Of Bugs and Men

Occasionally, a gender-equity conundrum stirs up the literary community. It goes something like this: Why is it that so many men are able to create believable female protagonists—think Wally Lamb’s Delores Price in She’s Come Undone, a much-ballyhooed Oprah pick—while supposedly so few women seem to be able to get inside the heads of men and tell their stories as convincingly?

Well, former Rice Ph.D. student Mylene Dressler ’93 has entered the debate with a compelling story told from the point of view of Tristan Martens. Not only is the main character in her novel, The Deadwood Beetle, male, but the retired entomologist finds himself late in life facing both emotional demons and hope for love—circumstances Dressler, a 30-something former dancer and past literature professor, can only imagine. And she imagines well—which is good news for the reading public.

In the past few years Dressler has created some acclaimed original stories, and her first novel, The Medusa Tree, was published in 1997. It is a multigenerational yarn about a former dancer and her grandmothers. Although her focus is again on family in The Deadwood Beetle, this second novel is a little less close to home. This story is one of a father of a son, who is in turn a father of a son. But the differences don’t end there. The tale is that of a family lost and scattered—lost through wars, both physical and spiritual—and the divorced professor emeritus is left quite alone in his dark, dead-bug-filled Manhattan apartment. Estranged from his former wife and his gun-hoarding, Bible-thumping son and family and an ocean away from the remains of his own immediate family, Tristan seems utterly solitary. The only spark of life from the outside world comes to him through his sole graduate student, Elida Hernandez. But one day he wanders into Cora Lowenstein’s antiques shop and not only comes face to face with a woman he begins to hope will be in his future but also finds a tangible piece of family history that he thought was a long-buried part of his past.

All of which is somewhat overwhelming for a man who has spent his entire life absorbed in the minutia of the habits of insects, beetles in particular.

Likewise, Dressler’s novel is inundated with little details—about beetles, about families, about the Holocaust. It’s filled with the concept of how small things—acts, gestures, words, intent—can have large, unforeseen, and long-lasting consequences. For example, it’s the words written in a child’s handwriting on a sewing table, “When the Jews are gone, we will be the next ones,” that have far-reaching consequences and meaning for Tristan. And the mystery behind those words is what propels the story forward.

Dressler’s words appear to be propelling her writing career forward as well. Not only has she now published two well-received novels, but she recently won one of only two Dobie Paisano writing fellowships for 2001–02. The fellowships, sponsored by The University of Texas at Austin and the Texas Institute of Letters, provide writers with a $12,000 stipend and allow them to spend six months at Paisano, the late author J. Frank Dobie’s 265-acre retreat west of Austin.

As for the literary battle of the sexes? Dressler was asked, during a recent standing-room-only reading of her novel, if she found it challenging to write about a man, an older man at that? She gave a knowing look, smiled, and said that male interviewers in particular seem to be fond of asking her that question, surprised that a woman would be writing about a man’s life from a man’s perspective. She, however, doesn’t find the circumstance so baffling. At 37, she is already beginning to feel a more intense consciousness of her mortality, and, she says, that when she “turned that feeling up several notches,” she could imagine what it felt like to be older, like Tristan. She added, “Most of us, when we are at our best, try to imagine what it feels like to be in another’s shoes.” And she imagined that an older man might feel a little uncomfortable in his skin, concerned about his appearance, especially if he wants to appear attractive to someone. She likened that feeling to those that many women experience throughout their entire lives. At that moment, a woman in the audience nudged her elderly male companion. He chuckled and nodded, perhaps in recognition of his own behavior and feelings reflected in Dressler’s comments and in the character she has created, Tristan.

Reactions like his may settle the debate once and for all.

—M. Yvonne Taylor