If I Told You Once, It Would Be Enough

Although Judy Budnitz '95 was a VES and English concentrator, her most recent work and first novel, If I Told You Once, reads more like a disjointed Folklore and Mythology course text. Before embarking on the novel, she commented, "I have to outline it before I start, which kind of takes the fun out of it." This is close to what actually happened, for while her collection of short stories, Flying Leap, received critical acclaim, If I Told You Once lacks the candor, unexpected plots and zany characterizations of her first work. Budnitz's new book emerges as a poorly conceived attempt to weave together mysticism and dramatic human relationships, taking reckless stylistic risks in the process.

Budnitz employs four women as narrators, all from different generations of the same family, who together grapple with the inconclusive questions of human existence. Ilana's narration greets, and scares, the reader first. Ilana is a woman of the old country, probably Russia, who somehow falls in love with a stranger and finds herself in an unnamed American city. Her journey comprises stories of rape and incest, murder and solicitation, placed in a mythical context of forests and magic. A "man in the forest laughing with little pointed teeth" violates her, yet gives her a Faberge egg. This egg becomes the metaphor for Ilana's life and spirituality, though the connection remains weak due to Budnitz's style problems. She writes, "I did not tell her about the egg. I should have flung it away when I ran, but I had been too frightened to think. So I kept it in my pocket, told no one; it was my first secret." The unyielding and unnecessary simplification of language appears forced. The symbolism, like the egg, appears artificial, and Ilana's stories of women without feet and goblins in the woods reek of a paternalistic treatment of the intangible folklore past of the "Old Country."

Butnitz's descriptions are often overdone, conferring the sense of a writing exercise gone awry. Ilana watches her bother Ari "rip the sheep from piece, till it was nothing but bloody meat," then describes him "trying to put the animal back together, licking his fingers and crooning, cramming the limbs back into their sockets." This display of the grotesque is one of many that causes the reader to wince and writhe; while indicative of her poetic prowess, Budnitz's portrayal of old country rituals offers little to Ilana's narrative and destroys the integrity of her tale.

Whereas Ilana's narrative is laden with folklore, Sashie, the second narrator, sounds equally fictional, for her story is an unoriginal interpretation of growing up as a first generation American. Still, the absence of lingering discussions of goblins makes Sashie's account is much more believable. Sashie feels the tension of assimilation; in one instance, she appeals to her hair for assistance in cultivating identity-- "There was a black coating on my hair but I could see out of the corners of my eyes that it was golden underneath, if they would only look." Yet even this typical immigrant assimilationist attitude appears over-written and over-dramatized.

Narrators change voice almost arbitrarily as Budnitz jumps from Sashie to Ilana. Aside from the content of each narration, Budnitz makes little effort to create a different stylistic or narrative voice for each one. She intrepidly attempts to address the conflict of old values and new, western values through the interplay between Ilana and Sashie. However, an analysis of dishtowels, tea leaves and hospitalization from two perspectives destroys the potential depth of this exchange. Budnitz tries to be too profound in her simplification, taking on too large a human theme within too small of a context.

The novel dissolves rapidly after Sashie gives birth to her daughter, Mara, and it continues to unravel with the later insertion of Mara's niece, Naomi, as the final narrator. The work changes from a mythical tract to a soap opera of human fallibility. In the last section of the novel, one gets the impression that Budnitz wants to explore every facet of the human experience: mother and daughter, east and west, moral dilemmas and cheap symbolism.

Mara is compulsive, jealous, hyper-analytical and destructive. She "walks as if the floor is thin ice. She checks beneath the cushion of a chair before sitting; she counts the knives in the silverware drawer." Through Mara, Budnitz explicates mental illness and the rationality of murder. This is too ambitious for her plot and narrative, especially given Mara's stream-of-consciousness rants. Had the rest of the novel not been so richly descriptive, this technique might have been effective. Instead, each thought staggers, laden with a false sense of importance and significance.

Naomi is the youngest narrator and the compendium of three generations of tenement dysfunction. While mysteriously drawn to her great-grandmother and the mystery of the egg, Naomi firmly inhabits the modern world. Her thoughts are descriptive rather than analytical, and this, combined with her youthful naivete, fail to give the reader any reason to feel an emotional stake in her future.

With the last two narrators, the novel spins out of Budnitz's previously firm control. The style changes from short sentences to descriptive passages, while snippets of modern existence attempt to address all the moral and emotional issues Budnitz has introduced. To prevent the rich symbolism of Ilana's account in the old country from laying waste, Budnitz reintroduces the egg as the unifying concept for the novel. When Ilana dies, the egg loses its sheen, and the novel comes to a halting end.

Like the oval egg, the novel can also resemble a slightly misshapen circle. Budnitz struggles to weave multiple narratives into a unifying whole, but the sense of centripetal completion fails as each new voice grows more allied with the increasingly amorphous world inside Budnitz's novel. Still, Budnitz has more than answered the requirements of techniques that a good novelist ought to engage. Thus, one can only hope that If I Told You Once, will have a twice, for Budnitz has the skills of a tremendous writer, and round two could be a knockout.