Book Report: Tumble Home

59. Amy Hempel, Tumble Home: A Novella and Short Stories (1997) (11/23/21)

Amy Hempel is a minimalist, a weaver not of grand plots but of small, sometimes seemingly random details—of texture and feeling, unique voices and leaps of thought. There is a zen, in-the-moment quality to many of the stories in this short collection. I enjoyed it. 

The short stories are often very short (one, "Housewife," is a single sentence: 43 words). They narrate various versions of "home," some happy, some less so, some in process of becoming or dissolving, all reflective of the various faces that home can have. The title novella, a little over half of the book, has the greatest substance: consisting of a letter written by the resident of a psychiatric home to a famous painter whom she once had tea with, it flits from thought to thought, life event to life event, and introduces various characters, including several other residents (or "guests") of the home as well as the letter-writer's mother, also a painter, who committed suicide. The fragmented, more or less random nature of the letter made it a bit hard for me to piece together the details (e.g., how old was the letter-writer when her mother died?), but I was impressed with the kaleidoscope of a life that was presented. It felt consonant with a person "on the verge"—of sanity or insanity, of life or death, the letter-writer herself having flirted with the idea of suicide but finally, it seems, opting in favor of life. The naked honesty of the letter-writer is admirable. Here's how "Tumble Down" itself begins, the first full section:

I have written letters that are failures, but I have written few, I think, that are lies. Trying to reach a person means asking the same question over and again: Is this the truth, or not? I begin this letter to you, then, in the western tradition. If I understand it, the western tradition is: Put your cards on the table.
     This is easier, I think, when your life has been tipped over and poured out. Things matter less; there is the joy of being less polite, and of being less—not more—careful. We can say everything.
     Although maybe not. Like in fishing? The lighter the line, the easier it is to get your lure down deep. Having delivered myself of the manly analogy, I see it to be not a failure, but a lie. How can I possibly put an end to this when it feels so good to pull sounds out of my body and show them to you. These sounds—this letter—it is my lipstick, my lingerie, my high heels.
     Writing to you fills the days in this place. And sometimes I long for days when nothing happens. "Not every clocktick needs a martyr."

I was amused to find, in the random musings, a reference to the poll I wrote about the other day right here: 

. . . I imagine what kind of woman you like. A woman who contains a series of surprises? There are clues in the women you have had, though the thought of asking you what you like is like the team of artists who hired a marketing firm to find out what Americans want in a painting. The artists painted the result of the poll which found that what we want is a blue painting the size of a dishwasher with a biblical figure and landscape.

She took a few liberties there, but the gist is correct.

The title of the novella is explained thus:

Tumble home. It's a shipbuilding term I learned from Warren [a fellow "guest"]. It's the place on a ship that is, if I understand him, the widest part of the bow before it narrows to cut through water—it is the point where the water parts and goes to one side of the ship or the other. To me, the tumble home is the place where nothing can touch you.

Perhaps we all need a tumble home. And a reminder to cherish tiny moments of pleasure, revelation, or grace.