“You need to remember artifice,” she says. “Art isn't a hawk making lazy circles in the sky. Beauty doesn't equal art, and it can't just be the world in a package. It's got to take the world and mess it up some. Add the artifice as a lens, right?”This one Christmas, Kyler took a gift certificate from a local record store, sealed it in an envelope, and then put it into an old cd case from which he had removed the cover art (I know that HMV eventually sold empty jewel cases for just this purpose, but this was a totally original idea at the time; I'm serious that this was long enough ago that we're not just talking about actual cds, but a paper gift certificate). Wrapping it in shiny paper and affixing a bow, when he gave it to our other brother Ken on Christmas morning, Ken's sarcastic reaction was: “Oh gee, I wonder what this is?” Unwrap, unwrap, sees envelope. “Oh, not a cd. You got me.” Opens envelope and finds gift certificate. “Oh, it kind of is a cd. You really got me.” Reading Mr. Splitfoot is exactly that same experience: You're presented with a shiny package; you're familiar with the format and are intrigued to find out the details. Once you get inside, however, you realise that you've been dealing with a conman and things aren't exactly as they appear. And then you dig a little deeper and realise you've been the victim of a long con and all the middle stuff was misdirection. Do you find that delightful? An artful artifice? To me, where the book is concerned, the payoff wasn't worthy of the intriguing setup and I left disappointed. This will contain spoilers.
Mr. Splitfoot is told in alternating timelines. In the first, we meet the residents in the Love of Christ! foster home; a sham religious setup where the children are starved and abused, forced to wear Amish homespun, and homeschooled in racism and misinterpreted scripture. After her older sister “aged out” when Ruth was only five, the little girl formed a fast bond with the newest foster brother, Nat (also five), and the two vow to be “sisters” forevermore, sleeping platonically in the same twin bed well into their teens. Nat discovers that he can speak with the dead, and the scenes where they retreat to the basement coal bin to contact the mothers of the foster home's orphans were suitably creepy:
“No. Shh.” He bobs his head from side to side, clearing the air of her question. Mid-bob, he freezes. Their grip tightens. The house groans. A disturbed and breathy voice comes from Nat's mouth. “Got any more candy?” Mr. Splitfoot sounds sexy.
“Who are you?”
Nat leans into her, inhaling like an animal. She feels the brush of his soft stubble on her cheek. Then quickly, in her ear. “Who do you think, you filthy?”In the second story arc – it's something like fifteen years after the latest events of the first timeline – we meet Cora; the grown daughter of Ruth's older sister. Cora lives a shallow life, obsessed with social media and internet shopping, and when she discovers that she's pregnant, her married lover is none too happy. One night, Cora finds Ruth (whom she met only once, when Nat and Ruth first left the foster home) hiding in her room, and despite the fact that Ruth refuses to speak, Cora understands that they have an urgent mission, and without a word to her mother, Cora sets off on a months-long journey, travelling the length of the Erie Canal by foot. This section also gets creepy:
When I see him outside the school in his leather coat and sunglasses, I welcome the experience of familiarity. But then I see Ruth's face. Her eyes follow every step he takes. I close the book. She watches him rattle the chains of the padlock, bang his cane against the doors, as if we are the last nuts in a jar he'll shake until we fall into his hardened hand.The two timelines eventually converge and all is made clear ***spoiler*** And this is where my metaphor of the cd case comes in: Although we understand that Ruth is only pretending to be psychic, the reader believes that Nat is channeling Mr. Splitfoot, but that's revealed to be a lie. So there's nothing supernatural here, BUT WAIT: In the second timeline, Ruth was a ghost all along, trying to make things right from beyond the grave. Is that a delightful ending or a cheat? It didn't work for me ***end spoiler***. So much of this book's promise just didn't deliver. I was immediately intrigued by the idea that Nat and Ruth vowed to be “sisters” forever; what's that about? And then when there's a story about three sisters from upstate New York who pulled off a psychic con a hundred years ago and then when someone asks Ruth where her “third sister” was, I thought, “Oooh, something good will happen when 'three sisters' get together; that's why a boy needs to be thought of as a 'sister'.” But, no; none of that means anything. I was intrigued early on when everyday things were referred to by their scientific names (“Ruth scratches her fingers across the Stachybotrys chartarum mold growing on the stone walls” or “In summer Drosophila melanogaster breed in the compost pile”) and I wondered why these undereducated kids would be thinking in these terms (it made me think of the arcane, like wolfsbane and mandrake root and witches' brews), but nearly as soon as I noted it, this stopped. I was fascinated by the idea of a megalomaniac who wanted to start a church based on a blend of Joseph Smith and Carl Sagan – there's a beautiful symmetry between the founder of the Latter Day Saints discovering the golden tablets of heavenly knowledge buried in New York state and Voyager being sent into space with the golden LPs that contained all that's terrestrial – but despite this premise (and the map of the meteorites that resembles Ruth's scar and whackos snorting Comet for goodness sake), there's simply no payoff if everyone's a conman.
