Cooperstown run amok
Grad student Willie Upton is having a rotten summer. She鈥檚 torched her career as an archaeologist, thanks to an affair with a married professor and an episode involving temporary insanity and a bush plane. Also, the 28-year-old has a horrible suspicion that she鈥檚 pregnant.
When she drags herself home to Templeton, N.Y., to hide from the wreckage for a while, her mother鈥檚 got another surprise: She鈥檚 lied to Wilhemina about her biological father. The man in question still lives in Templeton and, like the Uptons, is a descendant of Marmaduke Temple, father to both the town and its most famous resident, novelist James Franklin Temple.
Since mom (Vivienne) isn鈥檛 naming names, Willie uses the research skills she鈥檚 honed writing her dissertation to track the errant ancestor and discover her real dad.
The Monsters of Templeton, the fabulously inventive debut novel by Lauren Groff, follows the trend of recent books such as 鈥淢arch,鈥� 鈥淔inn,鈥� and 鈥淎hab鈥檚 Wife鈥� of extracting characters from classic novels, adding two cups of history, a quart of imagination, and stirring vigorously. But instead of offering one minor character a star turn, Groff borrows a half-dozen folks from the books of James Fenimore Cooper, using them as witnesses to the historic crime at the heart of her novel.
Generally, classics used as inspirational springboards for modern novelists tend to be beloved and instantly accessible to the collective cultural consciousness (鈥淟ittle Women,鈥� 鈥�Huckleberry Finn,鈥� 鈥淢oby-Dick鈥�). But although world-famous during his life, Fenimore Cooper has fallen on hard times. If it weren鈥檛 for the 1992 movie starring Daniel Day-Lewis, most Americans probably wouldn鈥檛 know a thing about 鈥�The Last of the Mohicans.鈥�
They鈥檙e even less likely to have read 鈥淭he Pioneers,鈥� in which, Groff explains in a foreword, Fenimore Cooper wrote about his father and the town he founded, christening the one Marmaduke Temple, and the other Templeton. Since Groff, a native of Cooperstown, found herself combining the city鈥檚 history and literary traditions with Washington Irving-style ghost stories and tall tales of the region, 鈥淚 relaxed and followed his lead.鈥�
Her Templeton, 鈥渁n odd mix of Podunk and cosmopolitan,鈥� has a baseball museum, an opera, and, residing in Lake Glimmerglass, a North American cousin of the Loch Ness monster. The day the novel opens, 鈥淕limmey鈥� has just gone belly-up, proving its existence by ending it.
The whole find-your-real-dad scavenger hunt is a little contrived. I, for one, would never embark on weeks of research if I knew I could get the answer I wanted by pestering my mother. (Vivienne is hoping the challenge will help pull Willie out of her funk.)
But Groff has concocted such a rich trove of source documents 鈥� portraits, old letters, journal entries, and reminiscences by characters lifted from Fenimore Cooper鈥檚 writings 鈥� that readers will be too busy gleefully burrowing into the fictitious past she has created to mind.
Early on, Willie calls her mom a 鈥渉uman onion,鈥� and the novel also works in layers, peeling away to find the 鈥渁crid, tear-inducing core.鈥� Despite Glimmey and the occasional character who claims to see ghosts, the real monsters of Templeton are most definitely human. Which is why a spiritus-ex-machina near the end of the novel is such a head-shaker 鈥� it鈥檚 a creaky contrivance Groff didn鈥檛 need.
What makes 鈥淭he Monsters of Templeton鈥� particularly satisfying is that Groff has taken the macho backdrop of Fenimore Cooper鈥檚 work and turned it into the stomping ground for some complicated, vibrant women. Cooper鈥檚 females, as probably even his most ardent defender would admit, weren鈥檛 his strong suit. Critic James Russell Lowell actually waxed poetic about his inability to write them: 鈥�...the women he draws from one model don鈥檛 vary,/ All sappy as maples and flat as a prairie.鈥�
Prickly, messed-up Willie and her mom couldn鈥檛 sweeten an Eggo between them. When Willie was a child, they were simultaneous sources of civic pride and shame 鈥� thanks to Vivienne鈥檚 status as a hippie and teenage mom and her late historian father鈥檚 publication of an unsavory secret about the 鈥済reat鈥� Marmaduke.
Both women were isolated by the 鈥済rand old house and ... simultaneous poverty. As I grew, I would have a pool my country-clubbing grandparents had put in, two in-town acres, a lake to play in all summer long,鈥� Willie remembers. 鈥淎nd yet I would have to pick my clothes out of a bin in the basement of the Presbyterian Church and during hard times run into the Great American grocery store to buy our cheese with food stamps.鈥�
As Willie uncovers 鈥渢he many messy centuries of my messy, messy family鈥� (and she鈥檚 not kidding 鈥� Vivienne emerges as the sanest, most selfless Temple in 200 years), the modern world gets kinder and gentler (rather improbably so, in a few cases) as the nastiness of the past is exposed.
The historical puzzle satisfies to the end, but in the present day, Groff tries a little too hard to smooth out Willie鈥檚 future. (As plenty of adopted children can tell you, finding a biological parent doesn鈥檛 automatically make the rest of life fall into place.)
Still, as a work of imagination, 鈥淭he Monsters of Templeton鈥� excels. It will be a while before I look at a lake and not wish there were a benevolent, ungainly Glimmey swimming under the surface.
