Carolyn Parkhurst - The Nobodies Album

ALSO BY CAROLYN PARKHURST

The Dogs of Babel
Lost and Found

To my father,

who taught me how to tell a story

There are some stories no one wants to hear. Some stories, once told, wont let you go so easily. Im not talking about the tedious, the pointless, the disgusting: the bugs in your bag of flour; your hour on the phone with the insurance people; the unexplained blood in your urine. Im talking about narratives of tragedy and pathos so painful, so compelling, that they seem to catch inside you on a tiny hook you didnt even know youd hung. You wish for a way to pull the story back out; you grow resentful of the very breath that pushed those words into the air. Stories like this have become a specialty of mine.

It wasnt always that way. I used to think my goal should be to write the kind of story everyone wanted to hear, but I soon learned what a fools errand that was. I found out there are better ways to get you. I wish I hadnt read it, a woman wrote to me after she finished my last novel. She sounded bewildered, and wistful for the time before shed heard what I had to say. But isnt that the pointto write something that will last after the book has been put back on the shelf? This is the way I like it. Read my story, walk through those woods, and when you get to the other side, you may not even realize that youre carrying something out that you didnt have when you went in. A little tick of an idea, clinging to your scalp or hidden in a fold of skin. Somewhere out of sight. By the time you discover it, its already begun to prey on you; perhaps its merely gouged your flesh, or perhaps its already begun to nibble away at your central nervous system. Its a small thing, whatever it is, and whether your life will be better for it or worse, I cannot say. But somethings different, something has changed.

And its all because of me.

The plane rises. We achieve liftoff, and in that mysterious, hanging moment I say a prayeras I always doto help keep us aloft. In my more idealistic days, I used to add a phrase of benediction for all the other people on the airplane, which eventually stretched into a wish for every soul who found himself away from home that day. My goodwill knew no boundsor maybe I thought that the generosity of such a wish would gain me extra points and thereby ensure my own safety. But I stopped doing that a long time ago. Because, if you think about it, when has there ever been a day when all the worlds travelers have been returned safely to their homes, to sleep untroubled in their beds? Thats not the way it works. Better to keep your focus on yourself and leave the others to sort themselves out. Better to say a prayer for your own wellbeing and hope that today, at least, youll be one of the lucky ones.

Its a short flight: Boston to New York, less than an hour in the air. As soon as the flight attendants can walk the aisles without listing too much, theyll be flinging pretzels at our heads in a mad effort to get everything served and cleaned up before were back on the ground, returned to the world of adulthood, where were free to get our own snacks.

I have on my tray table, displayed rather importantly, as if it were a prop in a play no one else realizes is being performed, the manuscript of my latest book, The Nobodies Album. This is part of my ritual: theres my name, emblazoned on the first page, and if my seatmate or a wandering crew member should happen to glance over and see itand if, furthermore, that name should happen to have any meaning for themwell, then theyre free to begin a conversation with me. So far, its never happened.

The other rite I will observe today concerns what I will do with this manuscript once I arrive in New York. This neat stack of white and black, so clean and tidyyoud never know from looking at it what a living thing it is. Its heft is satisfyingIll admit that to hold its weight in my hands gives me a childish feeling of Look what I did!but the visuals are disappointing. Look at it and youll see nothing more than a pile of paper; theres no indication of the blood that circulates through the text, the gristle that holds these pages together. This is why, when it comes time to surrender a new book to my publisher, I make it a rule to do it in person; I want to be sure no one forgets the humanity of this exchange. No e-mail, no overnighting, no couriers; I will carry my book into those offices, and I will deliver it to my editor, person to person, hand to hand. Ive been doing it since I finished my second novel, and I have no intention of stopping now. It makes for a pleasant day. I will have a fuss made over me; I will be taken to lunch. And when I leave, I will keep my eyes turned forward so I wont see the raised eyebrows and the looks exchanged, the casual toss that will land my manuscript in the exact place a mailroom clerk would have dropped it had I saved myself all this trouble. My idiosyncrasies are my right, and as long as everyone does me the courtesy of not mocking them to my face, well all get along fine.

Not that any of these people has ever been anything less than lovely to me. I suppose Im a little more attuned to these kinds of thoughts today, because I know that there have been a few questions about the book Im turning in. This book is different from anything Ive done in the past; in fact, Im going to puff myself up a little bit and say that its different from anything anyone has done in the past, though there isnt a writer alive who hasnt thought about it. The Nobodies Album isnt a novel, though every word of it is fiction. Do you see me talking around it now, building up the suspense? Can you hear the excitement creeping into my voice? Because what Ive done here is nothing short of revolutionary, and I want to make sure the impact is clear. What Ive done in this book is to revisit the seven novels Ive published in the last twenty years and rewrite the ending of each one. The Nobodies Album is a collection of every last chapter I have ever writtenor at least every one that made it into a book available for public consumption; even I drew the line at rewriting the ending of the unpublished novel thats been sitting in a box in my basement since 1992. But it contains all of the others, each one tweaked and reshaped into something completely new. Can you imagine what happens when you rewrite the ending of a book? It changes everything. Meaning shifts; certainties are called into question. Write seven new last chapters and all at once you have seven different books.

It wont be a thick volume; its barely a hundred pages. More a companion piece than anything else, intended not to take the place of the original endings but to set alongside them as a bookend. From my perspective, its an opportunity to take a tour of old haunts. See how they look now that the world and I have moved on to another vantage point.

Its possible, though, that not everyone sees the beauty of this idea as clearly as I do. When I first mentioned my plans to my agent and my editor, they were not entirely enthusiastic. People love your books the way they are, they both told me in their own separate, ass-kissing ways. Readers might get angry at you for messing with these novels they care about so deeply. Oh, they were so concerned, so solicitous of me and my legions of fans It was almost enough to make me reconsider.