“the fact that what is with this constant monologue in my head, that fact that why am I telling myself all of this stuff, since I know it already,…because I’M ME,”

Here, on page 125, we witness the narrator’s (first?) self-reflection on the way her mind works. In effect she’s looking at her thought process from a third person vantage, that is, from the reader’s vantage. I’ve been trying to identify the patterns in our narrator’s running, internal dialog as a way of better understanding her, as well as figure out some of the prompt techniques and methods that Lucy Ellmann may have used to create this unique novel.

This quote in the header for today is immediately followed by “Kraft Miracle Whip, Medi-Wise Pharmacy” before another follows it, “the fact that…” in which the narrator speculates on whether it is necessary to talk to yourself all day and whether others do so, too? Why “Kraft Miracle Whip?” If you are reading the book aloud, you will notice the “Me” and “Miracle” alliteration, followed by that of “Miracle Whip” and “Medi-Wise.” This seems to be a common pattern in the sequences of items, organizations, events, etc. Frequent alliteration also can be found in lists that include acronyms, of which the narrator knows so many, even uncommon ones, that there is a helpful index at the end of the novel!

What about the musical passages? Why are they in the text and can anything meaningful be gleaned by how they are used? Sometimes they rhyme with the text:

“the fact that I don’t know to this day why we all turned up for the birthday, ♬I don’t know why she swallowed a fly♬,” (page 102).

This quote is followed by the phrase “meringue of the family,” which seems pretty meaningless until you think about the context and recall how this phrase was used previously.

Here the narrator is telling us about her visit to her emotionally cold grandmother. She is all alone with her until her sister Phoebe arrives, finds her crying in the bathroom, and comforts her. Immediately following “meringue of the family,” is “the fact that you always remember who comforted you though,”

You may recall that “meringue of the family” is an affectionate, inside joke that refers to the narrator’s beloved Aunt Abby. On page 60, the narrator tells us that when her mother passed away Abby became the matriarch of the family, but Abby misheard and thought they said that she was now “the meringue of the family!”

However, not all the song lyrics rhyme with the text. On page 112 we have, ♬instead of sheep♬,” which refers to the Bing Crosby song, “Count Your Blessings Instead of Sheep,” and it pops into the narrator’s head when she is talking about her family’s beautiful New Haven house that they later had to vacate after her father died. She’s counting her blessings that they were able to live there for a time.

Of course I’m merely scratching the surface of the allusions, puns, inferences, and markers that Ellmann gives us in this very rich novel so full of the potential of discovery and fun of playing the sleuth!