Hoo, boy! Where to even begin trying to describe BY THE IOWA SEA? I believe that Joe Blair's memoir will be a rather controversial book. But here's my two cents' worth. This is a very powerful book. I had trouble putting it down, which is good. But I felt like a voyeur, and I'm not quite sure yet if that's good or bad.
BY THE IOWA SEA is perhaps the most utterly human and nakedly candid look at a marriage as any I have ever read. I started to call it a "troubled" marriage, but then I decided I didn't want to pigeonhole it in any way. Sure Joe and Deb Blair have got their troubles after eighteen or twenty years of marriage, but doesn't everyone? Doesn't that first flame of passion fade for most married folks after that many years - hell, even sooner for many? And the Blair marriage is made even more difficult and problematic by their having to deal with a severely autistic son. And Joe Blair's descriptions of what that entails hold nothing back. Yeah, they have some outside help, with various therapies, special schools and respite workers, but the truth is - and both Joe and Deb are all too aware of this - having an autistic child is kind of a life sentence.
Joe Blair is a pipefitter. He's the HVAC guy that comes to fix your furnace or boiler or air conditioning system. The 'plumber's crack' is never specifically mentioned, but judging from some of the contortions needed for the jobs described, it must show up now and then. But, fortunately for us, Blair is also one hell of a fine writer. There's nothing fancy or artsy-fartsy in his writing. It's plain, direct language, used to its full effect.
Joe misses his wife, Deb - the go-for-it girl she was when he met her back at UMass Lowell. But it's four kids later now, saddled with debts and the monotony and repetitions that make up real life, so of course Deb has changed. So Joe looks around, notices how other women are still attractive, and attracted to him. He even tries to get Deb into the game. He has a rich fantasy life - or he tries to have. Deb is mostly tired all the time. The inarticulate, exhausted, sometimes angry conversations are recreated here with near perfect pitch -
"... what? says Deb. You want to sleep with other women? That's ...
That's not - I begin.
You want to sleep with other women, she says again.
No, I say. Absolutely not. But ... what if I did?
I knew it! she shouts, almost victoriously. Why do you -
No! No! You don't understand! It's not about sex. It's not. It's about ... love.
You want to leave me.
No. That's not what I'm saying. I just want us both to ... choose again. To ... be loved. And to love. You know? I'm trying - ..."
And on and on and round and round until you can nearly feel the pain yourself as you read this stuff; it's nearly palpable. And I just felt for this guy, for this pipefitter, who was so filled up with the malaise of middle-aged disappointment and wondering, "Is this it then? Is this how it's gonna be for the rest of my life?!"
I'm pretty sure that men and women are gonna choose sides when they read this book - Joe or Deb. Because this is perhaps one of the most intimate and real looks into the male mind that's ever been written. Guys will get it. Women will probably not. Most of them will probably think, "Why, you BAStard!" And here, if I try to defend him, I begin to quickly lapse into the same sort of sad inarticulateness that afflicts poor Joe. Maybe it's a guy thing, that need to keep on being, being ... well, a sexual being, ya know?
I guess the thing that worked me up the most about this book is that it is NOT FICTION. It's a memoir, so I gotta believe Joe is doing his confused and inarticulate best to just tell his story. And somehow in the process he sets the story - his and Deb's - against the backdrop of the horrific floods of 2008 which utterly changed and ruined so many lives throughout the midwest. The connections come through. Natural forces, human desires and dreams, and how they all collide, and how things change.
Honestly, I feel like kind of a jerk trying to describe this work. But I'm not alone. Joe Blair himself described it this way to a woman he later had an affair with -
"A book, I said. About love. Well, not really about love. It's about this guy who has lost hope, and then finds it. And it's autobiographical, only not. And it's about faith. And a marriage that has ... well ... to be honest, I don't know what it's about. It's hard to say."
And that sort of sums it up. You know? You just have to read it. And I guarantee it'll suck you in, whether you're a man or a woman. I ended up liking the guy. And I suspect, even though it's very much a 'guy' story, that a lot of women will end up liking him too.
Here's a little postscript. Joe, if you haven't already read it, you should read Fred Haefele's memoir, REBUILDING THE INDIAN - that motorcycle stuff you talked about, ya know? And you and Deb both should try to read NEXT STOP, Glen Finland's memoir about her adult autistic son. I mean if you have time, which you probably don't ... even so. Sheesh! Joe's got me writing like he does now.
Once more. This is one very powerful book. Read it!
- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER
