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Dicey's Song (Voigt)
Nth reread. I have posts on Thick as Thieves, All the Birds in the Sky, and Carry On, Mr. Bowditch in the queue, but then ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
mildred_of_midgard found several interesting cross-references between The Runner and Seventeen Against the Dealer (thank you for telling me about these!) and one thing led to another and now I'm in the throes of a massive Tillerman reread. Maybe I'll even get through Homecoming this time, although so far it's not looking promising… I have a plan, though!
In my reading Dicey's Song this time around, the theme of holding on and letting go is even more explicitly prominent than I remembered — but, you know, now that I think about it, this theme echoes and re-echoes throughout the cycle. In Runner, in Come a Stranger, in Sons from Afar… all of the books, I think, really, are about letting go of the things you have to, and holding on to the things you love, and how those things are tangled up together and sometimes are the same thing.
And I noticed on my last reread that the cycle's overarching theme (or one of them) is family, and this book is about the family that figures itself out, how it figures itself out, and is the one most explicitly about what it means to be a family.
I think this book is in many ways the thesis statement for the entire cycle.
And oh my goodness the resonances… I think Voigt must have had all these characters fully realized in her head from the very beginning. Jeff cites his father quoting Tolstoy about how unhappy families are all unhappy in their own way… setting up that exploration of family. And the Chesapeake Bay, which is its own character who really comes into its own in Solitary Blue. And the farm, which emerges as a character (asmildred_of_midgard noted).
And boats and music, both as motifs and representative of… what is the boat representative of? Freedom? Independence? Connection? I think all those things at one time or another. Boats are… a really big deal in this cycle. I think every book has a boat playing a somewhat central role. Oh no, wait, not Come a Stranger, I think? Which may mean something as well... Anyway. This book begins with Dicey sinking a boat (…Bullet's old boat, right? So it's its own character too?), then the rest of the book involves her working on it, and what it means that she's able to or not able to work on it. Interestingly, where Dicey is concerned it seems to be the process that symbolizes to us what's going on, not the result (as it might be in the hands of another writer). Dicey doesn't finish the boat, and that means something because the reason she doesn't finish it is because she' busy holding on. (HM. Bullet finished his boat. He was letting go, and not holding on to anything. HMM. Runner is probably the key to this whole cycle.) And then there's the failure in Seventeen… I think it will be much more interesting to look at that, this time out.
I don't know what music means exactly in these books, except that it's a way throughout the cycle that people are drawn together, that people in these books strengthen families and create found families. Interestingly… I think (?) the only book devoid of music entirely is The Runner, and even that one has poetry as a way to (sort of) connect.
And other things… Gram gets a phone. The same phone she threw at the phone company in Runner, when she became for all intents and purposes alone, and liked it that way (well, I guess, at least after her husband died; I don't imagine it was very comfortable until then, but from what she says in this book, she might have found her own meaning in that as well). She gets it explicitly because she has children in the house. So the phone, itself a means of communication, becomes representative of Gram's willingness to communicate, her connection, her reaching out.
(Geez, I want more fic about Gram. She learned all these lessons, slowly and painfully, that she's telling to Dicey in this book. What was it like for her?)
And the scene in the wood shop never fails to break me down. I'm just always a crying mess after reading that one.
mildred_of_midgard found several interesting cross-references between The Runner and Seventeen Against the Dealer (thank you for telling me about these!) and one thing led to another and now I'm in the throes of a massive Tillerman reread. Maybe I'll even get through Homecoming this time, although so far it's not looking promising… I have a plan, though!In my reading Dicey's Song this time around, the theme of holding on and letting go is even more explicitly prominent than I remembered — but, you know, now that I think about it, this theme echoes and re-echoes throughout the cycle. In Runner, in Come a Stranger, in Sons from Afar… all of the books, I think, really, are about letting go of the things you have to, and holding on to the things you love, and how those things are tangled up together and sometimes are the same thing.
And I noticed on my last reread that the cycle's overarching theme (or one of them) is family, and this book is about the family that figures itself out, how it figures itself out, and is the one most explicitly about what it means to be a family.
I think this book is in many ways the thesis statement for the entire cycle.
