Adam Haberberg Book

A writer is a man trying to save himself from himself. A man who, in order to hold on to a little momentum toward the future, attempts to exchange his own existence for that of words.___Adam Haberberg, from the novel Adam Haberberg


For my ten-year class reunion back in 1982 I was irreverently drunk and rode to the head table, rumbling up through the main aisle in the meeting hall of a Catholic church we had rented, riding on the back of a large motorcycle driven by a fellow classmate, and Vietnam War veteran, Jim Anderson. I have not seen him again, nor the others, since. This summer of 2012, in my small hometown in Michigan, they held the 40th high school reunion of this same graduating class of 1972. I was invited. Of course, they had to invite me, I was the class vice-president. I remember running for that office either because I knew I could not win as president or because I did not want to be class president. I cannot remember the details. What I do remember was being painfully in love with a girl from far-off Kentucky who I had met in my hometown at the end of the summer before our last year of high school, and before the so-called experimental and recreational drugs to come that most of us would find ourselves partaking of. I say most of us loosely as many of these people are already dead and cannot defend themselves, and the others would certainly deny any indulgences in these types of behaviors given their positions in the small town government or their serious ties now to the Christian religion. 



Reading this Adam Haberberg book by Yasmina Reza has made me remember, going back to that recent July of 2012 when I refused to participate with the others in reminiscing and celebrating our time attending high school together. The power of this book in striking up the need for a memory of my own is notable in itself, let alone the measure of Reza's great writing and relaxed style. The title character, Adam Haberberg, in his confusion over what the future may hold for him, was certainly, through a chance encounter with an old school chum, looking back through his past for the answers for how and where to go forward with his life and what remained of it. So in my own refusal to attend the reunion I still remembered and decided there were three ladies and one man I certainly did want to see again, but only to catch up with their lives and to find out if anything I believed about them was actually true. But the meeting of the four people never happened, just a few brief, electronic messages sent to my old friend Marcia. 



Marcia was the only old classmate I had retained as a "friend" and a few times we messaged each other on the social site of Facebook. Marcia and I had a long history as kids competing with each other in the same small town, living at most five blocks from each other, walking home together almost every day from school, side by side, arguing over this and that, and muddling through all our early education at the same schools until finally graduating from high school in 1972. I remember taking her to a high school prom after she had recently broken up with her latest boyfriend who I had not liked since we had both become teenagers. I remember thinking back then, as much as I hated the prom, that I had nothing really better to do with my time than to attend this shitty event with my old pal Marcia and in my own way give her ex the finger.



It was the rare chance when ever saw Marcia again after high school. There was a period of a couple years after the end of my first marriage to the wrong woman that I did see Marcia again, probably ten years later just before that first class reunion, we getting drunk together in the local bar while planning as a hastily-made committee that ten-year class reunion, and flirting as usual about matters that would never be actualized. And then she found me again on Facebook thirty years later. I felt the relationship worthy of rekindling in the sense that she and the three others I was still interested in were the most important people in my life up until that endpoint of 1972. The other three people were Joni, Mary, and and a boy named Davy. 



I played chess with Davy during lunch period all through middle school. I remember him being a big girl in a boy's body. I will most likely never know if he was gay, but I don't know how he could have been anything otherwise if today he is actually happy. I wanted to see him again and tell him that I always thought very highly of him, his intelligence, kindness, and knack for staying pretty much unpicked-on and unseen through high school even with him being one of the biggest kids in our class. Back in middle school he gave me a promotional picture of The Beatles that I may still have somewhere in one of my cardboard boxes I have packed away. His dad was a state congressman and his name was on the scholarship I never used that I will admit I proudly received for academic excellence. In high school I never knew anything about any of Davy's activities. I was not aware of what his interests were. And it was pretty much the same for me with my backdoor neighbor, Joni. She was a pretty tomboy who I had played with a bit as a little kid, but never having any other personal relationship through the years except for the occasional friendly greeting when passing each other in the halls of our schools we attended together for all of those thirteen years. Looking back now I know I also loved Joni in my own way. She meant something to me then and still means something to me now. I wanted to meet up again and tell her so. I am sorry it never happened and now it probably never will.



The last of the four people I wanted to see again was Mary. All through our schooling Mary and I were friends. We teased and flirted with each other like most kids do, and I always had my eye on her even knowing that I wasn't supposed to. In our house my dad called Mary's mother an old battle axe and I never really knew why. I suppose it had something to do with her mother's typically stern look and and boxy fireplug frame. She wasn't attractive and had plainly been out on the boat in the sun too long. She did not have a warm and inviting presence to her, and her husband and two sons were also aloof when it came to the perception of a young guy like me. Of course, I was younger than Mary's two brothers and certainly had nothing at all in common with them. There was no way I could imagine seeing either of them delivering the Detroit Free Press morning paper as I had done as a younger boy before school each day in the cold and rain and snow we had up there in northern Michigan. There were only a select few of us who could claim they delivered newspapers under the same horrible conditions we rode our bicycles in. Most of my fellow classmates would probably say privately that they considered Mary's whole family a little too privileged and likely a bit spoiled. But Mary was different because she was so quiet and unassuming. She was a leader of nothing. She wasn't a cheerleader, athlete, or even in the school band by my recollection. She just calmly showed up for class, did her homework, and stayed out of sight until she became too attractive to stay hidden for long. Of all the girls I had ever known throughout my twelve years of schooling Mary would have been the one I would have chosen for me. I would have been happy to have just become best friends with her, but back in those days boys and girls weren't like they sometimes are now.



