I would tend to think, were I to ponder it, that America and the world probably is full of aimless college girls. And college boys, of course. College is, after all, a place where many end up going when it is time, simply because they can.
So I suspect that Lorrie Moore’s aimless Tassie’s story is one that, at some level at least, many
Tassie is a young woman from a small town who is a freshman at a Midwestern university. She goes to all those stupid, goofy classes, is a bit bored, and has all those unfocused yearnings and rejections of all that is “old”. In the opening pages Tassie revels in the obvious uselessness of undergraduate study:
“My brain was on fire with Chaucer, Sylvia Plath, Simone de Beauvoir. Twice a week a young professor named Thad… stood before a lecture hall of stunned farm kids like me and spoke thrillingly of Henry James’ masturbation of the comma. I was riveted. I had never before seen a man wear jeans with a tie.”
Apart from life in class – which actually but not surprisingly is a minor part of Tassie’s life – she chats with girl friends and flirts with boys. The story is often funny; as when Tessie, sexually innocent as she is, uses her roommate’s vibrator to stir her chocolate milk. But later she falls in love and takes on a lover, and will never make that mistake again. She works as a nanny for a couple who have adopted a toddler.
So what? Been there, done that, even if it is elegantly described by Moore.
Well, that’s in my opinion the thing about this novel – it is wonderfully written by an incredibly talented novelist, but there is hardly even the outline of a plot. The core story is the exploration of a new social setting by a young girl. But the story doesn’t move forward much at all, and it sort of degenerates into social commentary. Until, that is, bad consequences start hitting Tassie, and misfortunes pile up. In A Gate at the Stairs misfortune start as a trickle, but ends as an avalanche. Now the story shifts completely and becomes a very sad tale indeed. Moore manages to make comprehensible an irrational and disoriented logic of grief that is horrifying.
Lorrie Moore is delicious to read. She has great humor and an extraordinary gift for metaphor. The weaknesses of this story are the many unnecessary words and almost too clever writing, and that the plot for a long time doesn’t move at all. The strengths lie in the beauty of the writing, in addition to the humor, wit, and depth of observation displayed by Moore. A Gate at the Stairs is an extraordinary novel and a very worthwhile read by an excellent writer!
PS: A Gate at the Stairs was listed as one of the top 10 books of 2009 by New York Times.
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