STAGING THAT SUMMER IN PARIS: NARRATIVE STRATEGIES AND THEATRICAL TECHNIQUES IN THE LIFE WRITING OF MORLEY CALLAGHAN
Marianne Perz
The people in the principal cafes ... might just sit and drink and talk and love to be seen by others
(Hemingway, A Moveable Feast 100)
In "Mimesis: The Dramatic Lineage of Auto/Biography," Evelyn Hinz proposes a new poetics of life writing, one that recognizes life writing's "dramatic affinities" (196). She argues that "drama [i]s the 'sister-art' of auto/biography" (196) and writes: "the internal dynamics of life writing are much closer to dramatic art, and the language of the stage affords us a much better vocabulary for describing the impact of this kind of literature than does the critical terminology of prose fiction" (208). There are three pivotal steps in Hinz's argument. First, she traces the "genetic" or historical roots of drama, citing various life writers who have acknowledged the connection between the two genres. Second, she refers to the large volume of modern criticism in which the similarities between the two are illuminated. And third, Hinz points out several features in auto/biography, which, she explains, are ones which Aristotle has identified as being essential to drama.
I suggest that there is yet another parallel between the two genres: the authors' use of similar strategic techniques. Just as a stage director employs stagecraft for the production of a drama, a life writer uses it to shape the way that he or she recreates life experience. Canadian writer Morley Callaghan, I argue, dabbled in techniques of the stage when writing his memoir That Summer in Paris. In this text, Callaghan creates a narrative persona for his voice that performs the same tasks as a casting director, a lighting designer, and a costume designer. As he speaks, this narrator reconstructs a theatrical mise-en-scene, comprised of performance and of spectatorship, in which he imagines himself and other writers to have taken part during the summer of 1929. This is referred to in the text as "literary life ... on [a] grand, opulent and theatrical scale" (Callaghan, That Summer in Paris, 74). First, the narrator casts various people in the roles of performers and spectators. Second, he describes light and dark images in relation to what the people are doing. This "stage" technique indicates when characters are r^rforming and when they are not, while it also simulates theatrical scenery. Third, he designs imaginative costumes for this production. He describes various pieces of attire which, when worn, signify either that attention is being attracted to someone who is performing or that there is a lack of attention to a spectator — hence, the dynamics within the theatre. As such, Callaghan invites us to participate in a third production. Having once actually experienced the "show" in Paris, then having watched it in his imagination a second time, the narrator calls upon us to act as spectators in a playhouse as he delivers a third performance as he speaks.
Before discussing the memoir in detail, I wish to point out Callaghan's familiarity with stagecraft and dramatic technique. Among many of his works are two experimental plays. Callaghan had what Gary Boire refers to as "a short-lived career as a dramatist" (75). In 1938, Callaghan completed Going Home (initially referred to as Turn Home Again), and in 1940, he completed Just Ask For George. Furthermore, during this time, Callaghan had the opportunity to discuss technique with other dramatists. For example, he "socialized with the American writer and dramatist William Sa-royan" (77). Neither of Callaghan's plays were successfully produced in New York, but while attempting to do so, Callaghan did take a part in preparing the staged production, thereby developing experience in casting. He played a large role in "audition[ing] actors with [Lawrence] Langner [from the New York Guild]" (77).
The narrative persona that Callaghan assumes in That Summer in Paris provides him with yet another theatre role: the recreation of actual events on the stage of the reader's imagination. What the narrator describes to us is not a direct reflection of the rituals of performance and of spectatorship that took place in 1929. Rather, it is a recreation of events that he imagines, remembers, or wants us to believe to have taken place. What is important here is to realize that the writing is an imitation of his interpretation, which has played inside his mind before he put it into words.
Consider that there are three times that a drama presents itself in the formation of That Summer in Paris. The first is the actual observation, a time when the narrator has been in the position of watching and acting in 1929. The second is recollection. In this second or intermediary stage (before recreating it in words), the narrator describes a drama as taking place inside his mind. Callag-han constructs an implicit metaphor throughout the text, comparing the voice's personal process of recollecting this Parisian excursion to a dramatic presentation which takes place inside his mind before describing it.
