|
The Author on Her Work
I began by writing poetry, but when I turned to fiction, I soon learned that
a novel was another kind of beast, one which consumed my life. By page
eighty, I knew that what I was writing would survive and flourish, but at the
same time, I would begin to envy people who were, unlike me, free to come
and go and walk on the street instead of remaining locked in my room until I
reached the end. As a consequence, I learned never to begin a novel until
the subject matter became so obsessive that it was easier to write the
incipient book than to avoid doing so. A collision of very tiny
circumstances led to the obsession which in turn led to Buffalo
Afternoon. The impetus began when I learned that an old friend of mine
had been a combat veteran in Vietnam. I was stunned to discover that I had
been completely unaware of his experience, and soon realized that I had
never, at least to my knowledge, known anyone who had been in combat. Later,
however, I realized that the germ of Buffalo Afternoon had been
planted much earlier.
When I was teaching English literature in college, I was required to
"observe" younger colleagues who were teaching an elementary course in
composition. One teacher in question could not have been older than thirty.
Her students were almost entirely composed of Vietnam veterans who were
released from a nearby Veterans' Administration hospital in order to attend
classes, and for the most part they arrived wearing hospital blues;
afterwards, the students were promptly returned to the hospital. One of the
veterans in that class was frightening. He was tattooed from the top of his
shaved head to his waist and he wore no shirt. The rest of the veterans
seemed stunned to be in the classroom and were, compared to other classes,
unnaturally quiet.
The configuration of teacher and students was the most peculiar and the most
striking I had yet seen. The teacher, clearly terrified of the veterans,
was pressed hard against the blackboard and seemed to wish she could climb
up onto the narrow shelf for the chalk for greater safety. The veterans
were seated as far from the teacher as they could get so that there were at
least six rows of empty seats between the teacher and the students. I sat
in the middle, on the far left hand of the room, and watched. It was
evident that teacher and students desperately wanted to be somewhere else.
It was also clear that, if possible, the veterans were more frightened of
the teacher than the teacher was of them.
Years passed, and that image stayed with me, that chasm-like separation
between the civilian teacher and the Vietnam veterans, all of them wounded
and recovering either physically or mentally. In time, I wanted to understand
why such a separation should exist.
When I asked a man who helped run a Vietnam veterans program for help, his
advised me to conduct interviews over the telephone because, as he said,
"They're all crazy, man." I was shocked by his attitude and decided to take
my chances meeting with veterans face to face. Finally, I went to a meeting
of the Brooklyn Chapter of Vietnam Veterans of America and at the break,
asked for volunteers who would be willing to speak to me. Four did. The
first person to come to my house was clearly terrified of me. He did not
yet know my motives or my political beliefs. The massacre at My Lai was
still very much on everyone's mind. In the end, the first volunteer and I
got along well, and the news went out that I was all right. More and more
people volunteered and I soon settled down to work with a core of five
people with whom I was to meet twice a week for almost two years.
I learned many unexpected things: how difficult it was for combat veterans
to give up the excitement of combat, so that civilian life often seemed
boring, and how hard it was to get a combat veteran to speak about his own
experience. Everyone was willing to tell "war stories," but it was
extraordinarily painful for most of them to go beyond that. In the end, I
came to understand that what the veteran most feared was contaminating
someone (like me) who had not been forced to experience what the veteran had
lived through. I had thought that soldiers who fought in Vietnam would
somehow feel scarred by their time there; perhaps the greatest surprise was
learning how many men had become like Nick, the narrator of The Great
Gatsby. After what they had seen in combat, they had changed and become
determined to remain on moral attention forever.
I did not find it difficult to write about men in war. Everyone believed it
could not be done by a woman—as if men would somehow be alien beings to a
member of the opposite sex. I have never understood that attitude. I was
raised among men as well as women. I had a father, two brothers, two
grandfathers, many male friends, a son and a husband. I had not gone
through life entirely puzzled by the natures of men around me. I understood
many men immediately; others remained opaque even after long acquaintance,
but the same was equally true of the women I knew. Long ago, I had begun
to say that writing was really the autobiography of the imagination and that
anyone ought to feel free to write what he or she could comprehend
emotionally and imaginatively. I believed that absolutely, and I still do.
