Yellowing Pages #3
Is it better to be obvious or a cliché? Is there a difference? These are the questions that scream most loudly to me when I consider Heather Lewis and her work, particularly her final novel Notice. Simply, I think being obvious is preferred to being a cliché, and there is a difference but it’s subtle. Subtle would be a great way to describe Notice. Though written in first person, the story unfolds rather than being told. And the unfolding slow pace is almost tortuous because this book takes you to places so empty and so devoid of light that describing them as dark seems trite. Cringe worthy more aptly describes this tale from start to finish.
Victim literature, particularly in modern fiction, has become cliché. Perhaps the only more prevalent cliché is the author serving as subject of such stories. Notice like Lewis’ first novel House Rules, contains elements of her life and interests and struggles. But while other authors fictionalize their own lives with color and flair, Notice’s brilliance come in the quiet and the gray. The author conveys tales of being raped and illicit drug use with such a lack of emotion; it’s hard to believe the reader could form any connection to the work or writer. And yet such concerns are unwarranted because within Notice’s first few pages of the reader is fully invested and coursing with empathy.
Notice was posthumously released. Lewis wrote this book as a follow up to House Rules, a novel also rife with drug use, dysfunction and abuse. Notice carried on in this tradition but where House Rules seemed to ease the reader into the muck, Notice jumped head first into the pool of dirt and shame and pain without pretence or warning. To Lewis fans this progression and logical continuation of what was found in House Rules offered an exciting literary prospect. The publishing world didn’t share this enthusiasm, however, rejecting this darker and even more unapologic work.
In response to this rejection Heather Lewis reworked Notice, transformed her manuscript into a noir crime novel featuring a strong female detective trying to take down a powerful man for rape. The Second Suspect was more acceptable to publishers, as depravity had consequences and there was responsibility for actions including an ending that tied things up into a neat package. Moreover the prospective changed from detached, brutalized survivor, as found in Notice, to that of the objective, professional detective. I wonder though how much of an insult this was to Heather Lewis the writer … the artist.
Heather Lewis ended her life before Notice could be published in its intended form, after nearly ten years and considerable efforts by her supporters. Given her suicide and bent for producing “authentic” art, it is hard to read Notice as anything more than a veiled chronicle of Lewis’ downfall. Maybe that is all the novel needs to be. I guarantee that anyone who reads this book will find it to be more of an experience than a novel. The prose draws you in and you feel as though you are walking along side the main character, albeit in cement shoes, as she details all the depravity in her world and her sizable contribution to it. Like the proverbial train wreck you can’t look away from, Notice mesmerizes the reader and even if you want to stop reading it, you can’t.
The language the author uses is so stripped down it is hard to believe any notion or detail could be conveyed. However in the sparseness of words an even more intense experience develops. There is not a letter wasted and so everything has extraordinary meaning. The way the author describes the unimaginable with such nonchalance and self-awareness could render her words flippant and bare. However this is not the result. Instead each indignity and measure of destructiveness and destruction suffered by the main character resonates with such power you just want it to end. At the same time the contemplation of such a merciful stoppage also leaves the reader panicking because they know they will never have a literary experience like this again.
Notice unfolds around the narrator, a teenager called Nina. She informs us that this is not her real name, just the name she uses. We never find out her real name or where her family is, just that she lives in her parents’ house and they are out of town for awhile. Absent those little missing details we find out plenty about Nina’s life. We learn that she turns tricks in the parking lot of a commuter train station parking lot and that she does it for reasons beyond merely the money. After all Nina also has a real job, though we never learn what that is either.
Her activities progress and she eventually starts hanging around a bar and going home with men. Ultimately she goes home with a sadomasochistic man named Gabriel, who we later learn sexually abused and murdered his own daughter. Nina ends up a player in a twisted game involving Gabriel and his wife Ingrid. Nina forms a strong bond and relationship with the long suffering and equally damaged Ingrid. This sets in motion an even more disturbing series of events including Nina’s arrest and eventual commitment to a psychiatric ward.
In an ordinary story Nina’s commitment would be the climax and set the path to resolution, perhaps even redemption, and the end. This is not an ordinary story however. The reader is instead exposed to endless examples of humanity treating its fellow members with a disturbing disregard. Throughout the unsettling descriptions about her life Nina also has comes to revelations about her life, generally these notions do not lead to some path of improvement just further resignation: “I thought this was always my job-to make people see something ugly inside. Take them to a place in themselves they didn’t want to go, but had to. Let them do this through me and then let them discard me, discount me. Later on making them pay me, never seeing how I paid for this too.”
Nina forms another unhealthy relationship with Beth, her counselor in the psychiatric ward. Generally Nina finds herself attracted to older women, perhaps seeking a mother or savior; however these women also seem to be suffering from some form of dysfunction. Additionally Nina’s involvement with these women and their attempts to help her always result in more disaster and chaos in Nina’s life. Beth gets Nina released from the psychiatric ward and it is only a matter of time before Nina returns to that most familiar, turning tricks.
Nina suffers another rape and something that is so soul stealing and dismissive of dignity and physically intrusive, it will haunt the reader long after completing the book. In the end Nina acknowledges that all her misdeeds and mistakes have been about achieving a feeling of nothingness. It is almost incredible to realize that Nina’s life choices have been about such extreme suffering just so she could reach complete emptiness. Throughout the story you feel like you are trying to walk underwater to reach some much needed air, but you are moving against the current and movement proves difficult, yet you continue to try. As you read Nina’s final observation - “with that slumber taking me over, and then taking me under, I knew that leviathan thing slept this same darkness. Lay with me too. Resting, bidding its time” - you realize that resurfacing is impossible.
The afterword to Notice was written by novelist and Heather Lewis’ mentor Allan Gurganus. He writes fondly about the young author he knew and directly about the demons she faced. He confirms the autobiographical elements of Notice: “She made the fall her subject. She choreographed it over and over, both on and off the page.” Gurganus’ afterword also lends credibility to the reading of this novel as a suicide note of sorts, though as earlier stated, Notice was to be Lewis’ second novel. Gurganus writes: “Has a book ever been more convincingly it’s writer’s last? … Its final pages are nearly unendurable in their quiescent acceptance of defeat. Here the void is rampant, flying it’s national banner: Surrender’s white flag. By then there is no law, no posse, no hope, no lasting form of love that can quite save our heroine.” Notice is obvious in its chronicle of someone reaching their end. This novel is obvious notice of Heather Lewis’ sad resignation from her toils in life and art. The brilliance of the delivery of this notice makes it clear, it is far better to be obvious than a cliché.
