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Foreword
With his signature tragicomic voice and a cast of
unforgettable and lively characters, John Dufresne explores
love, death, imagination, and memory. Deep in the Shade of
Paradise is a rollicking romance, a comedy about small-town
eccentrics teetering on the brink of despair, and a delicious
portrait of the American South at the cusp of the twenty-first
century. Dufresne's shimmering, multi-layered narrative is
comprised of anecdotes, armchair philosophy, folk tales, jokes,
letters, songs, and menus, all held together by the story of a
family bending in on itself with jealousy, mourning, and love.
In Deep in the Shade of Paradise—something of a
sequel to Dufresne's much-acclaimed debut novel Louisiana
Power and Light—the curative swamp water and wildlife
at Shiver-de-Freeze conspire with the Fontanas once more to
create a tale of love run amok in the ruins of memory and the
frayed ends of dreams. Dufresne counts even himself among the
myriad assortment of freaks, adulterers, artists,
country-and-western singers, hair stylists, and Pentecostal
preachers who gather to celebrate the wedding of Grisham
Loudermilk and Ariane Thevenot at Paradise, the Fontanas'
ancestral home.
Dufresne's previous books include The Way that Water Enters
Stone, Louisiana Power & Light, and Love Warps the
Mind a Little. When asked to give a little background on
what led him to write this new novel, Dufrsene offered this
combination of thoughts:
"There was a promise at the end of Louisiana Power & Light,
that promise being the birth of a child and the continuation
of the Fontana family. So these few years later I decided to
find out about that boy, what he was like, and what he was up
to. Wanting to know who Boudou was led me to Shiver-de-Freeze,
a town with its own time zone, a place apart, where anything,
apparently, could happen. Now, you have to write about what's
important to you, what you don't understand, what keeps you up
at night. So I knew I'd be writing about death and love and
self and identity, and then when I found out that Boudou had
an eidetic memory, I realized that I'd be exploring the past
and how it shapes us, and thinking about memory led me to
consider imagination, and so it went. One notion leads to
another.
"When I finished a draft of the book, I realized that more
than anything else the novel is about family and community,
and about telling stories. It's about the importance of our
personal stories—we are what we remember and what we
imagine—and our collective stories—there is no family
without a family story, no community without a community story.
And it is family and community, in the end, that redeem us,
that provide the only salvation we get in this world.
(I came across a line by Ayn Rand this week: "Civilization is
the process of setting man free from men." I stand as far from
those sentiments as possible. I find them arrogant, appalling,
and sad.) Telling stories connects the teller and the tale to
the told. And stories are everywhere in Deep in the Shade of
Paradise. Stories are the digressions that enliven our
journey, the lies that tell the truth."
Discussion
Questions
1. Two of Dufresne's major preoccupations are memories and
dreams. Sometimes they seem to be one in the same. Define the
difference between the two, and how they overlap.
2. Is Adlai really in love with Ariane, or just with the idea
of being in love?
3. Dufresne's writing has been compared to a wide variety of
notable American voices: the storytelling talent of John
Irving, the dark compassion of Flannery O'Connor, and the ear
for the vernacular of Mark Twain. Are other influences
detectable in Deep in the Shade of Paradise? How does
the novel fit into the rich literary heritage of the South?
4. Dufresne's depiction of religious fervor in Shiver-de-Freeze,
farcical though it is, is one of his most impassioned.
Describe his take on religion in the contemporary South.
5. Alvin Lee's creed shows that religion doesn't always
measure up to a familiar spiritual ideal. But Dufresne doesn't
seem entirely cynical about Alvin's faith. Why is this? Is
there a place for spirituality in Shiver-de-Freeze?
6. What do you make of Dufresne's appendix? Why not just
include these anecdotes and details within the novel's
chapters?
7. How does Dufresne's incorporation of himself, his editor,
and his reader as characters, so to speak, affect the
narrative? Does it tamper with the narrative's plausibility?
8. How does contemporary pop culture play into Dufresne's
storytelling?
9. Describe the father and son roles that Royce and Boudou
come to fill for each other.
10. There are many romantic relationships in this book:
Grisham and Ariane, Adlai and Ariane, Grisham and Miranda,
Earlene and Varden, Royce and Benning, Alvin and Lorraine and
Ouda, Boudou and the Tous-les-Deux twins. It's a pretty broad
portrait of love—what can we learn from it?
11. Describe Shiver-de-Freeze as a community. What holds it
together?
12. Describe the differences between Ariane and Miranda. How
does each fulfill Grisham's needs? How about Adlai's needs?
13. Why does Earlene go to see Dolphus Higdon?
14. How does Deep in the Shade of Paradise parallel
Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream both
thematically and structurally?
15. Boudou's memory seems super-human. Is this a blessing or a
curse?
16. What's postmodern about Deep in the Shade of Paradise?
What other forms of literary analysis might prove useful in
explaining what Dufresne achieves through his experimentation?
17. In the appendix's fifth entry, Dufresne talks about the
standard structure for plot development through various visual
diagrams. Then he illustrates the structure of Deep in the
Shade of Paradise with a squiggly line. Is this accurate?
Draw your own diagram to describe the novel.
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