And oh my goodness the resonances… I think Voigt must have had all these characters fully realized in her head from the very beginning. Jeff cites his father quoting Tolstoy about how unhappy families are all unhappy in their own way… setting up that exploration of family. And the Chesapeake Bay, which is its own character who really comes into its own in Solitary Blue. And the farm, which emerges as a character (as
mildred_of_midgard noted). And boats and music, both as motifs and representative of… what is the boat representative of? Freedom? Independence? Connection? I think all those things at one time or another. Boats are… a really big deal in this cycle. I think every book has a boat playing a somewhat central role. Oh no, wait, not Come a Stranger, I think? Which may mean something as well... Anyway. This book begins with Dicey sinking a boat (…Bullet's old boat, right? So it's its own character too?), then the rest of the book involves her working on it, and what it means that she's able to or not able to work on it. Interestingly, where Dicey is concerned it seems to be the process that symbolizes to us what's going on, not the result (as it might be in the hands of another writer). Dicey doesn't finish the boat, and that means something because the reason she doesn't finish it is because she' busy holding on. (HM. Bullet finished his boat. He was letting go, and not holding on to anything. HMM. Runner is probably the key to this whole cycle.) And then there's the failure in Seventeen… I think it will be much more interesting to look at that, this time out.
I don't know what music means exactly in these books, except that it's a way throughout the cycle that people are drawn together, that people in these books strengthen families and create found families. Interestingly… I think (?) the only book devoid of music entirely is The Runner, and even that one has poetry as a way to (sort of) connect.
And other things… Gram gets a phone. The same phone she threw at the phone company in Runner, when she became for all intents and purposes alone, and liked it that way (well, I guess, at least after her husband died; I don't imagine it was very comfortable until then, but from what she says in this book, she might have found her own meaning in that as well). She gets it explicitly because she has children in the house. So the phone, itself a means of communication, becomes representative of Gram's willingness to communicate, her connection, her reaching out.
(Geez, I want more fic about Gram. She learned all these lessons, slowly and painfully, that she's telling to Dicey in this book. What was it like for her?)
And the scene in the wood shop never fails to break me down. I'm just always a crying mess after reading that one.
no subject
The only way I can achieve anything like any kind of interweaving is to go back and forth through the different parts and insert and delete references and smooth them out. I can't just start at part one and work my through a series and have echoes and foreshadowing and different perspectives. She must have had a *lot* of this worked out, in her head if not on paper, before publication.
Oh, I know, right? Either she must have written the entire thing before publishing (unlikely), or everything was so clear to her that it was mapped out in her head as a unified whole. I don't even know how that works on the level she did it in these books! I am with you, that is the only way I can do it as well. I think the longest I've ever managed is 10k or so :P
So there are two boats
Ah, thanks for clearing up the boat thing for me! I knew it was confusing me, but not quite why :)
Runner has a theme of builders and breakers, and Johnny is a builder in this classification scheme. Bullet and his mother are breakers. (Sammy the younger as builder, hmm.)
OH. This… makes so much sense. And it's sort of ironic, too: Johnny is a builder who breaks all his family ties. I will have to think about this some more. Is Sammy a builder? He likes to help Dicey, but I'm not sure that he is natively a builder… I am going to have to think about this one. I am betting this is something that might show up elsewhere, too.
Wow, I don't think anyone had to teach Dicey to reach out.
Dicey is interesting. I feel like she has no trouble reaching out sometimes, and other times (Mina, Jeff) she's a ball of prickles. Maybe family is easier for her? It's odd to me, though, that she reaches out to Cisco in Seventeen. I am seriously looking forward to that one, for the first time.
Even that has Bullet remembering Liza singing, constantly. Neither he nor his mother can produce music, but they both seem emotionally connected to it. And there is the scene where Bullet enjoys square dancing. So it's there a little bit.
Oh, I really like that, that makes me think… Bullet, and his mother, were connected to Liza, but then she left, and there's no music any more… hmm! I don't have the book right with me (I'm out of town) but in Dicey's essay, doesn't she talk about how Liza doesn't have any songs any more at the end?
I do think you're right about there not being a boat in Come a Stranger. I'll have to think about that.
I have a whole theory about why there's no boat in Stranger! My theory involves the boats being a locus for cutting ties with others. Dicey holds on to her family and doesn't finish her boat in Song. Bullet gives a boat to his mother in the process of letting go of his family. Jeff's journeys in his boat reflect his increasing alienation from his parents. Dicey;s boat-building takes over her relationship with everyone in Seventeen. Heck, Francis Verricker sails away from his family! And who is the only major character who is emotionally healthy and doesn't go through a period of cutting ties with family? Mina, that's who!
