This mother’s life
During the summer of 1984, Phillip Lopate recorded more than 20 hours of conversation with his mother, Frances, who was 66 at the time. Lopate was 41. He let the tapes sit unused in the closet for 30 years before he decided to bring them out and listen to his mother’s voice again. What resulted from that listening is “A Mother’s Tale.”
“A Mother’s Tale” reads more like Studs Terkel than it does Montaigne. The book is a dialogue, and a formal departure for Lopate, who’s best known as a central figure in the resurgence of the American essay. Frances Lopate’s words are at the heart of “A Mother’s Tale,” unedited, changed only in that they’ve been culled and organized in titled sections. Lopate himself is present, both as a 41-yearold sitting in the TriBeCa loft during the taping, and as his future self, constructing the text.
The interplay between the three Lopates is fascinating. Frances, who was born in 1918 and died in 2000, talks about the time she ran away from home and had her first sexual encounter. She talks about the candy store she ran during World War II. She wishes Phillip Lopate’s father would disappear, and says it often. At all times, Frances’ commentary gets balanced out by two Phillips. One sits in the room and remains silent while his mother talks about his own botched circumcision. The other, writing now, offers commentary — not only on his mother, but on the past version of himself.
Like his mother, Lopate writes that he has “a refusal to submit fully to empathy.” And while “A Mother’s Tale” may never give into one side of the triangle, in the tension of its moving parts, Frances Lopate comes to life on the page. The specificity makes her story an intelligent and entertaining portrait of a woman who lived through most of the 20th century. Lopate, who’s made a life out of language, listens back to the woman who first taught him to speak. He’s a generous son, and the project, greater than the sum of its parts, is a worthy one.