One of the ways by which the metaphor is constructed is the continual reference to memories as "scenes": one of the sub-divisions or units of drama. In the first chapter, the voice describes the memorable "scenes" which are triggered in his mind:
That night I couldn't sleep. Little scenes from our lives in the Quarter in Paris kept dancing in my mind. That Raspail and Montparnasse corner would light up brightly with the cafes crowded and the headwaiters shaking hands with the regu lar patrons. Or down at the Deux Magots I could see Fitz gerald coming to meet me with his elegant and distinguished air It was all too vivid in my mind. (11)
The narrator forms the analogy between memory and scene later in the text, when describing Parisian "musicians," "violins," and "chestnut trees" (188) as well as Scott Fitzgerald's charm: "The remark and the warm little scene made me feel again that he had some fixed place in my life" (188). Moreover, the narrator refers to the boxing match that has taken place between himself and Ernest Hemingway, refereed by Fitzgerald, as a scene: "At the club — I remember the scene so vividly — I remember how Scott, there for the first time, looked around in surprise" (212). In this passage, the voice switches from the present to the past tense. The phrase "I remember the scene" describes the drama first playing in his mind and only after this does the voice switch to the past tense to describe the manner in which Scott Fitzgerald "looked."
The implicit metaphor is also constructed by the repetition of the term "picture." It emphasizes the "pictorial aspect of the stage" (McCandless 13). A staged production is often described as a picture. In Lighting the Stage, Stanley McCandless proposes that the stage is "a large canvas on which to paint with light" (86). In the earlier part of the twentieth century, a time just prior to the time that Callaghan was living in Paris, this comparison was also made. Arthur Symons writes: "This visible creation of life [the production] is ... like a picture, and it is made in the spirit of the painter" (364). Symons also refers to the "stage director ... [a]s the artist of the theatre" (362). This connection is in fact made by Callaghan in his text A Wild Old Man On the Road,1 in which the protagonist's observations (which are also memories for his father) are described as paintings on a stage. The two are spectators at different moments in time to the same picture of activity in and around the cafes in Paris: "the whole corner a big bowl of light hanging there in the night as it must have hung there forty years before" (19).
As Hinz points out, one of the characteristics of drama is "its visual immediacy or quality of actual presence" (196); that life writing does "aspire to this condition . .. may be seen in its frequent recourse to pictorial metaphors" (196). Throughout That Summer in Paris, the narrator uses the term "picture," either in reference to a memory or to a flashback. He refers to a recollection of Ernest Hemingway, for example, as "that picture I ha[ve] of him spitting blood at me" (128). The voice also describes a memory of Ernest Hemingway's appearance as constituting a type of picture: "in the way he held his hands, his chin down a little to his shoulder, he made an impressive picture" (104). In this case, he describes the picture as having formed itself in the past in order to be retained for future recollection. Furthermore, he refers to the process of recollection as a "dream technique" which operates by "one picture then another flashing in the mind" (143). Finally, the metaphor is reinforced by a character's reference to a potential memory as a tableau. Near the end of their journey, Morley and Loretto Callaghan "wand[er] into an elegant house without noticing it ha[s] a red light over the door" (225); a brothel in which a madame tries to stage her business. Callaghan remembers her suggesting: "if we would like it, two of her girls would come into our room and make a tableau for us" (225). While the narrator himself does not make a direct comparison between a memory and a picture here, he does call our attention to the pictorial aspect of this memory through the words of this madame. That is, what he may have seen, the girls in sexual performance, is compared to a tableau which has still yet to be assembled.
The narrative voice then recreates what he has watched in his imagination in the form of a third dramatic presentation, this one drawing us in to participate in the ritual of theatrics as we read — as spectators. Foremost, as he tells his story, the narrator acts as a casting director by speaking about the characters as performers and spectators. Most often, he casts the literary figures into the roles of performers, thereby following an important strategy for appropriate casting: "The search for specific qualities ... is the major attack in the casting process" (Hodge 316). Writers are particularly well-suited for performatory roles since they have experience in performance and show, displayed in written form. That the narrator imagines to have perceived, in his younger years, a connection between writers and performance is evidenced in a disapproving comment about metaphor. Ventriloquizing his younger voice, he comments: "every time a writer used a brilliant phrase to prove himself witty or clever he merely took the mind of the reader away from the object and directed it to himself; he became simply a performer. Why didn't he go on stage?" (Callaghan, That Summer in Paris, 21).
Hemingway and Fitzgerald are two writers in particular who assume the roles of performers in That Summer in Paris. As Brandon Conron suggests about their portrayal in Callaghan's text: "at the centre of their brilliantly imagined worlds they were actors who could put on dazzling performances" (Introduction 15). In one passage, the voice describes a memory of Ernest Hemingway during a boxing match, in which he spouts out "blood at [Callaghan] with such theatrical scorn" (That Summer 128). The narrator also casts Fitzgerald in various performatory roles throughout much of the story, more often than he does Hemingway. Fitzgerald is consistently "making a spectacle of himself" (196). The voice describes a scene in which Fitzgerald delivers an acrobatic performance for him to watch and interpret. Once Morley and Loretto Callaghan have been invited into the home of the Fitzgeralds, Scott Fitzgerald responds to Morley's lack of enthusiasm either for Hemingway's Farewell To Arms or for the company of the art critic Clive Bell by performing an acrobatic stunt:
Suddenly he got down on his knees, put his head on the floor and tried to stand on his head. One leg came up, and he tried to get the other one up and maintain his balance. And while he was swaying and flopping at my feet, my shame and anger became unbearable.... Now here he was on the floor of his own drawing room, trying to stand on his head to mock me. In my anger and anguish, I felt there must be some dreadful flaw in my character which he had immediately perceived. Then he lost his balance and sprawled flat on his face. (154)
This "play within the play" (Fitzgerald's performance) is designed to arouse emotion from its audience. Fitzgerald is mocking Callag-han's lack of enthusiasm and is questioning his artistic judgement. As such, the performance provokes "anger and anguish" which Callaghan admits to having experienced at that time.
