from Chacon

A text is enhanced by every generation that reads it. In my visit to MJC a few things became clear to me, the first one being how deeply the students were able to enter into the landscape of "shadows"and see things and point out things that were there but that were hidden, unearthed by them. There are so many things in that novel that I thought no one would get, or few would get, and it seems that MJC students found many of those things. I got questions and comments that deepened the text for me.

One student commented on the ending, how the shadow on the wall, the Kopelli, being an indigenous image, maybe have brought Joey back to some ancestral identification, a return to his antepasados, which can be read as an act of strength. That blew me away, because the image, the Kopelli, was not random, and indeed he seems to be doing some sort of ritualistic dance. I like that! When I write a first draft, I follow the language, and it's when I revise, when I reneter the landscape that I see things more clearly and am able to deepen the meanings (I say meanings--plural--because a singular meaning turns the work into alegory, which weekens it, makes it superficial), and the shadow at the end made more sense after the first, second, third revision, and even more so after my talk with the students.

The other thing about MJC was the reaction to the end itself. Some readers felt unsatisfied, as if they wanted to know exactly what will happen to Joey. I, too, wish I knew exactly what will happen to him, because I care about him, but we can never know. The story doesn't end at the bottom of the page. We can only hope, project, guess what the future will be. We can never know the future. Knowing Joey the way you do, what do you think will become of him? Will he be Fat Boy Molina at 26, or will be be a successful actor, a decent man, like his mom wants him to be?

But the fact that the ending made so many students angry is a great thing! Think about it: if no one cared about Joey, nobody would care what happened to him.

Thank you for that frustration. I felt it too.