A Simpler Time A Simpler Place

by Gerald Locklin

Ellen sat waiting in the Buick while Fr. Dean Finn checked in at the motel office. He always registered them as Mr. and Mrs. George Adams of Syracuse, New York. There was no objection to a couple without luggage taking a room for a couple of hours at the Hit-the-Sack. The desk clerk, a poorly-shaven, perpetually smirking man of thirty-five lewd years, had managed, in the midst of an ambiance of sexuality which should have inoculated him against disgust, to cultivate a urinal of a mind. People came to his office thinking of their affair as a matter of love or fun or nature or bawdry or even mystical oneness. The desk clerk never allowed these patrons to raise him to their level of innocence. Rather, he saw to it that their ecstasies were not unashamed. His grin evoked for them the puritanism of their parents, the prurience of the adolescent gang, the hellfire of the preachers, the chancres of sex hygiene movies, the self-consciousness of the stag party. Finn hated the man; he was always tempted to sprinkle holy water on him.

Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

Reviews

[Ronald Burras · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Stay off the grass plot!" This was the command my elementary school classmates and I heard constantly in the early-to-mid sixties. The "grass plot" was in fact an expanse of lawn between our classrooms and the playground that served no discernable purpose but was, apparently, put there for no other reason than to test our obedience. We were forbidden to lie down on it, have lunch on it, or especially (gasp!) run across it, as was tempting to do if one was attempting to return to class on time from recess. The point of this is to emphasize that it was an era in which absolute, unquestioning conformity was the norm. One did what one was instructed to do, and failure to comply led to instant—and usually irreversible--ostracism.

One must understand this about this "simpler time" if one is to appreciate Gerald Locklin's very fine novella "A Simpler Place," which is by far the longest of the "three mid-century stories" to be found in this collection. Father Finn, a thirty-four-year-old Catholic priest in Western New York, finds himself in an increasingly absurd and, at last, untenable situation: His encounters with the woman he loves must be accomplished with furtiveness and, as is illustrated in the excerpt, often in sordid surroundings; his position as a role model to a bright and worshipful teenager--the type who, like Finn before him, is being encouraged to have a "vocation"--develops the potential to be permanently damaging to the lad; and he eventually drifts into a sexual encounter with an underage girl who moves untroubled between the polar extremes of sin and absolution that the rigid, puritanical Catholicism of that time maintained. (The description of the traditionally habited nuns, whose dwelling is a dismal and uncomfortable convent, is, though respectful, quite horrifying.)

A reader unfamiliar with that "simpler time" might find the character of Finn strangely unsubstantial. Where, one might ask, are the paroxysms of guilt, the anguished howls before the altar, and the dread of eternal damnation with its accompanying endless torments? Where are the devils pulling at his clothes as he attempts to pray? Finn's journey toward apostasy is surprisingly easy and, as it turns out, inevitable. But this is where the unquestioning conformity mentioned earlier comes into play. Finn’s “vocation” was not based on any deep-seated beliefs or convictions but was simply, and finally, the result of his doing what was expected of him in the “simpler time and place” that was his milieu. And when the times became more complex—as they did in Finn’s world and would soon, indeed, in the world at large—the monolithic system of taboos holding things in check could do nothing but collapse under its own unsustainable weight.

It’s worth noting that the reference to Dionne Warwick’s “Walk on By” places the action of “A Simpler Place” no earlier than April of 1964, when that record was released. President Kennedy had been assassinated a few months before, Beatlemania was in full swing, and, very shortly, all hell was to break loose, as anyone who lived through the cataclysms of the sixties can attest. It might be fun to follow Finn throughout the rest of the sixties and beyond, and perhaps—if Gerald Locklin wants to revive the character after lo so many years--we will get the chance to do so.
I can’t conclude this review without mentioning Locklin’s lucid, sane, and deceptively simple prose, in which the art is present but is not at all obtrusive. Also, it’s a pleasure to hear him voicing it in the Audible version. Anyone who has attended one of Locklin’s readings will testify that his work, whether poetry or prose, has an added dimension when read aloud, and that is manifestly the case here.