The Power of Place in NJ-Based Fiction

What role does place play in literary fiction? Does fictional place matter? Is it simply a backdrop or stage-setting for the action? How do writers convey place compellingly? Do they need to be born in a place to sound authentic? Why does Eudora Welty say, “Fiction depends for its life on place?”

Local author Dr. Ann McKinstry Micou is set to discuss these questions and more at Montclair Public Library on Thursday, March 12 at 7 p.m. Her lecture, The Power of Place in the New Jersey-based Fiction of Three Pulitzer-Prize Winning Novelists discusses the work of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelists Philip Roth, a native, Richard Ford, a transplant, and Junot Díaz, an immigrant.

Micou’s view is that “place,” as an element in narrative art, is integral to shaping a character’s identity and his destiny. Some critics consider place to be the least understood in the craft of fiction. She distills the narrative elements of place presented in the critical literature into clear, elegant definitions, which provide a framework for discussing the fundamental relationship between place and character in the work of these three authors. An example of one of her definitions is, “When conveyed convincingly, place creates the impression of ‘hereness’ by generating physical and emotional presence, identity, and immediacy.” For each author, she embellishes her arguments with cogent quotations from the novels.

Philip Roth’s place—the ambience of Weequahic, the Newark neighborhood where he was born—has an intense impact upon his characters’ identities, their feelings of belonging or of alienation, and their decisions to stay in or leave the place. While Roth treasures Newark and returns to it rapturously and relentlessly in his stories—over and over he says, “Nothing would ever get me to leave here”—some of the narrators, as well as the author himself, abandon the place precisely because of its effect on them. Micou draws from Roth’s Newark-related novels such asGoodbye, Columbus, Portnoy’s Complaint, American Pastoral, and The Ghost Writer.

The impact of place, both positive and negative, on the destiny of Frank Bascombe, the narrator of Richard Ford’s New Jersey trilogy, is different from Roth’s. While Frank, a Southern transplant to New Jersey, claims at first that “place means nothing,” he concludes that New Jersey “gives him something” and is where he belongs and wants to stay. “I could live here forever,” he says. Ford’s New Jersey Trilogy is made up of The Sportswriter, Independence Day, and The Lay of the Land. Frank’s New Jersey places are Haddam (an affluent suburb combining qualities of Princeton, Pennington, and Hopewell), and Sea Clift (a composite of Seaside Heights, Seaside Park, and Ortley Beach on the Jersey Shore).

As an immigrant, Junot Díaz’s perspective is different still from the other two writers. He shows the effect of dual places, the Dominican Republic and New Jersey, on the identity and destiny of Yunior, his narrator. Of his neighborhood in Parlin he says, “Here’s where I kissed my first girl.” His goal is not assimilation but embracing two cultures. The impact of place on Yunior entails his determination to bear witness to immigrants’ voices that have gone unheard. “Home” in New Jersey fiction for Díaz is Parlin and New Brunswick; his novel is The Brief Wondrous World of Oscar Wao; the story collections are Drown and This Is How You Lose Her.

This event is free and open to the public. The library is handicapped accessible and can provide assistive listening devices upon request. For more information, visit www.montclairlibrary.org/calendar or call 973-744-0500 ext. 2235.

About Dr. Ann McKinstry Micou

Upper Montclair resident Ann McKinstry Micou, a retired teacher, communications director for international nonprofits, and currently freelance writer, was born in Santa Barbara, California, and received a bachelor’s degree from Mills College, and, later, a master’s degree from The New School in Manhattan. Early in her career, she taught high school English, specializing in American literature, at Concord Academy in Massachusetts, the Sarah Dix Hamlin School in San Francisco, and the National Cathedral School in Washington, D.C.

Micou, her husband, and two children lived in the Middle East for five years during the sixties. In Ankara, Turkey, she edited the Turkish Journal of Pediatrics at Hacettepe University; in Tehran, Iran, she taught American literature at Pars College. She wrote two books while in Iran, Handbook for Iran and You Already Know Persian. The latter is based on the premise that English speakers already know a core of Farsiwords; for example, khaki, Esther, magic, pajama, admiral, mummy, and gymkhana.

Back in the United States, she and her family lived in Wilton, Connecticut, where she commuted to Manhattan for twenty-six years. At World Education, Inc., an organization involved in integrated adult education in the developing world, she produced newsletters and annual reports; at the United States Council for International Business, she served as Director of Communications. At the Institute of International Education, she directed the South African Information Exchange, and produced dozens of directories on resources for anti-apartheid groups. Over a twelve-year period, she traveled to southern Africa almost forty times and, in addition to her directories, wrote Listening to the Stakeholders: The Impact of U.S. Private Funding in Southern Africa and U.S Independent Sector Involvement in Southern Africa, and edited The Role ofVoluntary Organizations in Emerging Democracies, based on the proceedings of a conference she organized in Prague.

When they retired in 1999, she moved with Paul, a United Nations officer, to South Newfane, Vermont. Her books about place in Vermont include A Guide to Fiction Set in Vermont (2005), A Guide to Fiction Set in Vermont for Children and Young Adults (2007), and Vermont Fiction 3 (2009). At the end of 2009, she and Paul moved to Upper Montclair to be near her daughter, Julie Micou Cerf, her husband, Monty Cerf, and their three children. Her son is the novelist Paul Micou.

After her husband’s death, she enrolled in a doctoral program at Drew University and received this past August a D. Litt., with distinction. Her dissertation, Here in New Jersey, is about the power of place in the New Jersey fiction of Philip Roth, Richard Ford, and Junot Díaz. She has published two life-and-work essays for the Charles Scribner’s series on American writers, both edited by Professor Jay Parini of Middlebury College: “Howard Frank Mosher,” Supplement XXII, 2012, and “David Huddle,” Supplement XXIII, to appear in January 2015. Since her move to Montclair, she has also been working on a reference book for general readers, librarians, teachers, and students called A Guide to Fiction Set in New Jersey, modeled on her Vermont books about the mystique of fictional place.