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The Early Fiction of John McCoy:
A Facsimile Edition
with commentary by the author
I Sit in It
Written in Mrs. Kubasko's P.M. kindergarten class, Harding Elementary School, 1974.
I Sit on It, #2 pencil on rulled paper, 10.5" x 8"
Text:
[Jo Johl] John.
[IS] I Sit in it
Meet me
See Mat on it
Notes:
From 1973 until 1977 I attended Harding Elementary School in Youngstown, Ohio. Although today it seems strange to me that there should have been a public school named after the second-most disliked President of the United States ever (and before Watergate, Harding was still number one), at the time I was just happy to be sharing my blocks with Nora, the little red-haired girl who was my first real crush.
I Sit in It is the earliest extant MS in my handwriting, and demonstrates many of the techniques that would mark my later work. Written in first person, it is plotless, simple, and relies upon suggestion for its effects. The most obvious questions for the reader are, "What is 'it'? Why does the narrator sit 'in' it, while Mat is 'on' it? Where are we to meet?" But although these questions are ulimately unanswerable, they are crucial. By setting up rational expectations and refuting them, the reader is led, koan-like, to a new level of interpretation. It is only when the expected categories of "in" and "on" are deconstructed that understanding begins.
The true subject of I Sit in It, then, is the mutability of identity. Note the strikethroughs which begin the story: Jo become Johl becomes John. And then, a period after John announces the completion of the metamorphosis. But should we assume that this teleology is valid? It seems unlikely.
The Missing Bird
Written in Mrs. Wren's first grade class, Harding Elementary School, 1975.
The Missing Bird, Crayon on manilla paper, 10.5" x 8"
The Missing Bird (Reverse), Crayon on manilla paper, 10.5" x 8"
Text:
THE "MISSING
BIRD" BY John McCoy
Once there was a bird.
He had a mother. She said, "Hop,
and fly." He hoped, and fell.
His mother cood not find him,
and askek mrs. owl. "Look behind th
tree." she said. and there he was!
Notes:
Mrs. Wren had a pair of plastic mushrooms on her desk which she claimed were poisonous. The poison was so strong, she said, that a child need only touch the mushrooms to die a painful death. Today I believe her intentions were to keep her students' hands off of her belongings, but the result was a horrified classroom of six-year-olds. Why would anyone keep something so dangerous on their desk? What if we brushed against the mushrooms by accident? Eventually, the brighter students in the class realized that the mushrooms posed no danger, and they terrorized the rest of us by threatening to make us touch the forbidden objects.
Some of the anxiety of this situation is reflected in The Missing Bird, a story which appears to be simple, but which reveals a sinister side upon closer examination. Although baby animals are often separated from their mothers in children's literature (see P. D. Eastman's Are You My Mother? or Eric Hill's Where's Spot?), it is not so typical for the mother to be instrumental in causing the separation.
The reader must decide for him or herself whether the mother believes that her child can fly or if she is malicious in her instructions, but the central tragedy of the bird trying and failing is vivid no matter what the mother's motivation. The misspelling of "hopped" as "hoped" is felicitous: just as the bird, we hope for the best as we enter the world, only to be brought low by gravity.
Owls are often figures of wisdom, but the sensitive reader will question the necessity of the character of Mrs. Owl. Why can't the mother see for herself where her child is? She knows he must have fallen near the tree. Perhaps the mother isn't really looking.
The Restaurant
Written in Mrs. Brass's third grade class, Harding Elementary School, 1977.
The Restaurant 1, #2 pencil on white Kraft paper, 8" x 10.5"
The Restaurant 2, #2 pencil on white Kraft paper, 8" x 10.5"
Text:
There was a restaurant where a man
who sold pencils would stop every
day to eat breakfast. And all the
morning he would shout out loud to
him self as if he wanted everyone
to hear. There was also a threesome
that had a favorate table to eat
at. To day, however, as they where sitting
down, they noticed a lady 6' tall,
long-black haired, coming in. They
shuffled around nevously, collecting
cups, plates, and silver ware, and sat down
making it appear as if they just had
breakfast. Then, the lady sat down
drank half a cup of coffee, and
then began talking to herself.
