FA's Review of Ann Beattie's Solid Wood

Doves and fire aren’t the only things coming out of those pins in Ann Beattie’s, Solid Wood.

One thing that surprises me about the first three stories of the BASS 2007 is that they all center around people over the age of 60. The female narrator of Pa’s Darling is 60. While it’s unclear who exactly the narrator is in Toga Party, the main characters are retirement age. Ann Beattie’s three of the five characters (Penny and Maurice excluded) are in their sixties.

This seems strange to me, because my impression of BASS stories is that they were more diverse. You might have a story by John Barth side by side with some up-and-coming writer. But maybe I was thinking of the Best Non-Required Reading series. Maybe that's yet to come. While Ann Beattie's Solid Wood is a really enjoyable read, I keep longing for stories about people under 40.

Nonetheless, Ann Beattie’s Solid Wood is one of my favorite stories so far. The narrator, Jake, recalls a vacation to Key West with his sickly sister, Doris. While there, he visits Clemmie, the also sickly widow of Jacob Foxx Greer, Jake’s Raymond Carver-like writer/mentor/colleague. Greer’s biography is coming out and one item of his life that is not included is that Doris and Greer had an affair and a son together, which was given up for adoption.

When Jake first visits Clemmie, he runs into her daughter, Penny. As a young girl, Jake once saved Penny from drowning after she fell through some ice. It seems hard for Jake to reconcile the little girl with the woman who responds to his social call with sarcasm and bitterness.

Doris, Jake, Clemmie, and Penny all meet to see a magic show by the son of one of Clemmie’s friends, Maurice the Magnificent. Doris becomes part of the act, examining some of the magician’s pins and stating that they are solid wood. In reality, doves and flames shoot out of them. The group then goes to dinner and at the end of the night, Jake wonders, “Is it too late to rethink things?”

To me, this story seems like the main character is gazing into the looking glass. On one side he sees Clemmie, the wife of his beloved mentor, and Penny, a young girl who in some ways he cared for like a daughter. On the other side, he sees Doris and her lost son (Maurice?). The pivotal point of the glass is Greer, a man who Beattie conveys as a self-centered artist who had it all and then went off for more (the narrator even mentions an affair with a young man).

The tragedy of this story is the narrator. There’s no allusion to his wife or children. He mentions a book that never went anywhere. The things that were solid wood in his life were nothing but hollowed out compartments for Greer’s manipulation. Jake is the one who cleaned up after Greer’s life and quite literally, picks up the bill (Penny’s bitterness, the lost opportunity to ever know his nephew) at the end. So when he asks if it’s too late and Doris replies, “What things need to be rethought so late at night?”, it’s clear he’s the last one to realize it.