In her debut collection, Attempts at a Life, Danielle Dutton combines floral umbrellas with
strange dreams, the English countryside, and Virginia Woolf, setting the stage
for a well-read book of flash fiction.
Often taking the form of vignettes, Dutton’s stories narrate various
biographies and autobiographies, exploring the ways narrative expectations
shape one’s own life story. Written
in a lyrical style that borders on the poetic, the works in Attempts
at a Life question such literary
conventions, frequently manipulating reader’s expectations while at the same
time scrutinizing them.
Structured as an ongoing series of revisionist texts, Dutton’s
book presents “Hester Prynne” alongside allusions to Louis Zukovsky and William
Carlos Williams, creating a collage-like array of rewritten literary works. Using this approach to comment on artistic
conventions of the past, Attempts at a Life
blends flash fiction with the literary essay, creating its own worlds from
“drawing rooms” and “birds with unusual claims to song.” A piece entitled “The Portrait of a
Lady” exemplifies this trend.
Dutton narrates, for instance:
I was a tomboy and fought on open
fields. The days passed unmarked
and I called them: Mrs. Days. “She is a different child!” I heard the women say even as they were
forgetting me. And while my
sisters practiced their stitches in the parlor from the light of a beaded lamp,
I stood on the battlefield with what I thought was a gun in my hand, but it
turned out to be a bright green bird.
Thankfully an opportunity arose to chart well-charted republics. (14)
In contemporizing Henry James’ classic novel by the same title,
Dutton suggests that his depictions of independent-minded ladies like heroine Isabel
Archer remain dramatized and unrealistic when compared to everyday women, an
idea that she conveys through her narrator’s self-characterization. While describing her supposed
alienation from more domestic female characters, who “practice their stitches
in the parlor,” Dutton’s narrator uses a high register and a mocking tone,
implying through such choices that Isabel Archer’s life story remains an
unattainable, impractical ideal. Like
other works in Attempts at a Life, “The
Portrait of a Lady” pairs such commentary with repeated themes and motifs that
link the individual pieces within collection, of which past depictions of
women, narrative tropes, and the resonance of literature with one’s life story
are merely a few examples.
Dutton’s treatments of other Victorian classics, which she
intersperses throughout the book, are also impressive. Because Attempts at a Life explores the literary life history as well as the personal,
she demonstrates that the two often intersect, raising questions about the role
of fiction in constructing one’s own narrative. Particularly apparent in a story entitled “Jane Eyre,”
Dutton conflates the events of Charlotte Bronte’s novel with an ongoing
commentary, suggesting that such dated depictions of womanhood still shape
lives today. She writes, for
example:
I took long walks through generous
woods and sometimes even on the roof to look at distant hills and (like all
heroines, ever dissatisfied) to imagine what might be past them. I have a certain amount of palpable
self-distrust as well as matter-of-factness, but stand in possession of a
heartily romantic imagination replete with the usual voids and sprites and
turbulent seas. (3-4)
In this passage, Dutton juxtaposes the tropes to which
Bronte adhered with parodies of such conventions. By noting that Jane is the typical “heroine” who remains
“ever dissatisfied,” as well as giving an oversimplified analysis of the
“romantic” sensibilities that permeate the novel, Dutton critiques such
traditions as being formulaic and stifling. Similar in many respects to the portrayal of Henry James’
heroine, “Jane Eyre” raises significant questions about the manner in which
individuals appropriate such conventions in narrating their own story, suggesting
through her use of a narrator who self-consciously mimics Bronte’s tone and
imagery that this story has determined the course of many life histories.
While depicting a variety of autobiographies, Dutton reveals
the absurdity of the rules that individuals adhere to in conveying their own
experiences, often examining the impact of culture on creating them. In doing so, the stories in Attempts
at a Life continue their dialogue with the
works that came before it, and exchange that proves compelling throughout. These themes are exemplified by the
story “Everybody’s Autobiography, or, Nine Attempts at a Life,” in which she
writes:
Raised in an orphanage on the
wrong side of town, still I learned all the classical notions and good
writing. Thus, I embarked on the
path of a newspaperman, which took me on fine adventures where the direct
treatment of the thing was often called for. (24)
Modeled on Everybody’s Autobiography, in which Gertrude Stein examines American
definitions of success by creating a narrator who personifies them, Dutton’s
piece similarly suggests that societal factors also play a large part in
shaping the stories that one tells oneself. A thoughtful meditation on the ways one’s identity remains
determined by outside influences, “Nine Attempts at a Life” borrows from Stein
while commenting on the apparent artistry that one often finds in her work. Through phrases like “I embarked on the
path of a newspaperman…where the direct treatment of the thing was often called
for,” Dutton reveals Stein’s Everybody’s Autobiography as being self-conscious, a work that at times highlights
its own artistry instead of its subject.
Like Stein’s own work, however, the stories in Attempts at a
Life do not merely critique or create, but
instead carry on a dialogue with literary tradition.
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