His old man was a nothing, nothing but right answers and holding on to his precious farm.
Ohhhh, that quote about Grandfather Tillerman holding on in Runner, that's very interesting. He's holding on, but to something inanimate, the land, which is something worth holding on to but not at the expense of people, which is what he's done.
no subject
I know, right? Where have you been my whole life?!
I am with you, that is the only way I can do it as well. I think the longest I've ever managed is 10k or so :P
I'm kind of finishing up a 450,000-word fanfic series that's not nearly as good as Voigt's, and the only way I've been able to do it at all has been by doing the whole thing all at once. However she did it, she's amazing.
I knew it was confusing me, but not quite why :)
It confused me for the longest time. Only rereading Runner this last time cleared it up, and only because we were having this conversation and I was paying close attention.
And it's sort of ironic, too: Johnny is a builder who breaks all his family ties.
Oh, yeah, I thought about saying something about how I think it's more of a self-perception thing, an identity, than anything else. Also, obviously, being good with your hands does not equate to interpersonal ties! Bullet even says Johnny's a carbon copy of the old man. It's complex; there's no builder/breaker binary, in my mind. But it's a theme that I think is worth paying attention to, along with the letting go/holding on/reaching out.
(Also, stepping for a moment out of thematic concerns and into real-world healthy behaviors, HELL YES leave that abusive family behind, Johnny! Don't look back!)
I have a whole theory about why there's no boat in Stranger! My theory involves the boats being a locus for cutting ties with others.
Huuuhh. That's interesting. I like it! Fits very well with Johnny. And omggg, you're so right about Francis!
Also interesting how the motor boat is a parting gift from Bullet: reaching out and cutting ties at the same time. It also gives her a way to be less dependent on her abusive husband.
Is Sammy a builder?
Yes! I was going to mention this as I got a little further in Seventeen. Check this passage out:
“It’s a good thing Sammy took wood shop, or I don’t know what I’d have gotten for Christmas.”
“He’s got clever hands,” Jeff said.
“And he likes making things,” she added. Sammy had even roped James into making a half-court, a backboard to play tennis alone on, one summer; at the garage where he’d been hired to pump gas, he now spent most of his time working on engines. It was Sammy who kept their old pickup going for them. It was even Sammy who’d found it, and talked them into it, telling them it could be got running, he could do it easily, and at the price, which was only $485, he said— ignoring Gram’s raised eyebrows at the sum— they’d never find anything cheaper. “Who needs a wheeled vehicle?” Gram had demanded. “We do,” Sammy had told her. “You do, and you need a license, too. Maybe we can’t afford it, but that doesn’t mean we don’t need it. And we can afford it.” Sammy had set his mind to it. Like anything else Sammy set his mind to, it got done. They insured it in Gram’s name, because she was the cheapest; Sammy was the only one of them who didn’t have a license at that point, and he’d turn sixteen in less than a year.
And note Gram getting the car because of the children, just like the phone! Oh, and I just remembered, she gets the boat from Bullet because her husband won't let her get a driver's license. The later books seem to put right a lot of things that are wrong in earlier books.
I don't have the book right with me (I'm out of town) but in Dicey's essay, doesn't she talk about how Liza doesn't have any songs any more at the end?
I'm not seeing it, but here's the whole essay, if you want to read and see what you were thinking of:
Mrs. Liza lived away up north, away out on Cape Cod, away in a town right at the end of the Cape. Her cabin was outside of town, right at the edge of the ocean. The ocean rolled up toward her rickety cabin, like it wanted to swallow it up; but it never did. Maybe it didn’t even want to. The wind was always blowing around the cabin, like it too wanted to have that little building gone.
Mrs. Liza had children, but she never had been married, and the man who was her children’s father had long ago gone and left her. She worked nights when the children were little, waiting tables in a restaurant, serving drinks in a bar, night-clerking in a motel. She always worked hard and was always willing to take days nobody else wanted, Christmas and Fourth of July, Easter. When the children got older, she switched to a daytime job, checkout in a supermarket. She hadn’t had any training for the kind of job that paid well, so she was always thinking about money, hoping she would have enough. Every sweater she owned had holes in it.
