Clark Blaise. The Meagre Tarmac.
Henry, Richard M.
Clark Blaise. The Meagre Tarmac. Emeryville, Ontario. Biblioasis
(Consortium, distr.). 2011. ISBN 9781926845159
In The Meagre Tarmac, Clark Blaise adds another eleven short
stories to his two-dozen earlier books, all of which attempt to tease
out what he has called, in an early essay, "The Voice of
Unhousement" (Resident Alien, 1974), "the center of my
imagination." Given even a cursory reading of his literary output,
it would be difficult to argue that there is such a center. Most often,
the failure to secure such a center, or identity, is the result of
competing cultural values and practices. While the quest is doomed from
the outset, the joy is in watching how, in each book, this question
plays out. In The Meagre Tarmac, there is the distinct hope that a
center might be possible, but only through a reconciliation of two
desires. The desire for American romance is countered by a desire to
fulfill the familial expectations of arranged marriages and respect for
extended family models. This conflict is never resolved.
Certainly, Blaise explores in this collection an interspace between cultures, specifically in characters of the generation that
"came over" from India in the 1960s and 1970s to America to
earn their degrees and to make enough money to return, marry, and settle
comfortably within their "own" culture. Such is the plan. Most
of the men in these stories were part of the dot.com explosion and are
well off, at least financially. In all other respects, these men are
failures. The nature of these failures, however, is most often
foregrounded in their personal relationships with other characters. They
are certainly exacerbated by the cultural backgrounds, but these
failures might better be described as the result of a kind of
"restlessness." Characters continually sabotage their
relationships even when it appears they have achieved what they've
been looking for. "Man and Boy" gives a fairly blunt summation
of this problem: "I can't say it's a tragedy ... but we
had no American childhood, no Archie-and-Veronica high school romances
and no 'adolescent memories at all.'" What is telling
here is that the model of adolescence aspired to, a model of
relationships based upon romantic love, is founded in a comic strip.
The collection opens with its provisional main character,
middle-aged Vivek Waldekar, who is the poster child for a model of
success. His marriage was arranged by his family. His wife remained in
India while he made enough money to bring her and their son to the
United States, but his goal is to return to India. His relationship with
his family is guided by a sense of duty, however unsatisfying that might
be. Given his arranged marriage and his allegiance to Indian values, he
cannot even come close to the comic-strip relationship enjoyed by Archie
and Veronica.
If the women fare any better, it is because they desire neither
tradition nor stable romantic relationships. From Rebecca, a
self-described "Sally sleep-around" in "Waiting for
Romesh," and Rose, a cancer patient in "Brewing Tea in the
Dark," to Krithka, Waldekar's own wife, in "The Dimple
Kapadia of Camino Real," these women are motivated by physical
comfort, a comfort guided by their libidos. This lack of expectation on
the part of women is also found in Waldekar's thirteen-year-old
daughter, Prammy, the narrator of "In Her Prime." Her
commentary on her family and the axis of male desire is decidedly
jaded.
Blaise's characters occupy hybrid cultural spaces that are
neither here nor there, each informing the other, but without
integration or reconciliation. Each is tantalizing, but in the end,
corrupted by the possibility of the other.
Richard M. Henry
SUNY Potsdam
