Jam on Prose (The Frances books)

This is an excerpt from Russell Hoban’s Bread and Jam for Frances, a wonderful children’s book in its own right but an especially important picture book from my childhood.

Albert took two napkins from his lunch box.

He spread the other one on his desk like a tablecloth.

He arranged his lunch neatly on the napkin.

With his spoon he cracked the shell of the hard-boiled egg.

He peeled away the shell and bit off the end of the egg.

He sprinkled salt on the yolk and set the egg down again.

He unscrewed his thermos-bottle cup and filled it with milk.

Then he was ready to eat his lunch.

He took a bit of sandwich, a bite of pickle,

a bite of hard-boiled egg, and a drink of milk.

Then he sprinkled more salt on the egg and went around again.

Albert made the sandwich, the pickle,

the egg, and the milk come out even.

The passage goes on for several more lines in this vein. I am not sure if Russell Hoban meant for it to read like poetry, but it is written with those end-lines how I have transcribed them, and the effect is much like a sestina, what with the deliberate meter and the repetition of “egg,” “milk,” and “pickle” to end different lines. The prose is hypnotizing in its incantatory sound and in each sentence’s parallel construction, like a liturgical utterance or something. Indeed, the words that make up each sentence “come out even.” But what is really striking is its sonority: you could read this passage in a poetry reading and I guarantee the audience will be rapt with attention.

Now consider this excerpt from Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses:

He hung the hat on a peg by the door among slickers and blanketcoats and odd pieces of tack and came to the stove and got his coffee and took it to the table. She opened the oven and drew out a pan of sweetrolls she’d made and put one on a plate and brought it over and set it in front of him together with a knife for the butter and she touched the back of his head with her hand before she returned to the stove.

McCarthy’s prose is like Hoban’s with the punctuation removed, and the difference in effect is that the McCarthy has a ghost-like quality to it in which things are done in detail but without end stops: each activity blurs into the next, and the small gestures seem to have strange depth beyond their simple performance. The signficance of each activity is never retained, though, because it is too quickly transformed into the next act.

My point in pitting these two passages together is to show both their similarities and subtle distinctions. Both include prose that enchants with its evocation of details in a kind of cosmic ordering of everyday acts, but that order has a completely different meaning despite the stylistic parallels. The significance of the prose describing Albert eating his lunch is that an incredible enjoyment can come from meticulousness, whereas the significance of the prose in All the Pretty Horses suggests that meticulousness is often a marker of great sorrow. Both have the emphasis on sequence and chronology but differ in the way that chronology is lived.

Hoban’s prose is good in all of his Frances books, and his deliberate style makes for great bedtime reading, as my brothers and sisters will attest. Several years ago, my mom and dad made an audio recording of two of the Frances books, and my dad reads the bulk of each book slowly and clearly, much like how Albert eats his lunch. The result is bittersweet: he reads with the joy of systematic thinking that Albert has with systematic eating, but his voice evokes such sorrow in me because since he has been gone, my life has been much more like the McCarthy passage, with one activity blurring into the next in an attempt to grip an unknown grief, than the Hoban passage, of which Dad’s life was a great model. I strive to make it all “come out even,” but I end up needing too many “ands” and neglecting the periods.

At the end of Bread and Jam for Frances, Albert makes another appearance, this time as the observer of Frances’s new diverse lunch. He responds to her description of her lunch with what I consider immortal words:

“That’s a good lunch,” said Albert.

“I think it’s nice that there are all different kinds of lunches and breakfasts and dinners and snacks. I think eating is nice.”

I often have that sentiment, as simple as it is, but what I really find lovely about it is that when my dad says it on the audio recording, it sounds like he really means it. I have the feeling that Albert and my dad are kindred spirits when it comes to the simple enjoyment of the diversity of lunches. I think that is nice.