Mommy Dearest

Justin Haythe '95 weaves a gripping and emotional tale in his debut novel.

By Regan Eberhart

If you stand too close to a pointillist painting, all you see are dots, but when you step back, the overall picture emerges. Justin Haythe '95 appears to have created the literary equivalent of a pointillist canvas in his first novel, The Honeymoon (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2004). He layers detail upon detail that, taken together, form a complex, nuanced story.

The story is told by 21-year-old Gordon Garraty, an American photographer living with his new wife, Annie, in London. His short marriage is dissolving at the same time that his mother, Maureen (he always calls her Maureen), is dying of cancer. As Gordon takes stock of his life, his observations spill backwards to his childhood, which was spent traveling around Europe with his mother. Seldom does he interpret events or filter them through the context of his emotions. He functions more as a camera would, capturing the image of each moment and letting the reader determine its meaning. The singular mystery of the book is the nature of Gordon and Maureen's relationship.

A sensuous, strong-willed peripatetic, used to commanding attention and getting her way, Maureen travels incessantly to compile information for her life's work—an art guide to the most "beautiful things in the world." Her book is in a perpetual state of creation, and Gordon doubts that she'll ever finish it: "Her discipline never matched her enthusiasm. She would discuss her book as if it were a living thing ... without having done any serious writing for several months."

For years, Gordon was her companion as she toured museums, churches, and other repositories of art. They seldom stayed in one location long enough for him to finish the school year or to make friends. It is easy to see why Gordon comes across as a blank page, more of an observer than actor in his own life, since he grew up in the constant company of such a domineering parent.

One of the first things Gordon does on his own, at the age of 19, is fall in love with Annie and capture her affection. Quite inexplicably they get married after knowing each other only a short while. When Maureen and  her new Swiss fiancé take Gordon and Annie to Venice for a delayed honeymoon, the relationships among the four travelers begin to fray. For Maureen there's deep frustration in being with people who don't meet her standards; for Gordon, there's a tongue-tied anguish in watching events unfold that he is incapable of dealing with effectively. The trip climaxes in one moment of selfish cruelty, which Maureen dishes out and Gordon tries helplessly to explain away, and the honeymoon comes to an abrupt end. The reader is left wondering why Gordon couldn't have acted to save his marriage.

Author Justin Haythe is also a screenwriter. His film The Clearing, starring Robert Redford, Willem Dafoe, and Helen Mirren, was released in early July, and he was named one of Variety's top-10 new screenwriters. Haythe's film background is apparent in the novel's visual richness. Every detail seems camera ready: A mood setter—"A fan rotated, ruffling and re-ruffling papers on the desks"; a character study—"He pointed with both index fingers at the gondolas and grinned like a schoolboy who had suggested something rude"; a makeup treatment —"She wore tinted glasses. Her face had begun to slip, a small ridge of gathered flesh ran the length of her jawline."

While Haythe describes the "dots" of Gordon's life, the picture these dots create is left to the reader to decipher. Like a good painting, it has innumerable interpretations.

Also Noteworthy

Peter Decker '57, a historian and rancher, owns land in Colorado that was once part of the vast Ute nation. While repairing a fence one day, he found an arrowhead where an Indian had fashioned tools more than a century ago. Wanting to know more about the people who had preceded him, Decker went looking for answers about what happened to them. His new book, The Utes Must Go (Fulcrum Publishing, 2004), is a fascinating, well-researched account of how Anglo society removed the Ute tribes from Colorado, New Mexico, and Wyoming in the late 1800s.

Quoting from letters, newspapers, military records, and government documents of the day, Decker describes the blatant racism with which American society regarded Indians. He also provides insight into many of the people who settled the West and created and enforced Indian policy—newspaper magnate Horace Greeley, journalist and Indian agent Nathan Meeker, Colorado Governor Frederik Pitkin, Interior Secretary Carl Schurz, and others.

Because Anglo society believed it had a "manifest destiny" to conquer the continent, there were few qualms about taking the Indians' land—especially since the "savages" didn't put their land to constructive use, i.e., for farming or mining. Decker shows how the Ute tribes gradually lost their freedom as they lost their land and became more dependent on the government for sustenance. This was a planned dependence—to break them down and to create an environment in which they could be brought "out of savagery into citizenship." "Civilization" was one of the more benign threats the Utes faced, however, since newspapers and community leaders, including the governor of Colorado, campaigned actively for their "extermination."

Although the Ute tribes had lived as hunter-gatherers in the Western landscape for centuries, it took the United States less than three decades to seize most of their historical homeland and relegate them to less desirable areas in Utah.

As the atrocities of our current era indicate, the tendency to dehumanize and despoil entire groups of people is all too common. Decker's research and his unsentimental narration bring the drama of the Utes to poignant life and force us to take note of our own dishonorable history.

Children's Corner

This summer, younger children who are enthralled with vehicles will enjoy new board books written by Peter Mandel '79. Boats on the River and Planes at the Airport (Scholastic, 2004, with illustrations by Edward Miller) are bright and bold with rhyming text that describes a plethora of water and air craft. There are slow boats, sail boats, tug boats, planes with lights, planes with mail, planes dropping sky divers, and more. ... Children learning their ABCs will find fun examples, from alfalfa to zucchini, in a board book by Woody Jackson '70, A Cow's Alfalfa-Bet (Houghton Mifflin Co., 2003). The book contains 26 of Jackson's trademark colorful illustrations of cows that even adult readers delight in. … For children interested in bugs, Eliza and the Dragonfly (Dawn Publications, 2004) by Susie Caldwell Rinehart '93 is a thoughtful tale of a girl who becomes entranced by a dragonfly nymph and watches it develop over time in a pond. As the nymph transforms, Eliza develops respect for this creature that she had earlier greeted with "Eeeeewwww." The dreamlike illustrations by Anisa Claire Hovemann lend a sense of wonder to the story.

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