In the face of what is considered such a monumentally moving work of literature such as Betty Smith's "A Tree Grows In Brooklyn", I'm sure it's silly to quote a mere millionaire musician such as Jay-Z in the reflection title. Or is it? From those impoverished in pre-WWI, Great Depression Brooklyn to those still in the grind, few making out, many succumbing to the streets, there are many impressive and diverse stories to be told from the dirt. And I have to give Jay-Z his props, because when I saw the book title as I searched for more classic literature to dig my teeth into, the line to end out his amazingly poignant "Some How Some Way", one of the few redeeming moments from the otherwise drab "Blueprint Volume 2: The Gift and the Curse", stuck with me: "Still I grew, somehow I knew that the sun would shine through / And, touch my soul, take hold of my hand / Look man, a tree grows in Brook-lan". And so my adventure with Francie Nolan was stimulated into action.
My heart still feels sore from finishing the book. This has been months coming. I picked this book up last spring, but found no time to really read it. It was my first year of teaching, and not much reading got done. I made it through the first two parts and then some, about 200 pages, then abandoned it because I didn't have the attention span for a beautiful, sprawling book that had very little in the way of a traditional tension, a build toward a climax. It was just life, which also lacks the traditional plot, which makes one wonder, where did the idea of the traditional plot come from in the first place?
I digress from my ramble to go into the book, of which I read the last 300 pages in the last five days or so, the last 250 in the last two days.
This novel surrounds the life of the Nolan family living in an impoverished Brooklyn neighborhood in the 1910s. Johnny, the patriarch, a loving father, and an irresponsible drunk. Katherine, the mother, a stable, pretty, and quiet woman who's the family's glue and stability. Neeley, or Cornelius, Katie's favorite child, a curly-haired boy who reminded everyone of Johnny's better qualities. And then there's Francie, the book's protagonist, a year older than Neeley, introspective, observant, wise beyond her years, and with a true inner-toughness. You see the story primarily through her eyes despite the omnisicient narration. And through her eyes there is a somber world with so many options, but would she ever rise up like those trees in Brooklyn, the ones that popped up only in poor neighborhoods, the ones that liked poor people?
Her trials and tribulations are set forward, and I had a profound connection to the text as a teacher. I wondered quietly and out loud why the poor kids I teach day in and day out don't have the resolve of Francie Nolan. But then I realized, she had a mother who stressed education at all turns, and even though she had to pull her from school once the going got so rough that it was either charity, starvation, or one of the children working, she still reinforced that Francie would be, had to be, a completely educated and successful woman. This vow her mother held up, despite a strained and vastly unaffectionate relationship between the two of them, was the only strand of hope to hold onto throughout, and it's a hope many of my kids don't have, despite the fact that nearly all of them are more well-off than Francie would have ever dreamed at 12 or 13.
Outside of that, the sheer doggedness of Francie's character despite facing the extremeties of poor living was just inspiring. She genuinely found a way to enjoy life and have fun in the face of starvation, and not a bit of it rang false. There was no taking granted of the world. She was living truly what Thoreau had set out to create for himself in the wilderness. He divested himself of worldly possessions because he wished to, and she had no other alternative. As the book draws near its closing, Francie and Neeley admitted to one another that their new baby sister, Laurie, who was now set for the future as Katie prepared to remarry to a man of wealth, would never have the fun they did.
Truly, if this book is about anything, it is about the beauty of the struggle.
And the beauty of words. I have never, could never even conceive, painting a picture like this with words. For nearly 500 pages, Betty Smith uses the power of simplicity to paint with beautiful, multi-colored strokes of the life of her protagonist and family. There is no pretention to her prose whatsoever, it's just elegant. To prove it, I shall now open it up to a random page and find beautiful prose. Wait for it, wait for it...
Oh, oh, the description of Francie, what made her up, page 72-73...observe....
"She was made up of more, too. She was the books she read in the library. She was the flower in the brown bowl. Part of her life was made from the tree growing rankly in the yard. She was the bitter quarrels she had with her brother whom she loved dearly. She was Katie's secret, despairing weepingly. She was the shame of her father staggering home drunk."
There is much more to that section, that's just its dark side, but I think it's absolutey heart-breaking and stellar. It's hard to show in just a quote, but these words, these actue and deep observations twist you into this life of a girl growing up, and you just want to believe she makes it so badly, from being a little girl scraping up junk on the streets to buy candy and reading books on the fire escape, to the introverted book and writing junkie of pre-adolescents, to an adolescent learning the definition of truth and beauty and also the hardship of real work in the face of starvation, to...to...
Well, my heart is still sore from it all, as I've said. You don't become sympathetic for Francie ever, you don't weep for her struggles. You find that they are brilliant and necessary and you find a piece of yourself within them, and once you have connected at the deepest level, you feel that her successes and failures are your own. That's what good fiction of this nature does, and as far as coming of age stories go, well, what can I tell you? There's a reason The New York Public Library made it one of the Books of the (20th) Century, ya'know? But that's neither here nor there. Let's just say that many have been touched by this story, I'm the latest, and there are many more who are waiting in the wings, unknowingly, to be turned inside-out by Francie Nolan's somber yet triumphant story, "A Tree Grows In Brooklyn".
"It was the last time she'd see the river from that window. The last time of anything has the poignancy of death itself. This that I see now, she thought, to see no more this way. Oh, the last time how clearly you see everything; as though a magnifying light had been turned on it. And you grieve because you hadn't held it tighter when you had it everyday."
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