Salt and Paper: 65 Candles
by Janell Moon
RAW ArT Press. 186 pages, $15.
JANELL MOON’S latest novel is one of those books about which it’s easier to say what it isn’t than what it is. Salt and Paper: 65 Candles is presented as a journal, and it does have ascending dates as the year passes, offering a day-by-day record of Janell Moon’s 65th year—sort of. The record is written in scraps. These scraps are not geometrical, like a quilt, but a hodgepodge of words. They aren’t like poetry either, though some parts of the book are poetic insofar as they have an overarching metaphor such that each line advances toward a new insight, as in poetry. The rest are short paragraphs of narrative often structured with sentence fragments, interspersed with seemingly random words and phrases.
In the acknowledgements the author claims that “hybrid writing can allow a woman’s writing greater intimacy with her readers.” Random and disconnected phrases grow into complete images as Moon records a year in her life. At times she addresses the many women (baby boomers) on the path with her: “We are the most educated, fit and psychologically aware people to enter our sixties. Still, our bodies are wearing out. I don’t like to be told the sixties are the new forties. It doesn’t feel true in my mind or body. … [I] don’t want my ego invested in resisting a natural process. I’d rather be the woman who is her age.” Moon eventually comes to call this stage of life “the youth of old age.” Like this author, I’ve been a part of a large marketing demographic all my life. I grew up with Howdy Doody and hula hoops. My teen years were marked by the arrival of beach party movies, fast food, and pantyhose. When I had children, disposable diapers were created. But for boomers, whose mantra was “don’t trust anyone over thirty,” arriving at twice that age is daunting. Watching the nightly news, we see cures for women with leaky pipes and for men with erectile dysfunction. So it seems natural to expect some literature to be crafted about growing older as we try to figure out who we are one more time. Joining this quest, Salt and Paper is at once true and mundane. “Arthritis in hands and feet. Hurts to move, helps to move,” comes in a short entry that includes “winter pears and goat milk.” Challenges for the author include a broken bone, an only son moving to Colorado, a mother with failing health, who has always cared for a mentally ill brother, one friend in early stages of Alzheimer’s and another who’s dying and wants Moon to be part of her “dying team.” Moon doesn’t care to instruct us: these problems and how she copes (mostly accepts) are her own. Moon doesn’t defend the past, though she says she’s learned from it. She’s not forthcoming about her love life. (Is that what we call it when we enter our seventh decade?) She is divorced, has a son and a grandson. What she does say is this: “A year after the divorce, when [I was] first with a woman, the combination lock opened and I was free to be myself the rest of my life.” She mentions a woman she once met at an Over 50 Alanon meeting. There are lots of female friends and a mysterious “you” she addresses from time to time. One day she’s been out with friends and later writes: “A beagle wandered away from the market and came to the edge of the café. I threw a wafer that it ate without looking up. I thought, it was like you the morning we were talking—rather I was talking about love—and you ate throughout in silence.” This vagueness, this frequent absence of detail, leaves an emotional void, so her quest for greater intimacy with the reader fails, at least in this respect. The problem isn’t the hybrid writing style, which is refreshing in a way. But Moon neither reflects on the past nor projects into the future. We see what she sees in front of her and must gather insight from those things. She writes about her home, the ocean, the birds, the sunsets, the age spots on her hands, and what’s going on with her cat. A k.d. lang concert is disappointing, not because of k.d., “barefoot, full dress with a funny little waistcoat,” but due to poor seats behind the singer. So the author reveals a lot. The things she encounters and the sense she makes of it all she willingly shares. The writing as well as the reading experience is pleasantly original, but the author sticks with what is safe. Martha Miller is the author of Retirement Plan: A Crime Novel (Bold Strokes Books). She maintains a website at www.marthamiller.net.
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