She had reasons to turn into a mean woman, but Mrs. Liza just couldn’t. She had a face made to smile, and her eyes always smiled with her mouth. She had long hair, the color of warm honey in the winter, the color of evening sunlight in the summer. She walked easy, high narrow shoulders, but loose, as if the joints of her body never got quite put together. She walked like a song sung without accompaniment.
Then slowly, so slowly she never really could find out the place where it began, life turned sour on Mrs. Liza. People said things. While she never heard them herself, her children heard them and got older and understood what people meant. Mrs. Liza loved her children, so that worried her. Money worried at her the way waves worry at the shoreline, always nibbling away at the soft sand. Her money seemed to run out earlier each week.
Mrs. Liza stood at the door of her cabin and looked out at the ocean. The ocean looked back at Mrs. Liza and rolled on toward her. She could see no end to the ocean. The wind that pulled at her hair was always blowing. She looked out at her children playing on the beach and reminded herself to get some tunafish for supper; but she forgot.
Her eyes stopped smiling first, and then her mouth. The holes in her sweaters got bigger. Meanwhile, people talked and she didn’t know what to say so they could understand. Meanwhile, quarters and dimes got lighter, smaller. Meanwhile, her children were growing bigger and they needed more food, more clothes. Meanwhile, nothing she did seemed to make any difference.
So Mrs. Liza did about the only thing left to her to do. She went away into the farthest place she could find. They cut her hair short. She didn’t notice that, lying there, nor when they fed her or changed the sheets. Her eyes never moved, as if what she was looking at was so far away small that if she looked off for a second, it would be gone.
I'm still planning a wall of text to our other thread, but my 450,000-word series calls. ;)
no subject
Oh, yeah, I thought about saying something about how I think it's more of a self-perception thing, an identity, than anything else. Also, obviously, being good with your hands does not equate to interpersonal ties! Bullet even says Johnny's a carbon copy of the old man. It's complex; there's no builder/breaker binary, in my mind. But it's a theme that I think is worth paying attention to, along with the letting go/holding on/reaching out.
YES! I think every book has its own themes, or at least some major questions it's exploring, and I can see how one of Runner's is what it means to build and break. (Which like all the other themes is something that shows up in the other books, but not to that degree.)
(Also, stepping for a moment out of thematic concerns and into real-world healthy behaviors, HELL YES leave that abusive family behind, Johnny! Don't look back!)
AHAHAHA YES. But on the other hand… I want all the fic about John too (I think someone wrote one, I'll have to go back and reread) (okay, I just really want fic about ALL THE PEOPLE, because fascinating) because I really, really want him to have figured out how not to turn into his father, how not to be broken, because there's no indication that he knows enough (emotionally speaking) to figure it out… except, maybe, that Bullet eventually figured it out. But Liza never was able to, Liza made the mistakes she made at least partially because of her family situation (and trying to get out of it).
I have a whole theory about why there's no boat in Stranger! My theory involves the boats being a locus for cutting ties with others.
Also interesting how the motor boat is a parting gift from Bullet: reaching out and cutting ties at the same time. It also gives her a way to be less dependent on her abusive husband.
So there's another boat in Solitary Blue, Dicey's sailboat, that doesn't indicate the cutting of ties at all (in fact sailing in that boat is how Dicey and Jeff renew their ties with each other after Jeff gets worried about Dicey lying). So that's not all boats mean… but I think boats might still mean a separation, a solitude, like it's the fact that Dicey and Jeff have a separate space for themselves that allows them to have that conversation, and like you point out the motor boat is Bullet reaching out, but also lets Ab have a separate space from her husband.
And note Gram getting the car because of the children, just like the phone! Oh, and I just remembered, she gets the boat from Bullet because her husband won't let her get a driver's license. The later books seem to put right a lot of things that are wrong in earlier books.
Holy cow, I never realized that! That is amazing. I think that's part of (the seven millino reasons) why I love these books so much, that there's so much generosity and healing and putting right, as you say. I am a sucker for that.
I'm still planning a wall of text to our other thread, but my 450,000-word series calls. ;)
Oh gosh, take your time! (I realize this is too late for the wall of text in the other thread ;) but, you know, just in general.) I also have way too much that I need to be doing right now :) Darn this only having 24 hours a day! At some point I will post something on Solitary Blue, which I've now reread and which is just freaking fascinating in terms of everything we've been talking about, but it will probably take me a little while because of real life (and because I read it while kid-wrangling so wasn't exactly taking notes, so now I have to remember the notes :) )