From reading the Prologue, we are introduced to a very negative view of modern society in a complicated format. The narrator uses complex phrases, metaphors, and similes that take careful thought to pull apart. One that especially appealed to me was when he said, “Thumb and cranium lucked us into our current status and we’ve traded curiosity for erosion.” I interpreted this to mean that hard work and brains have gotten us this far, but we no longer possess the curiosity it takes to maintain our greatness, and thus things will only get worse from here. These deep thoughts drifted into the first chapter of this memoir, with the mood reversing to an almost peaceful sense as the narrator describes his current location with his wife in Iowa and their circumstance of the decision to have a child. On page 14, the narrator describes this decision with, “The subject remained with us, floating like an ovum waiting for a sperm.” I found to be an extremely clever simile and pun. As the story continues, Chris finally gives in after considering himself a saboteur, a person who commits sabotage (in relation to Rita’s remaining child-bearing years), and decides to try to have a baby with his wife Rita. However, he struggles with the fear and responsibility of becoming a father throughout these beginning chapters once she finally gets pregnant and the child begins to develop. With a change in chapter, the narrator shifts the story back to when he lived in the southern Appalachia of Kentucky. While he talked about his homeland, I came across “VISTA” which is a national service program designed to fight poverty, revealing the lack of wealth where he was raised. We see that he tried to sign up for the military, but got denied, then hauled off to Manhattan, where he experiences a culture shock. He saw a “tall woman with a huge jaw” being harassed, so he ran the guy off, and followed her back. Come to find out, this “woman” was actually a guy, which rattled him for an entire week. He goes on to say, “…Appalachian men could acceptably fornicate with daughters, sisters, and livestock, but carnal knowledge of a man was a hanging offense.” I found this a bit odd, since incest and bestiality are, in my opinion, just as appalling (though I’ve always heard throughout my life that mountain people inbreed). He soon meets Jahi, who takes him on outrageous adventures and introduces him to sex. After a terrible accident involving a young boy during a leisurely horseback ride that Chris felt like he caused from prompting the horse to gallop faster, he left Jahi’s place. When she called him a couple of weeks later, he “hung up on her laughter and never saw her again.” I was surprised that he just completely dropped his only friend (and lover) that he had in Manhattan, although the circumstances seemed reasonable. This seemed to be a reoccurring action with Chris, though, as he went on to leave Manhattan for home when he broke his leg, left home again for Minneapolis, and headed back west at the end of page 53, fleeing from the prospect of marrying the twins’ cousin, Maria. Each chapter is contrasting various times in Chris’s life, and he always seems to be comparing his life to nature, floods, Daniel Boone, or anything he can think of for justification of his actions and thoughts.
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