The
D. J. Waldie’s book, holyland: A Suburban Memoir was written in 1995.
The book documents the development of the city Lakewood through the perspective
of the author as a city’s resident. The author describes the city’s structure,
architecture and community in details. The author writes the memoir in an
irregular time order. The memoir doesn’t follow years one after each other. The
book is consisted of 316 bits; each randomly describes different sequences at
various times. There are some pictures included in the book including scenes
from construction, culture and history of the city. The author specifically
mentions he is avoiding being sentimental. Although the author tries to be only
an observer and not get the readers involve into personal memories, the memoir
still conveys emotions and information about the characters’ lives.
The
book begins with “That evening he thought he was becoming his habits, or –even
more—he thought he was becoming the grid he knew” (1), which explains to
readers how the author is emotionally connected to his house in Lakewood. He
thinks he is part of the grid. He defines the grid as a border for the
neighborhood which distinguishes it from the other neighborhoods. The border which came first before anyone
decided to live there. Waldie describes the grid as “The grid is the plan above
the earth. It is a compass of possibility” (4). He also writes: “Seen from
above, the grid is beautiful and terrible” (4). Waldie wants to describe the
feeling of seeing the both dimensions of the grid; a home and a prison or even
he thinks the grid could be a heaven or a hell when he writes, “That grid came
from God” (22).
Waldie
writes in a descriptive language, however, he uses the elements to excite the
readers’ emotions without mentioning his own feelings directly. For instance,
he uses some of the natural and social elements to portrait his feelings about his
neighborhood when he writes: “What is beautiful here? The calling of a morning
dove, and others answering from yard to yard. Perhaps this is the only thing
beautiful here” (13). By writing about the people’s routine lives in his
community Waldie complains about the motionless and ordinary life he has in the
Lakewood. Waldie also demonstrates how a small detail –like a bird—can be
positively effective for him to enjoy his life.
The author
emphasizes sympathy in his book in several places. For instance, he presents
the connection between the housewives in the city and himself when he writes:
“In 1953, a reporter for Harper’s Magazine asked young wives living in
my suburb what they missed most. The women usually replied, ‘My mother’” (102).
Waldie had lost his mother a long before writing the book and he sees himself
connected with those women by sharing a similar story. He writes about his
mother when she was hospitalized due to a heart attack, “I said, ‘Stop
Counting, mother.’ She stopped again on three. What were they? Were they a
telephone number or a street address? They were coordinates for a map I did not
have” (23). The author deeply regrets his mother’s loss and he tries to further
understand her after her death. Waldie writes about his father’s death briefly
and he follows by describing the place his father has died in –the bathroom.
“My father died behind a well-made, wooden bathroom door. It is a three-panel
door. Each panel is nearly square, twenty-one inches wide…” (24). He completes
the story of his father’s death in the next bits and doing so he further
completes demonstrating his feelings about his father. The author mentions his
father was even older than the house he was living in when he writes “The
bathroom door is now forty-seven years old. My father was sixty-nine” (25). By
describing that, Waldie wants to further emphasize how incidents make places to
remains in his memory. He could recall all the details of the door his father
died behind and that shows how his father was important for him.
The
author writes about the story of two boys have been drowned in the flood
control channels in the bit 275. The bit starts with the description of the
channels and how they are important evacuating water from the streets of the
suburb when it rains. Waldie writes about the boys in a way one can read in the
newspaper; with showing no sorrow and empathy and that makes the bit a little
disturbing in the readers view. However, he ends the bit as it is one of his
bitter memories when he writes, “When the channels are cemented and fenced, the
frogs disappeared from them, along with the boys” (154). “The boys” Waldie
writes about can be the boys were playing in the channels before the channels
been upgraded, or he mentions the boys who were drowned in the channel. Either
way, Waldie describes his emotions from the news he remembers from the past,
something that happened and he always remembers it. The author wants to inform
the readers he is not going to see the basic water channel again, as he will
not see any other victims.
The
story is written in simple language. Waldie tries to hide his feelings in his
book. However, he made many clues available for the readers to understand his
feelings. The memoir is not empty of emotions, in fact, emotions act like the
skeleton of the book, they are not easily visible but their effects in
supporting the memoir are appreciable. It takes more time and attention to
understand emotional factors behind each bit.
Work Cited
Waldie, D.J. holy
land: a suburban memoir.
New
York: Norton, 2005. Print
