Abstract
E L IZ A B E T H RENFRO California State University, Chico Ella Leffland Ella Leffland, writer and painter, believes that âprobably every one who turns to writing or painting or anything like that has a dol lop of the outsider.â For Leffland herself, this development of the artist-as-outsider perspective may be traced to her childhood in Martinez, California. Born in 1931 to Danish immigrants who referred to Denmark as âhome,â Leffland says she âthought we were on a vacation here for years!â This led to her feeling what she has described as âeither a double sense of belonging or no sense of belonging,â a theme she often returns to in her fiction: âI think com ing from a family that was different and had a different attitude toward things had a bearing on the people I [write] aboutâ (Ross 291-92). This feeling was intensified during World War II, which Leffland describes as ââthe central experience of my childhoodââ (Bolle 68). Lefflandâs adolescence was filled with horror stories from Danish relatives about bombings and Nazi domination. At home, Martinezâs location in the San Francisco Bay area made it an important shipyard site for the American war effort. The nervous citizens prepared constantly for anticipated Japanese bombing raids, and Leffland witnessed acts of âpatrioticâ terrorism against second and third generation Japanese American and Italian American families she had known all her life. Critics agree that loneliness or isolation of the individual is a recurrent theme in Lefflandâs work. As John Romano puts it, in par ticular reference to Last Courtesies (1980), a collection of short sto ries, âat the center . . . is most often a character who is profoundly alone, suffers, and cannot make himself or herself understoodâ (3). Lefflandâs characters are isolated in a matrix of the competing 56 Western American Literature demands of their own needs and values, and the desires and value systems of othersâlovers or friends, family, community, country. Critics disagree, however, in their readings of these characters. Romano calls Lefflandâs authorial presence âdistinctly caring,â adding that âher imagination is always bound up with sympathy.â He argues that in Last Courtesies, âthe principal business of these stories is bestowing sympathyâ (3). Yet another description of those stories, by Stephen Goodwin, states that they leave the reader feel ing the âdread power of nightmares,â as the characters, while âsym pathetic . . . are treated with a detachment that is the only bulwark against disgustâ (5). Keith Monley wrote (prior to the release of The Knight, Death and the Devil in 1990) that while âLefflandâs novels are, one and all, tales of redemption,â this is âhardly the case in her short stories. It could even be argued that in Last Courtesies . . . the protagonistsâ âobsessionâ proves terminal, but in any case the pro tagonist is certainly not redeemedâ (492). Much of Lefflandâs fiction seems to reflect what might be called âWestern Gothic,â a post-World War II West Coast version of Southern Gothic. Lefflandâs characters are, as is true in Southern Gothic fiction, strongly molded by and reflective of the setting in which they live. The mood, tone, personality, even values and moral code of the characters is part and parcel of the mood, tone, and character of their land and geographical setting especially the land in which they spent their childhoods. Barren plains of Modoc County, backwoods country in Napa, icy and isolated Danish farms, Germany through its entire historyâall define, reflect, create the characters reared there. As in Southern Gothic fiction, many of Lefflandâs characters are aberrant or grotesque in some way, though often in more subtle ways than, for example, Carson McCullersâs dwarf (Ballad of the Sad Cafe) or Flannery OâConnorâs criminal Misfit (âA Good Man Is Hard to Findâ). The behavior of Lefflandâs characters is often bizarre, at least in terms of expected or sanctioned behaviors, yet, fitting with the Southern Gothic tradition, entirely believable and appropriate (and therein lies some of the nightmare), and fitting with the tenor of the novel or short story, which is a blend of real ism and âthe supernaturalâ (Prescott 89a). Elizabeth Renfro 57...
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