The narrative voice also invites us to watch James Joyce, another member of the Parisian literary circle, behaving as an entertainer. Both theatre and film imagery are used to describe an evening during which Morley and Loretto Callaghan have been invited back to the Joyces' home, the Irish writer discussing film: "As he [Joyce] talked, I seemed to see him in a darkened theatre, the great prose master absorbed in camera technique" (143). Ironically, Joyce is speaking about film as if he were performing in one. He then proceeds to play the recording of a consummate performer — Aimee Semple McPherson, this detail emphasizing that this is indeed entertainment for the Callaghans. McPherson was an evangelist singer whose "life can be explained in terms of the 1920s craze for Hollywood, the stage and stardom" (Blum-hofer 8). In fact, one might argue that McPherson used religion to attract attention to herself. With the fame she acquired as an evangelist, she then attracted even further attention with extremely dramatic stories; it is ambiguous whether or not she may have fabricated a story for public attention about being kidnapped, "bound, gagged and numbed by ether" (7) to explain her disappearance for six weeks.
The narrator casts yet another member of the Montparnasse artistic circle, Kiki, "an artist model" (196), in the role of an entertaining comedian. While Kiki is not herself a writer, she does inhabit the literary social circle. Callaghan meets her through his "literary" friends Bob McAlmon and John Glassco. The voice suggests that Kiki is well suited to acting out different roles, referring to her as "the woman of so many lives in Montparnasse" (196). In fact, she performs the role of a humorous dramatic figure, the clown, when she climbs the stairs to the Whidney's apartment one late evening: "there was something of the clown in her lovely face ... Going up the stairs ahead of me was Kiki, and being the lovely clown she was, she began to go up the stairs on all fours" (196).
The narrator also portrays himself as having been an entertainer. Foremost, he is a comedian. Consider how he admits having acted in a "[crowded] apartment with well-known writers and reviewers" (48) in Greenwich Village, New York. While this particular location is not Paris, it is part of Callaghan's journey to Paris; it is a stop along the way. In fact, some of the guests who attend the "big cocktail party" (48) are "Quarterites" themselves. During this event, in the summer of 1920 Callaghan plays "the clown" for Sherwood Anderson, the American writer and "Quarterite:
Full of affection for this man I had never seen before, I played the clown and did it well. Approaching him with a solemn air, I took him by the arm. "Excuse me, aren't you Sherwood Anderson?" I asked accusingly. "That's right," he said.
"Good," I said quietly. "Then you're my father."
The look on his face as he drew back uneasily made me want to laugh ... Finally he said, "I don't understand. What is your name?" "Morley Callaghan."
"Morley Callaghan..." and then he burst out laughing. Delighted, he put his arms around me. "What a wonderful thing to say to me," he said. (48-49)
Here, Callaghan performs two roles at the same time: the abandoned son and the clown. In this latter role, he plays a trick in attempt to establish a friendship with Anderson. Callaghan also assumes the role of the clown when following Kiki up the stairs leading to the Whidneys' apartment. After Kiki has begun to climb "the stairs on all fours" (196), Morley is described as "readying] down, and throwing] her skirt up over her head" (196). The voice then says: "she continued to go up on all fours while I played a drumbeat with both hands on her plump behind" (196-97). The narrator admits that he has considered playing the part of the clown on other occasions, once while engaged in a serious conversation with Fitzgerald: "Taken aback, I tried to laugh. Those strangely colored eyes of his were on me, and if I clowned I knew I would be insulting him" (184). In this case, the narrator recalls being aware that Fitzgerald is trying to project "an unspoiled frankness" (184) while delivering a compliment on Morley Callaghan's writing. The voice also recalls the risk in performing the part of a clown on this particular occasion, thereby reminding Fitzgerald of simpler and sillier things within this "frank" and serious context that he attempts to create.
