closure to the pain he carries. In Bradley’s memories, he is not abused, he is the predator; he is not the victim, he is the victor; he remembers himself as being an almost super-human man-child able to conquer an adult. Notice how Bradley remembers an initial physical encounter in his memoir, when he becomes separated from the group on a class trip to Paris. In this passage, Bradley is an adult re-remembering and posting a memory onto his on-line blog: Jackie was walking from window to window on the opposite side of the street, looking for me inside each window, stepping into the doorway of some shops, looking for me, before quickly moving on. She moved quickly, like Chicagoans, so unlike the tourists that seemed to crawl the street. If I wanted to see Paris on my own, I needed to leave quickly. My feet did not move. Instead I watched Jackie for a moment, before my feet turned toward her. When she saw me, she let out a sigh of relief. “Bernard, you mustn’t stray from the group. Paris is still a city, just like Chicago, you must be careful. I’m responsible for you.” “I needed batteries. I want to take your picture.” Jackie looked away in the direction the group had walked, before she said, “I think we should try and meet them at Place de la Bastille. You remember your history. Well today you’ll be able to actually see where the political demonstrations that shaped France. . .” ”Can I take your picture?” I asked. “Yes,” she said without ever looking in my direction or even taking a breath or moment to think about my request. I stepped back and spread my long legs to position myself to get the best angles possible. Jackie did not move. She stood right in the doorway of one of the shops, the magazines and signage creating a colorful collage for the background. As I focused the camera, I decided to use the zoom lens. Jackie’s blouse and skirt were made from the same material with buttons down the front, of which several had been left undone at the top and the bottom. I looked at her body through the camera lens, I saw Jackie’s reflection in the glass door of the shop and there I also saw myself, standing there, looking like a man, holding the camera, wanting to capture this moment for my eternity and cursing the moment that the mirror would lift, opening the shutter and the exposing the film to the light, because at that moment, I wouldn’t be able to see Jacqueline. The interruption of her image gave me a feeling of panic and I rushed toward her. She did not move. We stood close to each other, with the camera, there between us, letting the passers-by, pushing through the shop door, nudge us closer together, until our arms brushed, confirming our chemistry, acknowledging our kinetic energy. “I don’t want to join the class.” “Why?” “I don’t want to see the historical district.” “They’ll see more than that. They’ll see Notre Dame, L’Opera and-” “Will you show me where you lived? I want to see all the places and your neighbors, you talk about. You say in class that your mother still has a house here. Can you show it to me?” I stepped in toward her again, this time purposely brushing my arm against hers. Jackie looked down the street in the direction of the class. They were not in sight. She turned toward me, looking toward my feet, never making eye contact and said, “If I show you, we can only stay a minute and then we must catch up to the group. Agreed?” “Agreed.” Bradley rose from his chair and stretched. He poured himself another cup of coffee, smiling at the memory of his first time with Jackie. It had taken him years to conquer her, but he finally had and he would again. He would be just as patient and just as methodical, but in the end, he would have her. Bradley’s blog audience is comprised of men who share his interest in older women; and women who are or will be what he calls “pink diamonds.” He regularly receives requests for more telling information about his background, upbringing and love interests. Bradley answers these questions in what is called a PDM or Pink Diamond Memory. Because of Bradley’s position as an educator, he uses an assumed name, The Diamond Miner [TDM]. He is actually mining for memories and managing the website is cathartic for Bradley. Unbeknownst to him, the website has become a form of psychological counseling therapy. His audience, which he views as people who share his same experiences and desire for older women, actually represent a support group of survivors that Bradley meets with regularly. In her essay “Memory, Creation, and Writing”, Toni Morrison explains the motivations and insights behind the creative process of writing, which she has explored over the course of forty years. The first important point she explains is that within any piece of creative writing, the writer must rely on his/her memory to stimulate his/her imagination. Morrison states clearly that within this process of recalling an event, it is the subjective emotional identification of the writer that is important; factual information is secondary and oftentimes not even desired. In her opinion, it is necessary that the writer collects fragments of his/her memory about a given event, and states that “the process by which the recollections of these pieces coalesce into a part is creation” (Morrison, p.386). This is the work that Bradley is doing through his on-line memoir; he is collecting the fragments of his memories and life and desperately trying to reassemble his identity. He needs to purge and revise, because he is imprisoned and obsessed by his memories of his childhood, Jacqueline and his own ideas of stereotypical manhood. In Morrison’s Beloved, Sethe is constantly haunted by her memories and they seem to materialize in the form of her daughter, Beloved. Her memories are simultaneously personal and collective.