Mr. Splitfoot really didn't work for me, despite some engaging parts; which is surprising because I picked it up after skimming so many gushing reviews. Another story: It may even have been the same Christmas, and my brothers were hanging out, watching TV together. Kyler noted that he could really use something to eat, but didn't know what. Ken said, "What about a Toblerone?" When Kyler said that that was exactly what he felt like, Ken said, "Well, here you go." and he tossed one over. Kyler was so excited and so grateful that his disappointment was crushing when he opened the Toblerone box and found it empty. Forever after in our family, being conned has been known as "getting Tobleroned". Perhaps this is the better metaphor for Mr. Splitfoot: perhaps the package is simply empty and I was Tobleroned after all. This seems like a book that will totally come down to personal taste. Not for me, maybe for you.
The other night, Lolo was saying that she loves when she's reading what she thinks are random books and they all seem to follow and expand on some similar theme. I noted that I thought it was odd that the last three books in a row that I read had mentioned Proust, and then the next day, Mr. Splitfoot had a throwaway line about St. Titus and that made me sit up and notice because "Titus" had been such an important character in The Sea, the Sea. And then there was the quote I opened with:
“You need to remember artifice,” she says. “Art isn't a hawk making lazy circles in the sky. Beauty doesn't equal art, and it can't just be the world in a package. It's got to take the world and mess it up some. Add the artifice as a lens, right?”Which I thought was totally analogous to this quote I had selected from Answered Prayers the other day:
As truth is nonexistent, it can never be anything but illusion – but illusion, the by-product of revealing artifice, can reach the summits nearer the unobtainable peak of Perfect Truth. For example, female impersonators. The impersonator is in fact a man (truth), until he recreates himself as a woman (illusion) – and of the two, the illusion is the truer.Yes, yes, I suffer from magical thinking and put too much stock in synchronicity, but the following was the weirdest thing. On facebook the other day, the DJ from my local radio station posted something like: In my family, this was called a One-eyed Jack, but I just learned that my friend's Mom called it a Toad in a Hole. What do you all call it?
And despite me never knowing that there was any alternate name for what is obviously a Toad in a Hole, tons of people responded with their own family nicknames for it. Then, in Mr. Splitfoot, there's this scene which is apropos of absolutely nothing:
"One-eyed Jack? One-eyed Susan?" Mr. Bell asks.
Ruth looks confused.
"Toast with a Tummy?" No idea.
"Bulls'-Eye? Egyptian Eye? Rocky Mountain Toast? Camel's Eye? Lighthouse Eggs? Hobo Eggs? Egg in a Hat? Egg in a Nest? Knotholes? Hocus-Pocus? Man in a Raft? Frog in a Pond? Bird in a Basket? Chick in a Well?"
She sips her juice suspiciously.
Mr. Bell drops his hands from his hips. He turns back to the stove, flips something in the fry pan, dishes it onto a plate, and presents it to Ruth.
She takes a bite and with a mouth full says, "You mean Toad in a Hole." Mr. Bell slaps his forehead. "Exactly. Coffee?"There's no reason at all for that scene, and if the point of synchronicity is to make me pay attention and realise that I was led here for a reason, then reading the book wasn't a total waste of time (and believe me, I know how flakey that makes me sound.) The bits about the conman's church and the Book of Ether really was fascinating to me, so maybe that was the part I'm supposed to remember. Maybe there has been more artifice at play than I realise.
