A fine line

In preparing my talk on "The Trouble of Marcie Flint," in which a dug into why I identified with Charlie Flint, the male lead, it never occurred to me that the story might be read as a parody, how the guy's thoughtful earnestness could be construed as ridiculous abstraction. Try this passage, for instance:

And then, like some trick in the movies, I saw myself as my son, standing in a like garden and sending up out of the dark a plane, an arrow, a tennis ball, a stone -- anything -- while my sister drew hearts in the gravel. The memory of how deep this impulse to reach into the light had been completely charmed me, and I watched the boy send the plane up again and again.

So what, is this guy deep, or is he a sap? Is he more Clark W. Griswold, or Clark.... Or, indeed, is there any difference?

The thing is, the reason the suburbs offer such ready material for parody is that they are always teetering on the edge of self-parody.

The firm handshakes.
The convivial greetings "Hello! So glad to see you!"
The complements "My! Your flowers are beautiful!" or "Isn't she just precious"

You can just go around saying this stuff and never have to think about anything.
Try it. "My, those steaks smell delicious!"

As with the society of the aristocracy and gentry whose mores it seeks to mimic, suburban society glides through on a set of rituals and formalities. However, unlike its predecessors -- which acknowledged their artifice -- it pretends to itself that it is natural. That's why streets and subdivisions so often have bucolic names "Shady Lawn", "Windy Hill", "Brook Lane".

Damn, it's confusing.