Dollmaker : An Example of Literary Non-fiction

Abstract

Dollmaker:An Example of Literary Non-fiction Joan Glazer (bio) In the Winter, 1986, issue of the ChLA Quarterly, Perry Nodelman wrote of the need for more serious analysis of non-fiction for children. He stated his belief that such analysis need not be limited to matters of accuracy and clarity, noting that "if novels can be judged on their factuality, then surely non-fiction can be judged for its artistry" (162). This is consonant with the writing of such critics as Margery Fisher and Jo Carr, both of whom expect that the writer of non-fiction do more than simply present facts. Carr describes her expectations by saying that good non-fiction "combines scholarship with the imagination of the creative artist" (5). The non-fiction of Kathryn Lasky does indeed combine scholarship with creativity. Her book Dollmaker: The Eyelight and the Shadow is representative of an approach she has used effectively several times. She selects a person or family involved in the activity to be presented, describes their specific endeavors, and relates how this activity has been done in other times or places. The emphasis is on the specific rather than the general, the concrete rather than the abstract. Using this approach allows her to write in a mode appropriate to fiction without doing disservice to the fact. Dollmaker describes the work of Carole Bowling, a maker of dolls that are coUector's items and museum pieces. It concentrates on the creation of her limited edition "Matty" dolls, for which she used her son Matthew as the model. The book opens with a detailed description of Bowling's workshop: It is an odd place. The materials and tools of painters and sculptors and carpenters are there, but most of them are in miniature sizes and minute quantities. There are needles and awls and drills no thicker than slivers. There are paintbrushes one or two eyelashes thick and thimble-size pots of paint. There are slender wooden tools for modeling in clay. There are inches rather than yards of exquisite tiny print fabrics, a small basket of rosettes that are one-quarter inch in diameter. There are handwrought buttons and buckles in scaled-down proportions. (9) This setting establishes the tone of the entire book. It is detailed, sensory, and relies heavily on the personal reactions of the writer. Throughout the book, precise measurements are given, showing just how exacting the work is, putting the dolls in a size perspective, imparting a sense (if factual description. At other times, the writing is sensory, as when the setting outside the workroom is contrasted with that inside. Outside is where buses travel and the sound of the high school band "booms through the neighborhood"; inside is the place where "action has been suspended" (11). Measured accuracy is interwoven with sensory imagery. The feeling that Lasky is a writer who has come to know and appreciate her subject is pervasive. Yet this does not intrude on the presentation of the process being described, nor on one's recognition of the nature of the book. Setting in Dollmaker serves several additional functions. It builds interest, particularly the initial judgment about the place being "odd." It allows background information about other dollmakers to be introduced through a flashback to Bowling's first visit to the home of a doll collector, and to some of the dolls she saw there. It presents the main characters of the story when Matthew and Carole Bowling walk into the room. Setting also functions to introduce one of the central themes of the book—the feeling that these dolls are almost human in their replication of real children. This theme appears in the subtitle of the book, "The Eyelight and the Shadow," referring to the special light in a child's eye which Bowling tries to capture as she paints the eyes on her dolls. It appears in chapter titles such as "A Face Awakens." It appears in the choice of words as dolls are described. There is "a merry twosome" (11), a doll that gets soiled "as if playing in a mud puddle" (23), dolls that almost seem to blush (22) or have a "perky stoicism" (15). Even the...