For the duration of our childhood education together, from elementary through high school, Mary had pretty much avoided me. I attended, probably in elementary school, one of her birthday parties and I remember having a pretty good time in their very nice home. I don't remember the party at all, but I do remember it felt good to be invited. I was conflicted in my feelings for Mary because of the remarks my father had routinely made about her mother. He was as negative toward her mother as he was the whole family, and in addition to my dad's negative comments my mother also informed me that her own father was the one who had sold his oil company to those people out there on the water. My mom also added that her father at one time owned so much of our entire town that their own family should have had more to show for it, but my grandfather was such a poor businessman, she said, mostly because he was a sucker and friend to all and gave his money away. I do remember a classic old gas station downtown on a corner of Newman Street that my grandfather owned and I would often visit him there. It later became a bakery and then eventually was annexed into a sit-down eating section of what was once, and still may be called, Chum's Bar.



There may have been some bitterness and jealousy on my parents' part for what might have been had Grandpa done a better job with all his commercial holdings. My Kentucky wife and I still keep a summer cabin west of town about ten miles out in an inland lake community and my mother commented that at one time in their long family past her father also owned much of this area as well, but had sold it all off through the subsequent years. True or not, it is interesting to me how much of an influence my parents had on the one romantic relationship that could have completely changed my life if I had ever felt I had a fighting chance to win over Mary. In the meantime, I remained steadfast in my quest to just become good friends with her. We spent our senior year in high school sitting across from or next to each other in a Home and Family Living class. Our teacher was an attractive tall woman with very nice long legs. I can't remember her name but I will never forget those legs. In class we talked openly about sex, birth control, relationships, and other unlikely topics for that time. We spoke about current affairs because the Vietnam War was going on and many of us young men would be subjected to it and the upcoming draft. We all got to know each other better as the class did nothing less than further our relationships with others who we may not have spoken two words to for ten or more years prior to taking the class together.



The weekend before our high school graduation exercises, much of our senior class had decided to camp out in the Huron National Forest around the Silver Valley area. There were two decidedly different camps back in those days, the drinkers and the dopers. I was of the latter camp and probably too proud of it, as well as were some of the jocks I had remained friends with on my journey to "turn on and tune out". The rednecks were mostly drinkers, though some of them liked to partake in a little pot smoking from time to time and so we remained on friendly terms until one or more of them had too much to drink. We dopers set our tents up far away from the shot-gunning beers and flowing kegs. My cousin even drove his Chevy Vega up the hill to where our tents were and we had some pretty awesome stereo music coming from his external speakers he set up on the roof of his car. We campers would walk down our hill and visit with the drinking gang until it became uncool for us and even dangerous to be around them, and then we would escape back up to our tent compound on the hill above the predictably mounting fray. It was a great time we had in the woods that weekend and I don't remember any altercations that came as a result of our fears over the hard-drinking rednecks. But the last night I did get, what I have always considered, lucky. The girls who had previously been a little too frightened of us dopers discovered that we weren't so bad after all. That we actually did behave ourselves and bothered nobody. That we talked about things that seemed to matter. That we were tender and more loving in ways the heavy drinkers were not. That we were softer and non-aggressive but still managed to work hard gathering our wood for the fires, cooking food over the open flames, and performing the necessary housekeeping duties needed to keep a clean and comfortable campsite. I think, looking back now, that the girls may have been a little sentimental as well about the finality of our long history of school years spent so closely woven together. 



After all the years of being nice to Mary she decided she would sleep next to me that last night in our tent. We fell asleep together in my sleeping bag, clothes on and covered, and I was happy for just that one night knowing that she cared enough for me to trust in me, to let me hold her and protect her, and we both slept well. In the morning we had our breakfast, broke camp, and made our way separately to graduation on time; smelly, happy, and for me a little dangerously smitten by her. But I don't think I ever saw Mary again after that day. It was as if I had accepted that she had innocently slept with me that one specific time in order to let me know she did care for me as best she could, and I never pursued a relationship with her beyond that warm and lovely incident. We had this history together between our families and our mutual schooling accomplished together in that town. But we never talked about any of these things ever throughout the duration of this history. Mary was an idea for me of what I was looking for in a long-term partner. The girl from Kentucky did become that idea manifest as my wife and constant partner for the last twenty-nine years and counting.



The book, Adam Haberberg, caused me to think more seriously about what I am doing today and what I have done throughout my past. It made me remember my sin of omission enough to want to correct it here on the page. But the need in me, the desire it would take, to face all four of these people again is most likely not in me. These words will have to do. But I can thank Yasmina Reza for leading me up to this point. My wife remarked that it is quite possible that my entire graduating class today would look like a gathering of right wing Republicans as hers did when she looked at their latest class picture taken this past summer as well. That would horrify and disgust me if you want to know the truth.



What I do enjoy most about the writing of Yasmina Reza is her dialogue. She reminds me very much of J.D. Salinger and the way she makes an adventure out of a day in the life of her character. She can write ably whether it is in a man's or a woman's voice. She knows her characters as if they were real and actually people she has known. There is never a misstep ever in Reza's voices or her choosing of them. The everyday affairs of her characters ring true and are interesting to me and I would assume to many others too if they were to hear more about this lady's talent. In a final note regarding this novel, Adam Haberberg, Reza is moving the basic story along in a nice and relaxed tempo, never moving ahead so fast and sure that her readers believe they are actually going to really get somewhere, but all along we know in our hearts that this time spent with her and her characters will damn well be worth it. The tension toward the end of this novel is extreme and handled realistically. This is a thoughtful book, well-written, and acknowledged by me as one of the very best novels composed within this period we now are living in.