Apart from performing as a clown, the narrator describes himself as once constituting a spectacle in Paris in 1929. He believes that the combination of himself, Hemingway, and Joan Miro walking outside the boxing club together after a boxing match must have drawn attention to itself: "Outside, walking over to the American Club, we must have presented a strange spectacle: Big Ernest over six feet and heavy, me, four or five inches shorter, and Miro, who might have been a little over five feet" (167). Miro and Hemingway then form yet another spectacle for John Glassco and his friend Graeme who are presented as "the clever little devils" (168). Buffy and Graeme commit "the most terrible of sins around the Quarterite" (169-70), failing to recognize Miro and mistaking him for playing the role of Hemingway's butler: '"And the other one,' Buffy said blandly, watching the two retreating figures. 'His butler, I presume?'" (169).
The narrator also casts the characters in the roles of spectators, thereby inviting us to pretend that we are watching them perform as "observers" of the activities in Paris. He often talks about himself as an observer, a "stranger" (79) to Paris, one who sees this city "'as a kind of otherworldliness'" (229). In fact, he describes himself as being a spectator of a Parisian picture: "But Paris was always in our minds as a very satisfying and beautiful picture, the soft river valley, the gentle slopes, the two hills, and on the Right Bank sunlight on the white dome of Sacre Coeur" (111). Morley and Loretto Callaghan are often positioned together as spectators, watching from their audience chairs inside the contours of Parisian cafes. Either they watch their "fill of the faces and [listen to] the snatches of conversation at the Coupole" (88) or they are described as eating "inside a cafe," observing: "Outside on the rue de la Paix the girls were passing, taxis whirled by" (79). The voice proclaims: "the street life of Paris was just beyond our window" (79). In fact, during his visit with Sinclair Lewis in Greenwich Village, the voice refers to himself and Loretto as constituting an "audience" for a "performance" in which Lewis "seem[s] to be so absorbed" (72):
Lou called out that Henry Canby was not at the office. Then he might be in his home in Connecticut, Lewis answered. Wherever he was, get him. By now we had become merely spectators, watching Lewis as he smiled to himself.
Then Lou called out that Henry Canby had been traced to his home in Connecticut; here he was. With an encouraging smile to us, Lewis picked up the phone, but he kept his eyes on us, his audience. (71)
Here, Lewis acts outraged and annoyed, as he speaks to Henry Canby about having published a patronizing review of Callaghan's text.
Apart from describing his friends as taking on the roles of performers and spectators, while telling his story, the narrator acts like a lighting designer. While the illumination — and darkening — of the theatre that is of both stage and audience, is used for several purposes in the theatre, I would like to consider two of its functions in That Summer in Paris.
Light and dark imagery enhances performance and specta-torship. During a dramatic production, technical righting is used to direct audience attention towards performance and away from the rest of the theatre. As such, lights are shone onto the actors who perform on stage while the rest of the theatre is left in darkness, since "the eye [of the audience] tends towards the brightest object in its field" (McGrath 118). In That Summer in Paris, light and shadow indicate to us when performance and spectatorship are taking place. Light appears frequently in Callaghan's descriptions of Paris. In fact, the narrative voice imagines Paris as a whole to have been so full of light — that is, so full of performance — that he describes it as a spectacular stage, remarking that "[i]n Toronto, Paris indeed became my city of light" (36). Recognizing that this is his own perception of Paris, the narrator admits: "the lighted place. .. had to be always in my own head" (254). The voice describes several images of light: moonlight, streetlight, bulb light and sunlight, to illuminate and indicate performance. For example, while Callaghan stands at the Fitzgeralds' doorstep in search of Scott, the "hall light" suggests that Zelda Fitzgerald is only pretending to smile, that she is delivering a happy performance: "Pale, haggard, dark patches under her eyes, she stared at me vaguely, then tried to smile and failed. I can remember the way the overhead hall light glinted on her blond head" (190). The smile is something that Zelda must force, having been awake all night "due to some trouble over the theft of Scott Fitzgerald's wallet in a night club" (191). Light also indicates to us when performance is being delivered through body language. Describing Fitzgerald, who has been awake for twenty-four hours, the voice says: "Under the bright kitchen light his humiliation, his exhaustion with the aftermath of some drinking, made him look like a corpse" (192). Here, the kitchen light acts as a spotlight, shining onto him to highlight or attract our attention. Although he may not be deliberately trying to act as a corpse, the involuntary exhaustion of his body performs the role for him.
Just as different types of lights illuminate a stage, a number of different light images are described by the narrator for several effects in That Summer in Paris. For a dramatic presentation, a lighting technician may vary the intensity or colour of a light for a particular result. A light may be dimmed to cause a performance to appear unclear and therefore open to interpretation. To achieve this, a stage technician might apply a dimmer. During the early part of the twentieth century, this technique was introduced into theatre production in Paris. During the performance of a matinee in an opera-house in Paris, the Savoy, in 1897, the dimmer (though at this time it was not electric) made one of its first appearances, thereby catching the public attention as "an interesting experiment" (Rees 171).
