What Ever: A Living Novel

by Heather Woodbury

Overview

"May be the nearest thing to an American Ulysses . . . wildly funny and infinitely sad."
—Fintan O'Toole, The Irish times

Focusing on the lives of more than a dozen characters—among them the Oregon rave boy Skeeter; the progressive-thinking octogenarian Violet, remembering her life from her bohemian youth in prewar Paris to her jazz-clubbing in postwar Greenwich Village; and the street-smart prostitute Bushie, holding forth on the profanity of the world—Heather Woodbury has forged a unique kind of fiction that combines the immediacy of performance art with the narrative structure and subtle characterization of a traditional novel. Taking off from her acclaimed one-woman show of the same title, Woodbury continually surprises in this novel with her ability to create new forms while always locating the unique, resonant humanity that links all the characters to one another—and to the reader.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781429922043
Publisher:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date:	08/22/2025
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	354
File size:	822 KB

About the Author

Heather Woodbury was born in northern California. After working in New York City as a barmaid, go-go dancer, and catering waitress as well as a performance artist, in 2001 she moved to Los Angeles, where she now lives.

Read an Excerpt

What Ever
PART ONECHAPTER 1IN WHICH VIOLET AND IRIS DISCUSS FORBIDDEN DANCESOur story begins long ago, in the early 1990s, when a couple of old ladies convene at the end of a counter in a bustling Greek diner on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Both are well dressed in the manner of patrician American women who hit their stride in around 1930-something--jaunty hats, handsome old furs, snappy blouses, and once-saucy skirts. One is dressed neatly and primly, however, while the other wears colors just a bit too bright for her phase of life and has a gleam in her eye a bit out of step with her Upper East Side surroundings. This is Violet. A small black poodle is tethered to her stool and wriggles at her ankles. This is Balzac. She calls testily to the harried waiter, who seems so accustomed to her that he regards her as part of the fixtures.VIOLET: Connie, Constantine! Constantinopolis! Can I have a glass of wateh, please?Connie nods from down the counter.VIOLET: Thank you, Connie. Come heah, Balzy, come heah, sit in my lap.The dog scrambles up as she, with effort, heaves him onto her lap. She pats him attentively.VIOLET: Poor dogs, they know when something awful is about to occur.IRIS: What is it?Violet's voice is low and has a layer of ever-present irony. Her ar's are all ahs, her or's are all awe's. Iris has a higher and sharper voice. She pronounces her r's with a crisp Midwestern accent. Her voice always has a tinge of worry.VIOLET: How should I know, Iris, I'm not a dog! So, what're you looking put out for this morning, Iris? Is it y'doorm'n again?IRIS: No, no, that's not it.VIOLET: 'Tisn't? Well, what is it?IRIS: Nothing.VIOLET: Oh, Iris, just don't pussyfoot around, I find it very boring when you do. Just tell me what it is.IRIS: It's The Times.VIOLET: The times? The times that we live in? Still!She eyes their surroundings--the crowded diner, the street outside--with feigned disbelief.VIOLET: Amazing!--or th' Times--The New Yawk Times?IRIS: It's The New York Times.VIOLET: Good Christ--no!--the times are bad enough, but The Times is far worse!Constantine slams down a glass of water and rushes off.VIOLET: Thank you, Connie. Now, just what were you reading in the paper of record this morning to get you all--upset?IRIS: Well, I was reading that there are these midnight dance parties that the young people, uh--VIOLET: The young people? The young people? Which young people do you mean?She looks around the restaurant.VIOLET: I should imagine there are several subdivisions at this point. Why, even Constantinopolis might be considered a young person, although he's got a pot belly and d'you notice his teeth--Connie delivers a basket of rolls. He hovers for a moment. Violet is startled.VIOLET: He-hello, Connie, have you met Iris yet? She loves your soup! Isn't that remahkable? Yes, well, she lost all her taste five years ago. Was it all of your taste buds, Iris deeah, or just several?IRIS: Violet!VIOLET: Oh, sorry, harumph, here, Balzy, have a nice roll. They're especially nice and STALE this morning.Violet feeds Balzac a roll.VIOLET: Oh now, just let me know just what you read that was so ... disturbing?IRIS: Well, I read about these midnight dance parties that are called, uh, raves.VIOLET: Raids? Raids? The young have been going on raids since the time of Genghis Khan, Iris. I hardly see how that can be news. Are you certain it was an ahticle in The Times and not an exhibit at the Natural Hist'ry Museum?IRIS: No, dear, raves!VIOLET: Rage? Rage, as in all the rage?IRIS: No, dear, raves, raves!VIOLET: Balzy, stop barking so that I can he-ar Aunt Iris! Raves? As in stark raving mad?IRIS: Yes! That's it! Exactly!VIOLET: So what's the trouble, deeah, with these raves? What do they do? Do they rave? Do they recite passages from King Lee-ah? What's the, uh, what's the ...She trails off. Amid the clatter of coffee cups, they can almost hear ambient trance music wafting across time and space.Copyright © 2003 by Heather Woodbury

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments	xi
	Preface	xiii
	Characters	xv
Part 1	Salvation	1
Part 2	Homemaking	41
Part 3	Seeing Things	81
Part 4	Quakes	127
Part 5	Castaway	167
Part 6	Locomotion	209
Part 7	Everything that Rises Must Converge	251
Part 8	Rave on	287

Editorial Reviews

Wildly diverse characters muddle their way through 1990s America, for reasons unknown to the reader. Previously presented as a stage piece in the mid-1990s, this is a mélange of dialogue-driven scenes that purports to be a novel but really comes down to, well, a play in loosely novelistic form. The characters are often ranters-from Violet, the Upper East Side octogenarian, to Bushie, a Hell's Kitchen whore, to Polly, a white Virginia housewife pursuing an affair with a black man-and none is terribly eloquent or interesting. Violet is a slight exception to this rule, having a brassy broad's gumption that serves her scenes well, even though she's often speaking about nothing in particular to one of the people in her life (friend, maid, waiter at the diner where she's a regular). Among the West Coast characters, the most interesting is Skeeter, a young rave kid who's hitch-hiking across the country to see various relatives and who's in love with two raver girls, Sable and Clove. All three are afflicted with egregious California accents (Woodbury, being an accent aficionado, tries to render them as realistically as possible), which gives their scenes a light sprinkling of comedy that relieves (a bit) the tedium of what they do (or don't do). With her references to the Christian right and certain pop-culture notations (Clove claims to be visited by Cobain the Friendly Ghost after seemingly attempting to drown herself in the ocean), not to mention her fixation on getting every character's manner of speaking down just right, Woodbury seems to be attempting to chronicle a slice of Americana, circa 1994-95. Likely it would all have been more enthralling on stage, listening to the different slangand hearing all the regional dialect variations, but on the page it just lies there, motionless and without drama. An odd and unaffecting mid-1990s relic that would have been better as a treatise on modern American slang.

Kirkus Reviews