Trouble in the family> In ‘Beaming Sonny Home,’ Cathie Pelletier takes aim at media making celebrities of anonymous, violent men who proclaim to be saviors

BEAMING SONNY HOME, By Cathie Pelletier, Crown Publishers Inc., 1996; 288 pages, $21.

Once upon a time in Mattagash, Maine, there lived a young, impressionable girl named Mattie whose mother died at an early age, so that Mattie was forced to raise her younger siblings without her father’s help. He had neither the time nor the inclination to do so. Then one day Mattie fell in love with a handsome prince named Lester Gifford, and she married him. And they lived happily never after. For, like Mattie’s father, Lester was a philandering husband who spent his “quality time” with every other woman in town, while Mattie raised their three daughters and son alone.

Typically, Mattie saw her one and only son as more valuable than her daughters, who resented her favoritism of a boy who caused trouble every waking day of his life. Had Mattie given an ounce of affection, attention and a sense of belonging, of purpose, to her daughters, perhaps they would not have grown up to act like “harpies on a corpse.” Lester was an absentee father, but Mattie was also emotionally absent for her girls, making this comic view of modern life a criticism of a culture which still sees women as expendable as Kleenex.

Mattie’s daughters could agree with the old joke, “my brother is an only child.” Sonny got the love, attention, good looks and charm, leaving his sisters to feel like something less than human. When the girls got married, Mattie turned their room into a sewing room, while she preserved Sonny’s room as a shrine. Sonny was pampered and fawned over by his mother, who repeatedly made excuses for him — when he acted up in school, when he burned down the American Legion Hall and now, when he has kidnapped two women and a poodle, holding them hostage in his estranged wife’s trailer.

His outrageous behavior presumably was meant to call attention to the poor. Sonny, a comic Christ led astray by a vision of John Lennon on television, wants attention.

In her sixth novel, Cathie Pelletier takes aim at a major problem of the ’90s: The media has made cult heroes of anonymous, violent men who are self-proclaimed saviors, venting their psychic rage and-or sorrow on “innocent bystanders.” They are served up on TV, brought to us by our favorite sponsors and talking heads. This instant gratification and “15 minutes of fame” seem to justify these brain-dead acts of psychological violence committed by (and to) people W.H. Auden called, “The Unknown Citizen(s).”

In his 1940 satiric poem on consumerism and mass conformity, Auden describes the “perfect” citizen who does what is expected and dies an unsung, anonymous hero. He asks: “Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd. Had anything been wrong we would certainly have heard.” Certainly this view still applies to American society; only the nuts and the crackpots get instant fame. In our culture, every tin martyr on the streets can justify his heinous crimes by claiming they were done in the name of “salvation.”

Following in the comic (cosmic) footsteps of Kurt Vonnegut, Pelletier intentionally creates an absurd Christ figure in Sonny Gifford — called Sonny because his parents never quite agreed on what to call him. The symbolism screams out. The sisters are called Marlene (as in Mary Magdalene — a follower of Christ, the first to recognize the “Risen Christ”); Rita (short for Margarita — the “pearl” of great price, or one of many cast before swine); and Gracie (as in the grace of God, something they don’t admit). And the beleaguered mother is Mattie — short for Matilda (“might and battle”).

Throughout, Mattie does battle with her daughters, whom she describes as “chattering and gossipy, like the grackles” who had “big, bulging eyes, like huge, gossipy flies.” Meanwhile, she watches her beloved son acting out the hostage game on TV as she struggles to complete a picture puzzle called “Easter Rising.” Searching for the blue piece (Jesus’ left eyeball), she thinks, Sonny, too, has “blue pools” for eyes. Blue eyes and good looks (“like his father”) are also associated with the blue of the irises Sonny would bring to Mattie, flowers so beautiful but forever stinking.

Let’s not forget that Sonny’s John the Baptist — John Lennon — appeared to him on TV, telling him to speak out for the starving children. It doesn’t seem to bother Sonny that Lennon is dead. Speaking out for the children is a convenient excuse for holding hostages, but actually, he just wanted to get his dog back from his ex-wife. And his mother could honestly proclaim, “Only Sonny, only her boy had been worth the pain of childbirth.” Yet even Mattie admits: “There might be a side to Sonny that would eat the Lord’s Last Supper, thinking it was cooked for him, and then ask Jesus for a doggie bag.” This is the only hint that even she knows he is selfish and egocentric.

Readers familiar with Pelletier’s amusing tales of modern small-town life in Maine will appreciate the narrative itself as well as the author’s penchant for poignant satire. Again she presents characters and situations which are plausible to such a degree that they are almost recognizable. Doesn’t everyone know someone like Mattie, whose only hope of happiness is her love for her well-intentioned “baby boy”? Doesn’t every family have a “Sonny,” forever frozen in childhood fantasy? Aren’t we all nauseated by the media exploitation of the emotional and mental problems of dysfunctional family members? Perhaps that explains this reader’s ambivalent feelings toward this fine work. While entertained with Pelletier’s ironic gifts, readers also must feel the gradual movement toward an inevitable doom, as it creeps into our psyches and frustrates our hopes.

The fairy tale view of religion, like the fairy tale view of love, is destructive for young people in a society that worships looks over substance. It is this illusion, this idealistic and impractical view of life, that leaves so many disillusioned and bitter. The pillars of the community promise us that if we buy all the right products and follow all the soap-opera rules for falling in love, we will get our just deserts — a spouse who will fulfill all our fantasies, and we’ll live happily ever after. Is that why our culture expects hostage situations to be played out during prime time?

Life now seems to consist of 30- or 60-minute bites, our troubles answered after the next commercial. Can we afford to reinforce this absurd notion of life to our descendants? Will society collapse if we tell the truth? Love isn’t enough — love, like hope, dies; passion fades; and the memories buy us what? “A brightly lighted cave, a tunnel of luminous despair.” Is that all there is?

Cathie Pelletier will be available for book signing 7-9 p.m. Wednesday, June 19, at BookSource in Bangor. Linda L. Labin is a free-lance writer from Newburgh and an associate professor of English at Husson College in Bangor.