In That Summer in Paris, the narrator achieves a similar effect. He "dims" the images of light for the reader. What he refers to as "false" light indicates that a performance which a character has delivered has been misinterpreted by others. The voice refers to "false" light when describing Scott Fitzgerald's performance at the Deux Magots at a time when he has been deprived of his sleep. As the voice notes, Fitzgerald has been a spectacle of something he is not actually trying to perform: "No one could know he hadn't had any sleep for twenty-four hours" (195). Even though Fitzgerald is actually "quite sober" (195), he involuntarily acts as someone would who is drunk:
Scott's drink had a particular effect on him. In his nervous exhaustion he had thought the drink would cheer him up. Instead it seemed to numb him. Stiffening, he looked puzzled... My wife was watching him... His face had turned ashen. He looked sick. People were gaping at him. We could see some Americans at a nearby table whispering. Suddenly it was as if he had been recognized; his name had been whispered along the terrace. (194)
The voice then points out to us, with light imagery, that the people who have mistaken Fitzgerald's exhaustion for drunken stupor have misinterpreted his gestures as a performance out of context "That night at the Deux Magots, he had been in a false light. Apparently he had been making a public spectacle of himself; a living picture of all the belittling stories that were being told about him.. .Yet he had managed to be seen in this light — the profligate abandoned sinner!" (195).2
While light suggests that a character is performing in the text, shadow indicates that a character, at that moment, is not. Consider again the passage during which Callaghan visits the exhausted Fitzgerald. That Fitzgerald is described as being in the shadows suggests that his body has stopped performing as "the corpse." Once Fitzgerald has left his home and encountered Loret-to Callaghan, the narrator says: "In her presence he had quickly recovered some of his charm, and on the shadowed street, away from the light, he sounded like himself" (193). As a result, the reader compares Fitzgerald to an actor who has shed his role. The shadow into which he steps metaphorically represents the darkness into which an actor steps off-stage. Out of his performatory role, he becomes "himself," as the voice believes him to be.
The shadowed area represents a place in which performance does not take place, a place that cannot be seen by spectators. The narrator describes a conversation he has had with Scott Fitzgerald: "I made a joke about Scott living in the shadow of bad Catholic art. It amused him. Then he said that he liked living near the Cathedral; he liked the neighborhood; he was always aware he was in the shadow of the Cathedral" (206). In the shadow, Fitzgerald is again an actor, this time out of the spotlight, off-stage and unable to be seen by the audience. Living in the shadows signifies that he lives in a location beyond public gaze and that, as a result, he can preserve his energy; he does not have to perform.
The images of lights and shadows also function as props. That is, when the voice refers to these images, it simulates for us the kind of lighting and darkening that we would experience sitting in the audience of a playhouse. Barnet, Berman, and Burto suggest that for a dramatic presentation, lighting can be used "as a substitute for (and improvement on) painted scenery" (223). They specify that such earlier forms of lighting, for example, as "[g]as could be controlled to produce the effects of sunlight, moonlight, etc."(222-23). In That Summer in Paris, the voice describes such images as sunlight, moonlight and bulb light in relation to people's performances or observations of them. He describes a shadow in relation to people who are not performing, to simulate the darkness that pervades the theatre as the performance is taking place on stage.
In one particular passage, streetlight, vestibule light, and shadow simulate theatrical "decor" for us. Consider the first observation that Morley and Loretto Callaghan form of Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald outside the apartment building in which they reside:
As we turned away disappointed, at loose ends standing in the shadowed doorway, a taxi drew up. A man and woman got out. They were under a street light. We could see their faces. 'Why, there's Fitzgerald,' I said to Loretto. In that light, even from a distance, he looked like the handsome, slender, fine-featured man whose picture I had so often seen, whose profile, in fact, appeared to be copied again and again by magazine illustrators. Coming towards us slowly, they couldn't see us. We were half hidden in the shadows. The vestibule light touched Zelda's blond hair. A handsome woman, her features were as regular as Scott's. I don't know why it upset me seeing these fine classic heads coming into the vestibule shadows where we waited. (149-50)
Here, the shadow around the doorway in which Morley and Lo-retto Callaghan stand simulates the darkness of a theatre in which the audience is seated, thereby also establishing that these two characters are spectators. At the same time, the streetlight simulates a theatre spotlight. As such, the movement that Scott and Zelda make from this light into the shadows simulates the movement that actors make from spotlight to off-stage. Consider yet another passage in which the voice describes his final observation of Hemingway in Paris in front of the Callaghans' "little hotel on Raspail": "I remember so clearly our parting with him. The streetlight was on him, and in that light there seemed to be so much warmth and vitality in his face" (237). Here again, streetlight represents the spotlight under which Hemingway delivers a performance. That the voice uses the term "seemed" to describe the "warmth and vitality" in Hemingway's expression suggests that perhaps there really is none. Quite possibly, the voice remembers him mimicking the display of such feelings rather than doing so naturally. Hemingway may be harboring resentment towards Callaghan, not only because of his "bloody" punch in the boxing arena but also because he is unable to score higher than he did at "the shooting gallery" (236). In this way, light and dark images have the capacity to transform into theatrical settings the front of the Fitzgeralds' apartment building and the Callaghans' hotel.