Not outloud, like the pencil-
man, but in a soft murmur.
The threesome left by the
backdoor. And even after the
tabe was wiped & cleaned, the
lady still looked on, still
clutching the half-emty
cup. The pencil-man glanced over,
saw the lady, and ran out the
door. The lady soon left.
--------------------
The next day, the threesome had
just finished breakfast when the lady
came in. They left. The lady spotted
the pencil-man talkig outloud and
went to the chair next to him. "It's
to cold outside! The birds are
freezing, dam it!" said the pencil-
man. "I know nobody wants to, but
somebody's got to feed the birds!"
"May I have some tea, herald?" asked the
lady. The man grabbed the teapot,
poured the lady some. "I ain't nobody
named herald," the man said.
--------------------
The next day the man & woman
came together. The threesome left
for good. The man & woman began
to talk together. They left and moved
into an apartment together wher
all the do is tall softly to one another.
And the restourant will never be the same.
Notes:
No writings save for notebook pages of cursive handwriting practice remain from Mrs. Vernarsky's second grade class, which is a shame, because that means I won't be able to point out that Mrs. Vernarsky had an amazingly weird beehive hairdo (except in this sentence). When I try to remember what I wrote in her class, all I can remember is being caught drawing "Big Daddy Roth"-type hot rods, the kinds with monsters and big chrome exhaust pipes.
Even if there is no surviving literary record of my second grade year, its importance to my personal development should not be underestimated. It was in the second grade that I was found to be nearsighted, and the resultant eyewear forever set me aside from my playmates. Oh, they still traded their Now 'n' Laters with me, still dropped their Scooby-Doo valentines in my box, but dodgeball was forever changed.
Small wonder, then, that alienation should be the major theme of The Restaurant. All of its characters are unable to communicate meaningfully with one another, preferring instead to shout or murmur nonsensically--or, in the case of the Threesome, to abstain from discourse entirely. Although I cannot recall the initial conception of The Restaurant, its obvious models are Sartre and Beckett, perhaps by way of a particularly bleak skit on Zoom.
For example, the ostensible protagonist, the Pencil-Man, desparately craves attention from an indifferent world, but is paralyzed by his own incompetence. "Feed the pigeons," he admonishes, but why doesn't he just feed them himself? At least the Pencil-Man is given a possible motivation by the narrator. When the Lady arrives, she is described objectively, blankly, as though she were a suspect in a police line-up: "6' tall, long-black hair." But what is her crime? Merely her attempt to connect with another human. "Herald," she calls the man, and in the misspelling we suddenly see the Pencil-Man as John the Baptist, another annoying hairy man who shouted. The Pencil-Man, however, is unwilling to take the role of Christian martyr, but instead offers tea, as though a participant in a Buddhist ceremony. Thus we see the contrast between Western and Eastern paths to transcendence.
Although they strike up a relationship, romance does not seem to be a solution for the alienated Pencil-Man and Lady. Theirs is a sexless relationship, one in which all they do is talk softly to one another. This would seem to indicate communication, but it is a communication devoid of either action or context. How will they survive? Who will sell the pencils?
Perhaps the most enigmatically fascinating characters of all are the "Threesome." In contrast to the clinical description of the Lady, the three are never described, not even to differentiate them from one another. Are they men or women? Are they lovers? Why are they so threatened by the arrival of the Lady? Possibly they represent the dissolution of identity, the generic personality of Modern Humanity. If so, their aversion to the Lady makes sense. The Threesome seek to absorb the Pencil-Man into their hive mind, only to have the Lady step in and encourage his eccentricity. Theirs is the true tragedy of the story, as they are unable to even enjoy their breakfast, prefering the pretense of eating to true nourishment.
And the pigeons? What of them?
Copyright (C) 1997 John McCoy. All rights reserved.
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