Falling in Place by Ann Beattie
"Falling in Place" by Ann Beattie depicts the lives of its characters as they navigate themes of disappointment, alienation, and unfulfilled aspirations. The novel draws a parallel to the myth of Icarus, suggesting that the characters, much like Icarus, fail to take control of their destinies and instead drift through life aimlessly. The central figure, Cynthia Forrest, is a summer-school teacher who feels disillusioned and disconnected from her students, embodying the struggle to find meaning in her own existence. Her lack of engagement with her students highlights a broader theme of isolation among the characters.
The narrative also explores the complexities of family dynamics, particularly through John Knapp and his family, who are entangled in personal crises, including a tragic shooting incident involving his children. The various relationships in the story are fraught with tension and unfulfilled desires, such as John’s affair with Nina and Cynthia’s aimless romantic entanglements. Ultimately, the novel concludes on an ambiguous note, leaving many issues unresolved and reflecting a sense of ongoing struggle rather than resolution. Through its rich character studies, "Falling in Place" invites readers to contemplate the nuances of human experience and the challenge of finding connection and meaning in a fragmented world.
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Falling in Place by Ann Beattie
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition
First published: 1980
Type of work: Novel
The Work
In Greek myth, Icarus’s exuberantly beating wings hurl him toward the sun, where they melt, and he plunges to his death in the sea. The Icarian figure adorning the cover of Falling in Place suggests the downside of youthful aspiration; the major characters in Falling in Place do not take control of their lives. Instead, they seem to fall numbly into place through indirection.
Of all the major characters in the novel, only Cynthia Forrest seems fully aware of how disappointing she finds her own life. From her standpoint, she is wasting a very good mind trying to teach summer-school students about literature. Perhaps ironically, her students dub her “Lost-in-the-Forrest”; from their standpoint, the name is apt. Cynthia does not usually concern herself with students as individuals, and she is using an anthology of excerpts, so the literature may seem unreal and the students’ personal experience irrelevant. The students’ welfare does not seem to be a concern for Cynthia. She becomes involved with one student, Mary, only when Mary’s father, John Knapp, expresses concern about Mary’s summer-school work and makes a date to talk to her teacher.
The conference between parent and teacher is not without some sexual overtones, and it takes place in a restaurant. If Mary’s welfare is really at issue here, it is lost in the dynamics of multiple protocols: the protocol of the business lunch, the protocol of the relationship between parent and teacher, and the unstated protocol between a young, attractive woman and an ostensibly successful man.
The summer-school class has disturbed Cynthia. One of her common nightmares, dreamed often after teaching, is that she is falling. Cynthia (realistically) believes that she is not reaching her students. She does not seem to realize that she has failed to help them link literature to their lives. The best Cynthia can do is to keep herself minimally functional. Her own love life is disappointing until the very end of the novel, when her whimsical, immature lover, Spangle, returns from Madrid, where he had rescued his wayward brother, and New York, where he failed to rekindle an old flame.
Most of the characters in Falling in Place are dying in their tracks. At the instigation of a friend who has proved himself monstrous in many respects, John Knapp’s ten-year-old son, John Joel, shoots his sister Mary. He had not known the gun was loaded.
John Knapp has been living with his mother in Rye, New York, where he is close to work and to his mistress, Nina. The family remains in Connecticut to be visited on weekends. The youngest of the Knapp children was brought to his paternal grandmother’s house to cheer her when the family first learned that she may have cancer. Louise, who is John’s wife and the children’s mother, did not attempt to keep her child. She even relinquishes John Joel after the shooting, and she accepts her divorce from John with philosophical stoicism.
The one time the readers see Louise in close contact with one of her children is when she takes John Joel berry-picking and picnicking. On that occasion, Louise and John Joel speak of intimate things. Included in the heavy baggage that John Joel needs to unload is the revelation that his friend Parker has found his mother’s diaphragm and put a pinhole in it. Parker is hardly a good friend for John Joel, but there are no others available; Mary does not have a choice of friends either. Except for one unsatisfactory friend each, the Knapp children are alienated from other kids. The shooting, although it is technically an accident, is the climax of a great deal of mutual hostility.
John Knapp is having an affair with Nina, who not very much older than his daughter. She is stronger than he is in many ways, but she is dissatisfied with her job, as well as her home—a small, womblike apartment, where John feels safe and she feels cramped. Nina cannot understand how John can be materially rich and yet so dissatisfied. Nina believes that money will make her happy.
By the novel’s end, John Knapp has left his family to be with Nina, John Joel has joined his baby brother at their grandmother’s house, Louise is helping Mary recover, and Cynthia is greeted by the returned Spangle. No problems have been resolved, and it is not likely that anybody will be very happy. On the very last page of the novel, however, there is an upbeat answer to what seems to be a trivial question. Greeted by her old boyfriend, Spangle, and hearing about his brother’s lost keys and money, Cynthia asks what was wished for when everything was thrown into the fountain. Spangle’s answer is, “The usual, I guess.”
Bibliography
Centola, Steven R. “An Interview with Ann Beattie.” Contemporary Literature 31 (Winter, 1990): 405-422.
Friedrich, Otto. “Beattieland.” Time 135 (January 22, 1990): 68.
Hill, Robert W., and Jane Hill. “Ann Beattie.” Five Points 1 (Spring/Summer, 1997): 26-60.
McCaffery, Larry, and Sinda Gregory. “A Conversation with Ann Beattie.” Literary Review 27 (Winter, 1984): 165-177.
Montresor, Jaye Berman, ed. The Critical Response to Ann Beattie. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1993.
Murphy, Christina. Ann Beattie. Boston: Twayne, 1986.
Plath, James. “Counternarrative: An Interview with Ann Beattie.” Michigan Quarterly Review 32 (Summer, 1993): 359-379.
Schneiderman, Leo. “Ann Beattie: Emotional Loss and Strategies of Reparation.” American Journal of Psychoanalysis 53 (December, 1993): 317-333.
Young, Michael W., and Troy Thibodeaux. “Ann Beattie.” In A Reader’s Companion to the Short Story in English, edited by Erin Fallon, R. C. Feddersen, James Kurtzleben, Maurice A. Lee, Susan Rochette-Crawley, and Mary Rohrberger. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2001.