The third "stage" role that the narrative persona assumes in recreating the theatrical mise-en-scene is that of a costume designer. As such, he imitates the same method that those in Paris were using to make a statement about themselves. Paris, during the decade of the 1920s, is referred to as "this colourful world" (Conran, Callaghan 6) — colourful, in a metaphorical sense, since many people wore striking and flamboyant clothes. "This was the hour that brought the tourists to Montparnasse — 'Americans in checked shirts,' writes Frederick Kohner, 'Scandi navians in sweaters and heavy boots, play- boys in tuxedos, women in men's clothes'" (in Carpenter 100).
What effect did this "costuming" have on those who were observing in Paris? As James Laver suggests: "As soon as clothes are anything more than a mere device of decency or a protection against the weather they inevitably assume a dramatic quality of some kind" (1). That is, those who watched these people dress up in costume felt like they were an audience watching a production in a playhouse, and, would form a connection between the costume and the person wearing it. This I argue is the very effect that Callaghan wanted on his own readership. In fact, we find that the use of costumes is quite common throughout much of Callaghan's work, especially in his text The Many Colored Coat.
In That Summer in Paris, not only are costumes described, but they have a function similar to the fuction they have in a production; they act as signs for the reader. More specifically, a distinguishing characteristic of a costume can signify a particular dynamic about the role that is being played by the actor who is wearing it. In other words, the costume designer invites the audience to play a game, to form the connection between costume and role — to make the deduction that one signifies the other. For example, as Laver writes: "When a mayor puts on his robes he is both putting on 'historical costume' and assuming a character" (1) because the robes act as a sign of leadership and of authority. In That Summer in Paris, the reader is drawn in to do this very thing. The narrator designs costumes, or at least mental pictures of them, with his words. It is the appearance of these costumes which we are called upon to see as a reflection of the internal dynamics of spectatorship and performance. Various items of clothing signify both the attention that performance attracts and the lack of attention that spectatorship attracts. The narrative voice describes two particular types of costumes for us: those which are flamboyant and signify the performer and those which are inconspicuous and signify the spectator.
One of the more flamboyant pieces of attire we are called upon to recognize both as a costume and, therefore, as signifying something about the person wearing it, is the white felt hat. Worn by its owner, Fitzgerald, this costume reflects the attention he attracts to himself when performing as a drunkard. The narrator presents quite a "flashy" description of this hat. It is certainly ostentatious enough to have remained so vivid in his memory that he is able to describe it in detail: "[Fitzgerald] had acquired the most elegant felt hat I had seen in Paris; in color it was lighter than pearl- gray, almost white" (187). He recalls having proclaimed at his first sight of it: "'That's the grandest hat I've seen in Paris, Scott.'" (189). In fact, it is quite conceivable that Callaghan, who feels more comfortable watching than performing,3 refuses to accept this Italian hat when we are told it is given to him, because of its flam-boyancy, because it attracts attention:
It was an Italian hat, he said. Taking it off, he gave it to me. 'Take it, I want you to have it,' and he put it on my head. I gave it back to him. A little more grimly, he put it back on my head. We kept exchanging the hat. (189)
We are then called upon to recognize that this pretentious hat reflects Scott Fitzgerald's own flamboyancy. The narrator points out that Scott has left his home one evening, "[c]lamping that beautiful white hat on his head (193). It is during this evening that Fitzgerald sits with the Callaghans at a table in the Deux Magots on St. Germain-des-Pres, acting drunk: "His face had turned ashen. He looked sick" (194). He therefore attracted the attention of patrons: "people were gaping at him" (194). The narrator then points out that he forms a connection between Fitzgerald's behaviour and the theatrical hat he wears. He remembers himself thinking: "his shirt open, the elaborate white hat at too rakish an angle. The elegant Scott!" (195). In other words, we are led to connect the white felt hat with the "public spectacle" (195) that Fitzgerald makes of himself.
