Straight Outta Strettam
I guess that should be "Straight Outta Minot" (or at least it would be for Martha, Sarah, and Jeffrey should we all ever move out of town -- I'm not originally from North Dakota; I was born in Illinois and grew up in Florida) but since I'm using today to review the books I've read, and in the last few days I've read and finished quite a few, it works for me. Strettam, a novel by Elva McAllaster -- this is how I saw her name on the front cover, but search engines seem to go with McAllester -- about a 1,797 person town of the same name (ISBN 031026491X) just off the interstate might not seem significant, and probably isn't. But neither was Grover's Corners, the fictional setting of Thornton Wilder's play Our Town. Both the novel and the play deal with physical and spiritual struggles in the lives of the townspeople, but Strettam is more direct because it actually mentions the central players in Christianity, God the Father, Jesus Christ the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And the personification -- or would that be demonification? -- of sin. But perhaps I should let the back cover blurb speak for itself on this one.
The roadsign could have read, "Just another American town." In this novel, a cross between Thorton Wilder's Our Town and C. S. Lewis's Screwtape Letters, Elva McAllaster paints the spiritual portrait of a small American town. Strettam may seem like a sleepy little berg as you drive by on Highway 37, but it is a battleground where lives - and souls - are ultimately lost or won. The people of Strettam are strangely familiar; they experience the same temptations, loves, hates, failures, and desires that all of us do. But only the reader can go behind the scenes to see the workings of the Seven Deputies ( the sins of Pride, Envy, Wrath, Sloth, Covetousness, Gluttony, and Lechery) as a fight for the souls of the townspeople and battle Tom, George, and Dave - the town's three ministers who meet at Joe's Diner to plan their spiritual strategy. Strettam is realistic, Urbain, entertaining, touching, and always challenging, for Elva McAllaster is one of those masterly writers who, by telling a story, did tell us even more about ourselves.
I would also add a sprinkling of Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology, the book of poetry where people after they die reveal things about themselves and others that were whitewashed during life. "All, all are equal upon the hill." Really, I'm not digressing. Two weeks to our kids starting school here in Minot, it is so easy to forget that Sarah and Jeffrey ... well, ARE kids and that Martha and I don't (especially I don't) need to live out what we did not or chose not to do through them. This weekend Jeffrey talked with Martha when she asked him about not going back to Cub Scouts this year. That hurt a little (I was only in it one year myself, Jeffrey's at least been there two) but I'm beginning to understand why my mom and dad didn't push a lot on me to stay involved and committed to every activity under the sun. I complain about how much they go on their tablets whenever they're home or at my in-laws, but when you think about it is it really that much time, are they really doing nothing else?
Last night after we got home Sarah and Jeffrey are the ones who wanted to spray each other with the water hose in our backyard, and they DO run around outside when they're at Grandma and Grandpa's. Saturday afternoon they're the ones who wanted to go shoot some hoops at McKinley Elementary's playground and climb the monkey bars, so even if they're not running half-marathons every week or so, at least they're outside, we're outside and doing things. Yes I would like them reading more for we have plenty of material and all those stats come back at me about expanding their vocabulary as a result of reading -- but with Martha and I as their parents, that is truly not a problem! Shoot, they might be writing plays in a few years, like the eight reproduced in Meeting The Winter Bike Rider and Other Prize-winning Plays (ISBN 0440955483) by writers who were in the mid-1980s between the ages of ten and eighteen and got to see their plays performed in the 1983 and 1984 Young Playwrights Festivals in New York. And I have some ideas I need to start writing down for mine ...
2015 seems to be the year of discovering new works by dead authors. There's an Ayn Rand play that's also serves as a story, an upcoming J.R.R. Tolkien story, a Harper Lee novel, and -- at least these are the ones I know of -- a Dr. Seuss book, What Pet Should I Get? (ISBN 978055324260), which I got to read this through with Jeffrey while Martha was getting a haircut Sunday, and it's a fun story. Likely produced between 1958 and 1962 but lost in Seuss' files for some reason, the story follows Kay and her brother going to a pet store -- a sticking point for the commentator at the end of the book, who says PSA-like that you should get all pets from shelters, but forget that -- and being allowed by their dad to buy ONE pet, but they can't make up their minds which one they want. By the end of the book they've picked one, yet we don't get to see what they got, we just see eyes peering out of the basket! Jeffrey guessed a bunny rabbit, and I opted for a dog; a cat I cannot see getting into a closed basket without sedation, and a fish presents some obvious problems. Love the rhymes though.
