MFA

thesisThe Almighty Banjo is a novel in which the main characters, Chris and Lisa, must confront their shared past after a twenty-five year separation. Thus the narrative occurs in two different times; a weekend in the near present, and a several-year period in the distant past. In the near present Chris is occupied with the simple goal of cleaning up his house and repainting a room. This is a task that most people would face with a sense of drudgery, but for Chris, a lay-about who would prefer to live exclusively in the past, it is the most significant thing he's undertaken in decades. The project is all the more challenging for him because he is in a poor health and highly dependant on pain medication. For help with the labor he turns to his somewhat estranged daughter, Rose. While helping her father Rose depends on her mother, Lisa, for transportation, a place to stay, and help making sense of what has happened to her father. This forces Lisa to examine a time in her life which she refused to look back on for fear that she would see something she missed. As both Chris and Lisa look back on the rise and fall of their relationship they see a world ignited by the objects they remember. When they recall an object, its color, its texture, its sound, the reality of the moment is recalled in a prose that stays true to the passion and agony of those times. Be it a costume mask, a kitchen appliance, or a banjo, the remembered object contains the secret to defying the unilateral thrust of time. The twenty-five year gap that the narrative leaps across exists because of this inertia. It is what forces Chris toward his death at the end of the novel, and what forces Lisa to keep parts of herself closed. As the episodes both past and present come to life time's linear nature is challenged. It becomes easier for the characters to cope with their mistakes, their lost joy, even their deaths by ranging freely within their experience