.Another conspicuous costume is the brown velvet dressing gown worn by Callaghan. Again, as he describes himself wearing this gown, the narrator calls on us to connect it to the performatory role he plays, the role of an athletic performer. The narrator describes this piece of clothing as being "flashy." He says it looks "like a crocodile skin" (92). The narrator also tells us that when Hemingway arrives at Callaghan's doorstep, he is struck by its appearance. For Hemingway, the gown causes Callaghan to resemble the boxer Georges Carpentier:
there was a moment of shyness when I felt like a stranger. I had on a dark brown velvet dressing gown which Loretto had given me as a present; it was expensive and looked like a crocodile skin. Stepping back, looking at me and shaking his head, Ernest said to Loretto, "I haven't seen such a dressing gown on a man since the last time I saw Georges Carpentier climb into the ring." (92)
As with the white felt hat, we are called upon to see this ostentatious dressing gown as a sign of the narrator's memorable demonstration of athletic skill. Unlike the white felt hat, however, the dressing gown is not worn at the same time that its "wearer" engages in performance. In fact, Callaghan is just standing at his doorstep, "engaged in a moment of shyness" (92) while wearing it. Nevertheless, while Callaghan may not be actually be performing at this moment, he is doing so in Hemingway's imagination. In forming the connection between Georges Carpentier's and Callaghan's robes, Hemingway imagines his friend as a boxer, that is, in the role of an athletic performer. Furthermore, the costume foreshadows Callaghan's athletic performance to come. Callaghan will perform in the boxing ring with Hemingway, delivering such a skillful performance that one of his punches will leave his opponent in a "bloody" mess.
This particular spectacle will generate a great deal of attention, particularly from Fitzgerald, Callaghan, and Hemingway. It is not simply the injury from the punch that will cause this attention but a public discrepancy over who "out-performed" whom in the boxing ring. In fact, the "bloody" performance will become so unforgettable that it will undo the friendship that Morley Callaghan has formed with each of them. At this point, "a long simmering fissure in their friendship had finally erupted" (Boire 39), arguably resulting from the combination of Callaghan's desire to compete with Hemingway's writing and Hemingway's "own discomfort with a disciple gone astray" (39). As such, the flamboyancy of the dressing gown anticipates the attention that Callaghan's athletic performance in the boxing ring will generate. Moreover, the manner in which the voice interprets Ernest's remark, referring to it spitefully as "the crack about the Georges Carpentier dressing gown!" (99-100), foreshadows bitter and angry feelings.
The narrator also presents inconspicuous costumes, such as "the conventional white collar of the American businessman" (174). We are invited to recognize this collar as a sign of the discretion of the priest who wears it as he takes on the role of a spectator in this Parisian theatrical mise-en-scene.
Although it is not specified, it is suggested that the white collar of the businessman is worn by Father Tom, the Catholic priest whom Loretto and Morley Callaghan meet during their transatlantic boat passage. This collar is one of two choices of attire the priest has while in France. Having noticed that Father Tom is not wearing a Roman collar, the voice tells us that Father Tom does not wear "a clerical collar [since it] [i]s taken as the mark of a Protestant Minister. Therefore, an American priest ha[s] a choice between the soutane of the French priest, or the conventional white collar of the American businessman" (174). While the priest's choice of attire is not specified in the text, we can deduce that it is the white "businessman" collar that Father Tom wears on the night of his Montparnasse outing with the Callaghans.
It is quite clear that the priest does not wear the soutane. Because this costume takes the form of a long robe usually worn only by Catholic priests, presumably it would not disguise this vocation, but would instead indicate it. He would almost certainly attract attention. The reaction that he predicts the ladies in his tour group will have upon discovering his whereabouts suggests that a Catholic priest in Montparnasse would stand out. Once he has begun to socialize with the Callaghans, he tells them, "At this hour his ladies would be wondering what he was doing... But he had left a note for them" (174). Father Tom then predicts that the note, which will inform "his ladies" that he is in the company of a friend in "Montparnasse, living among all the wild free artists" (174), will "put them in a terrible tizzy" (174). This predicted reaction implies not simply that the ladies disapprove of the lifestyle in Montparnasse but more specifically that they will disapprove of him taking part in it, that a Catholic priest does not belong on a wild excursion into the Montparnasse night. Father Tom's priesthood is not recognized during his outing. In fact, it is questioned by "a Toronto newspaperman with an owlish leer" (176), who has been informed of Father Tom's identity: "'Where's the Roman collar?'"(176). The newspaperman then proceeds to comment with a sarcastic sneer: "'Yeah, a priest, eh?'" (176). The cause of such scepticism is that Father Tom is wearing nothing that would identify him as a priest. Hence, he most likely wears the conventional white collar that a "businessman" typically wears.