I never thought I was beginning on an unusually difficult task when I began
to work with Vietnam veterans, although the task was certainly difficult,
not because I was dealing with men, but because the subject matter I was
dealing with was inherently complex and emotionally battering.
When it came time to write Buffalo Afternoon, I discovered that a
straightforward, realistic narrative could not encapsulate what I had
learned through my encounters with the veterans. Their experience went
beyond the confines of the ordinary world, and to reflect that, I found
myself resorting to "surrealism," although I do not think Buffalo
Afternoon is surreal. What appears to be surreal in the novel—the
White Man, the angel Li, the dance at the novel's end—represented what
reality truly was for the veterans I had come to know.
Writing Buffalo Afternoon changed me. Before I began to work, I was a
radical pessimist. After I finished, I was a somewhat hesitant, if not
wobbly, optimist. In writing Buffalo Afternoon I discovered that human
nature was astonishingly unpredictable. People can change, and change
radically, and in spite of my previous experience, I learned that they can,
under the most unlikely circumstances, dramatically change for the better.
They can become, as many of the veterans had become, truly moral beings.
I admired them and I respected them and I still do.
In the end, the novel seemed to write itself, probably because, while
writing, I had a sense of mission. I wanted to decrease the space separating
the civilian and the veterans first made visible to in that classroom. I
felt an obligation to be true to what the veterans had told me about what
had happened to them. When a subject becomes important enough to me, the
myriad problems that invariably arrive once I begin to write seem to
evaporate under the intensity of my desire to write what I have seen.
Discussion
Questions
1. Discuss the meaning of the title. The words "buffalo afternoon" are
mentioned in the first and last scenes of the novel. Why does Schaeffer
open and close the novel by mentioning this phrase?
2. Buffalo Afternoon closes with a dance. Many readers were
initially puzzled by the events that occur at this dance. What is the
significance of this dance for the veterans who Schaeffer portrays of in
this novel?
3. In some ways, Buffalo Afternoon makes use of a hyper-real surface.
When portraying an experience as extreme as a that of a Vietnam war combat
veteran, do you think Schaeffer found it necessary to break the realistic
surface of the narrative? Would this be true of most writers?
4. At the time of Buffalo Afternoon's publication, there was
considerable speculation about why Schaeffer, a woman, decided to write about
the Vietnam war. Do you believe there should be certain topics which are
appropriate to one sex rather than another? Why?
5. Who is the White Man and what significance does he have?
6. Like the White Man, the angel begins to appear to various people in the
novel. Why does this happen and what is her significance?
7. When the veterans return, many of their parents cannot accept them. Some
are afraid of their own sons; others walk away from their sons when they
differ on the meaning and value of the war. Were the parents' reactions
surprising to you? Had you been those parents' situation, what do you think
your own reactions would have been?
8. Schaeffer has said that one of the most surprising discoveries she made
was that serving in Vietnam did not necessarily erode the morality of combat
veterans. On the contrary, some appeared to have acquired a heightened
sense of morality through their experiences. Some who might have ended up
as criminals instead became "righteous people." Do you agree that such a
thing is possible?
9. Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., speaking of World War II, has said that he will be
happy when everything about World War II is forgotten. Do you agree?
Should Vietnam also be forgotten? Why do you believe that Schaeffer felt it
was important to document what she learned through working with Vietnam
veterans?
10. If you had fixed opinions about the Vietnam war and combat soldiers
were like, did reading Buffalo Afternoon change your views, and if
they did so, in what way were they altered?
11. How do you account for Pete Bravado's behavior once he returns to the
United States?
12. The events narrated in Buffalo Afternoon begin before Pete
Bravado's birth and describe his grandfather's coming to the United States.
Why does Schaeffer choose to do this?
13. Schaeffer often begins her novels with an event which is chronologically
out of place, usually an event which would, if placed in a strict time
sequence, occur much later in the narrative. After that prologue, the
narrative moves back in time. Why do you think Schaeffer begins by
describing Pete Bravado's nightmares and his struggles with the many
mattresses he replaces?
14. Is it possible to discern Susan Fromberg Schaeffer's political views
about the Vietnam war? If not, why is this so? Explain.
|