Memoir, of course, is a venerable genre. It's been around a while. The
first guy to hunker down and scratch a few words in the dirt, ten to one
he was writing about himself. Here's what I saw, here's what I felt.
Judging by recent headlines, however, the breed is in the midst of taking
a beating. Poor James Frey in his million little maligned pieces, the
latest bad-assed spoiled rich kid to bleed all the way to the bank. What
is it about telling our own story that makes us want to
oversensationalize, inflate our own egos with endless puffs of hot air?
Augusten Burroughs, running with the scissors that his foster family
swears up and down were fabrications. Is it insecurity? Maybe our own
lives really aren't that important. Even here in Montana, Judy Blunt
probably should have thought twice before writing that scene about her
father-in-law going after her typewriter with a sledgehammer.
In this cynical atmosphere, the new memoir by Tom Groneberg, One
Good Horse, (Scribner, $24) is a kind of palliative. It's like running into a
buddy you haven't seen for a while, arguing about who can buy the first
round. Ostensibly the story of a novice cowboy's first foray into horse
training, it's rather more the portrait of a life, a cross-section of the
quotidian struggles that make up the human condition. Like another
instant Montana classic of memoir, Fred Haefele's Rebuilding the
Indian, Groneberg uses his narrative armature, his horse training, as an
entrée into considerably larger issues. For instance: What does it mean
to be a father, a husband, a friend? What are the duties that we bring to
our lives, and what are our rewards?
"I think, perhaps for the first time, that I should have my own horse. If I
walked out into a pasture with a halter, it would nicker and trot toward
me. I wouldn't have to decide which horse to saddle, which animal to
trust. If I had a good horse, I could give it my life. I could ride it for years.
We could grow old together. Then I would give it to Carter [his son]. His
own horse, to ride, to have, because I know I will not always be there for
him."
Superficially, it's true that the average, page-flipping and blurb-reading
browser might waffle over One Good Horse. The veneer of it is all about
karaoke bars and job hunting, mornings spent feeding out bales of hay
and an evening or two with the in-laws. Dig a little deeper, though, and
you come to see, within these familiar totems, compelling reductions of
all our days. As opposed to the over-sensationalized, truth-hedging
memoirs that now top the bestseller list, Groneberg's narrative quietly
communicates a real sense of generosity, a vision of simply doing the
best you can, making a hand out of the cards you've been dealt. It is,
more than anything else, a calm meditation on relationships: A man to
his horse, his friends, his family, his community.
Still in the midst of resetting his dials after losing both his ranch and then
his job, he writes, "Maybe I can get a colt and remember what it is I love
about being out in the west. The pieces of my life will fall into place
again and everything will make sense." Shortly thereafter, he comes
across another memoir, Teddy "Blue" Abbott's We Pointed Them North.
One of the tent poles of Montana's literary canon, Groneberg uses
WPTN as a counterpoint, describing its narrative to us in pieces, subtly
couching his own experiences in the larger, historical context of Teddy
Blue's example. Groneberg aspires to being a cowboy in a long line of
cowboys, a writer in an established tradition of western writers, and
Teddy Blue gives him a place to hitch his figurative horse. "What can't
be reclaimed is the hole in my story, the empty space on that line that
used to read 'cowboy' or 'ranch hand' or 'man with horse.' I need a new
story."
And so we've begun with these two narratives threads, first one and
then the other - Groneberg's horse training, and now Teddy Blue's tale.
We're shortly given a third: The premature birth of Groneberg's twin
sons. "I phone grandparents and deliver the news. Carter watches
cartoons. Jennifer nods off. Time disappears. In the tiny kitchen across
the hall from Jennifer's room, I raid the refrigerator for little packs of
chocolate pudding, cups of ice chips, half-sized cans of lemon-lime
soda and ginger ale. Just before dinner, I scrub my hands and put on
another gown and visit the boys again. Someone has taped a card over
each isolette, one reading Avery, the other Bennett. This is me, I think.
This is my life."
The pediatrician, "a confident doctor, reassuring, with short strawberry
blond hair and a warm smile," says, "'I'd like to do some tests on Avery."
She explains that "there is a particular crease in his palm that she is
concerned about, and that his ears seem to be set a little low on his
face." As privileged readers, we discover, together with Groneberg and
his wife, that their beautiful new son has been born with Down
syndrome. "Jennifer and I hold each other and we cry. We grieve for
Avery, for his future. Or maybe our sadness is for ourselves, for the loss
of who we thought we were. We thought it didn't matter, this notion of
perfect children. At less than a week old, Avery has been labeled,
limited, his life foreclosed on, his future told by a crease in his tiny palm."
It is a measure of the strength muscling through Groneberg's
deceptively simple prose that our hearts break right along with theirs.
In tackling memoir, it's not enough to say that one has simply lived, that
you were here next door, microwaving leftovers and filling parking
spaces. You're asking a complete stranger to spend time with your life,
after all; you need to convince them that something here is important.
Fame does the trick, á la Bill and Hillary Clinton, George Carlin.
Travelogues have wheels as well (although less so now than before,
what with all the deserts having already been explored). Harrowing
experiences (drugs, sexual abuse) and professional expertise both
usually suffice. But it is, to my mind, much more difficult to write a
compelling story out of the bare bones of the unexceptional. Here is a
view of the world from where I'm standing, and it's one I'd like to share.
A slim enough book (considering the roiling issues in the subtext), and
conversational, adept in its voice, One Good Horse is finally that rarest
of literary creations: It's true.
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