The white conventional collar is designed as a very dull and "lackluster" piece of clothing. As its name suggests, it simply is conventional. In fact, as we have seen, it camouflages rather than causing itself to stand out. It is something, the voice tells us, that is worn by an American businessman — a typical "Quarterite" frequenter who, as Sherwood Anderson says in Dark Laughter, "had the money and the time for a holiday fling" (113). In fact, as we have also noted, when it is worn, no one really pays attention to it. The white collar is so effective at deflecting attention that when the priest wears it, no one, other than his two companions, pays attention to him or looks at him in a strange way even though he is quite an unusual frequenter of the Quarter. In such a disguise, Father Tom is incognito, deflecting at tention during his final night in Paris, and the narrator remarks: "Here at least no one would care what he did" (175).
As in the case with the white hat and the brown dressing gown, we are called upon to see this white conventional collar as a sign of the priest's inconspicuous behaviour while performing for us as spectators. After Father Tom has arrived at the Callag-hans' apartment, it soon becomes clear that he does not want to attract attention, that he wants to blend into the "Quarterite" lifestyle on his final evening in Paris, having nearly completed his European tour. In fact, it is his request to "Quarterites" Morley and Loretto Callaghan to do "what [they] would ... be doing [them] selves tonight" (175). Father Tom then spends his time being inconspicuous as a spectator to the activities and sites around Mont-parnasse. As the voice remarks, "we invited him to observe our little street walker, who was busy as always at that hour on the strip of pavement extending from the Select halfway over to the Gare Montparnasse" (177, emphasis added). In fact, we are told that the priest, sitting in his audience chair in the Select, a "strange smile on his face, . . . looked around the whole brightly lit neighborhood (178, emphasis added). The fact that the neighbourhood is brightly lit suggests that the "disordered idle sinful life flowing" (178) within it is a kind of spectacle at which Father Tom gazes. Furthermore, when Father Tom is led to the Jockey, we are told that "In that smoke-filled room,... he just watched" (178, emphasis added). Safely protected by the inconspicuousness of his white collar, Father Tom's eyes act as a kind of camera, taking imaginary pictures during this final night in Paris to capture "a good memory to take back to his penitentiary" (179). As such, the conventionality of this costume reflects the fact that he does not attract attention to himself, but directs it towards the spectacles along the streets of Montparnasse.
In That Summer in Paris, Callaghan invites us, as we read, to participate as a spectator in a playhouse drama. The narrative persona acts as a self-conscious casting director, lighting designer and costume designer, thereby recreating a mise-en-scene of performance and spectatorship believed to have been at the core of his 1929 Parisian experiences. As he speaks, the narrator casts characters into the roles of performers and spectators. He describes light and dark images in relation to people's activities, thereby "highlighting" when people are performing or watching as well as simulating the spotlights and darkness in the theatre. The narrator also designs costumes with his words, thereby reflecting the inner dynamics of this "Paris theatre." He describes people as wearing various pieces of clothing, ones which attract attention to performance and ones which deflect attention or act as camouflage.
To take this one step further, the narrative persona's assumption of these roles leads us to question his reliability. If drama is the "sister-art" to life writing, then we must consider that the life writer can use dramatic technique to shape what and how the reader imagines. By using stagecraft, Callaghan has the power to distort or to enhance the truth about what and how events took place during the summer of 1929. The characters he portrays as performers and observers may not have actually assumed these roles; he may be directing us to think this way. We may be persuaded by the use of light and dark images to give more attention to some characters over others when, in fact, no one person captured more public attention than any other. Finally, the costumes may also be exaggerated or invented to shape the significations we give to characters. Whether this "dramatic" narrative voice is authentically that of its author or one which Callaghan would like us to believe belongs to him remains in question. Nevertheless, he has given it the power to present the "drama" to play for a third performance. Thus, if drama is the "sister-art" to life writing, as Hinz proposes, then what a writer recounts as having taken place in "real" life can be staged in the reader's imagination in the manner in which he or she wishes. This conclusion, I propose, is a critical step towards initiating the "dramatic" poetics of life-writing.
NOTES
1In A Wild Old Man On the Road, the protagonist travels around Paris to discover more about his father's earlier experiences, encountering various artist figures.
2In his retrospection of a time during the 1920s in Montparnasse, Ernest Hemingway remarks in A Moveable Feast that Scott Fitzgerald became easily intoxicated: "he was easily affected by such small quantities of alcohol" (Hemingway 166). There is also a suggestion that this fact became publicly known.
3In a personal interview at York University in January 1996, Clara Thomas suggested that Morley Callaghan presents a view of Parisian lifestyle as an impressed but definitely alien outsider.
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