Straight outta Seuss, David
The roadsign could have read, "Just another American town." In this novel, a cross between Thorton Wilder's Our Town and C. S. Lewis's Screwtape Letters, Elva McAllaster paints the spiritual portrait of a small American town. Strettam may seem like a sleepy little berg as you drive by on Highway 37, but it is a battleground where lives - and souls - are ultimately lost or won. The people of Strettam are strangely familiar; they experience the same temptations, loves, hates, failures, and desires that all of us do. But only the reader can go behind the scenes to see the workings of the Seven Deputies ( the sins of Pride, Envy, Wrath, Sloth, Covetousness, Gluttony, and Lechery) as a fight for the souls of the townspeople and battle Tom, George, and Dave - the town's three ministers who meet at Joe's Diner to plan their spiritual strategy. Strettam is realistic, Urbain, entertaining, touching, and always challenging, for Elva McAllaster is one of those masterly writers who, by telling a story, did tell us even more about ourselves.
I would also add a sprinkling of Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology, the book of poetry where people after they die reveal things about themselves and others that were whitewashed during life. "All, all are equal upon the hill." Really, I'm not digressing. Two weeks to our kids starting school here in Minot, it is so easy to forget that Sarah and Jeffrey ... well, ARE kids and that Martha and I don't (especially I don't) need to live out what we did not or chose not to do through them. This weekend Jeffrey talked with Martha when she asked him about not going back to Cub Scouts this year. That hurt a little (I was only in it one year myself, Jeffrey's at least been there two) but I'm beginning to understand why my mom and dad didn't push a lot on me to stay involved and committed to every activity under the sun. I complain about how much they go on their tablets whenever they're home or at my in-laws, but when you think about it is it really that much time, are they really doing nothing else?
Last night after we got home Sarah and Jeffrey are the ones who wanted to spray each other with the water hose in our backyard, and they DO run around outside when they're at Grandma and Grandpa's. Saturday afternoon they're the ones who wanted to go shoot some hoops at McKinley Elementary's playground and climb the monkey bars, so even if they're not running half-marathons every week or so, at least they're outside, we're outside and doing things. Yes I would like them reading more for we have plenty of material and all those stats come back at me about expanding their vocabulary as a result of reading -- but with Martha and I as their parents, that is truly not a problem! Shoot, they might be writing plays in a few years, like the eight reproduced in Meeting The Winter Bike Rider and Other Prize-winning Plays (ISBN 0440955483) by writers who were in the mid-1980s between the ages of ten and eighteen and got to see their plays performed in the 1983 and 1984 Young Playwrights Festivals in New York. And I have some ideas I need to start writing down for mine ...
2015 seems to be the year of discovering new works by dead authors. There's an Ayn Rand play that's also serves as a story, an upcoming J.R.R. Tolkien story, a Harper Lee novel, and -- at least these are the ones I know of -- a Dr. Seuss book, What Pet Should I Get? (ISBN 978055324260), which I got to read this through with Jeffrey while Martha was getting a haircut Sunday, and it's a fun story. Likely produced between 1958 and 1962 but lost in Seuss' files for some reason, the story follows Kay and her brother going to a pet store -- a sticking point for the commentator at the end of the book, who says PSA-like that you should get all pets from shelters, but forget that -- and being allowed by their dad to buy ONE pet, but they can't make up their minds which one they want. By the end of the book they've picked one, yet we don't get to see what they got, we just see eyes peering out of the basket! Jeffrey guessed a bunny rabbit, and I opted for a dog; a cat I cannot see getting into a closed basket without sedation, and a fish presents some obvious problems. Love the rhymes though.
Straight outta Seuss, David
Comments
Post a Comment