In this installment of Page 69,
we put Steve Himmer's Fram to the test...
OK,
Steve, set up page 69 for us.
At this point in the novel, our protagonist
Oscar has returned home from work and is alone in his apartment after his wife
texts to say she’ll be out for the evening.
What
is Fram about?
Primarily, it’s about Oscar who works in an
obscure, minor agency of the US government — the Bureau of Ice Prognostication
— where he’s responsible for creating
fake records of what was discovered on Arctic expeditions to avoid the expense
of anyone actually going. Early in the novel he gets sent on an errand to the
actual Arctic, fulfilling (in a fashion) his boyhood dream of being an
explorer, and the further north he travels the more he is pulled into a
mysterious and dangerous struggle between competing agencies and interests. But
it’s also a story about marriage, and the distance that grows over time even
between people who are close, and about the distance between the Arctic and the
southern cultures trying to force it to mean one thing or another.
Do
you think this page gives our readers an accurate sense of what Fram is about?
Does it align itself the book’s theme?
It certainly reflects the marriage part of
the story, and shows Oscar’s alienating obsession with all things Arctic, and
his inability to see the world through any other lens. It’s a quiet moment in
what is, overall, a pretty active and fast-moving novel—on purpose, because I
set out deliberately to write a novel of overwhelming momentum after my first
novel was so intentionally quiet and still.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Page 69
FRAM
They’d go months sometimes without sex or
anything like it, months without touching each other in bed, her body closed
off to him however warm she’d been over dinner, over drinks on the porch, even
on the couch a few minutes before. Some nights the result was an argument after
dark, more or less the same one every time.
Him
saying she’d changed and her saying of course she had, they were older, their
lives busier, insisting the question to ask wasn’t why she had changed but why
he had not.
And
Oscar insisting sex wasn’t the point but the effort was, her being willing to
rise above being tired, to muster some last reserve at the end of the day for
his sake. To show him he mattered that much. Once he made the mistake of
insisting that Peary’s last push at the Pole, when his team finally reached it,
wasn’t only about wanting to but about honor and debt and what partners owe to
each other, and she’d stormed from the room to sleep on the couch, mutters of
“P goddamn F,” trailing behind her and Oscar left alone in the bed, wide awake,
knowing he’d gone too far but with no route of return that didn’t lead through
the living room where his wife steamed.
Another
time he’d raised the specter of Peary’s wife Josephine and how game she always
was for adventure in the dark of their bedroom, and Julia said, “For fuck’s
sake, Oscar. There’s no North Pole in our lives. Stop trying to turn everyday
life into big, dramatic moments and important moral dilemmas. It’s not like
that. No one’s life is. That’s what we watch TV for. I’m just tired, okay?
That’s all there is to it. Some days you’re just tired and it doesn’t have to
mean anything. Now shut up and let me sleep.”
More
often the argument ended with Julia yawning, clamping down on her anger and
telling Oscar not to get so insulted, not to take it so personally, that the
last thing she wanted at the end of a long day was more expectation—she came
home to get away from demands for a few hours and to put her body aside.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Steve Himmer is author of the novels Fram, The Bee-Loud Glade, and Scratch
(coming in 2016). He edits the webjournal Necessary
Fiction and teaches at Emerson College in Boston.
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