Blume mulls childhood plane crashes
Decades later, author opens up about pivotal events in early life
In all the years that Judy Blume has been writing her groundbreaking books about the fears and secrets of teenage girls, she has never discussed the series of traumatic events that marked her own adolescence.
Now, in her late 70s, she has begun to talk about the three commercial airliners that crashed into her hometown of Elizabeth, N.J., between December 1951 and February 1952, killing a total of 118 people. Blume’s father, a dentist, was called in to help identify the charred, mangled bodies. In recent interviews, she has said that she “buried” memories of the accidents so deeply that she never spoke about them to her husband or her children — not even when her daughter became a commercial airline pilot herself.
It would have been fascinating to read a memoir by Blume about its effect on Elizabeth’s teenage population. But she says she remembers very little about the crashes. She told The New York Times: “I never went down to see the site (of the second impact). Even though my school was less than two blocks away. I find that very strange.”
She has instead written what she claims will be her “final novel for adults” as a way of imagining herself into the lives of contemporaries more directly affected. Longterm Blume fans will be instantly at home in the company of the novel’s plucky heroine, Miri.
A 14-year-old girl on the brink of first love, she lives with her glamorous single mother, uncle and grandmother. It’s a cosy setup, except for the mystery of Miri’s paternity. All she knows about the man who once “schtupped” her mother is his name, and she’s not even meant to know that. She envies the wealthier and more outwardly conventional household of her best friend, Natalie, who has a charming dentist father (based on Blume’s own father), a chic mother and drawers full of cashmere sweaters.
Blume is seductive on the luxuries of ’50s fashion: angora kept in freezers to prevent shedding, Volupte compacts and underwear stores with “not a bra or a girdle in sight. And nothing black. Navy blue was as close as it got.”
Miri and her friends giggle at the word “lingerie” and where it might lead. As the novel opens, they are all looking forward to Natalie’s 15th birthday party, where they will dance with local boys to her new jukebox.
Readers who had their first fictional encounters with periods and boys via Blume in the 1970s and ’80s will find the subjects revisited here. When the planes begin falling from the sky with their sensible, virginal stewardesses on board, many of Blume’s characters — teenagers, mothers, grandmothers — are shaken into acting on their romantic feelings.
As a reader, you find yourself speculating on how the crashes may have shaken Blume. We all wondered what made it so apparently easy for this particular suburban woman to shine a light on the previously shameful subjects of menstruation, teenage sex, masturbation, homosexuality, bullying, racism and so on. But it makes sense that a girl who was struggling with those issues while whole families came crashing down onto the sidewalks around her decided it was time to put puberty into perspective.
Blume has never been particularly interested in language or plot. She has her eye on people, and her work resonates because she uses clean, accessible prose to sketch characters who are convincingly conflicted. Her good girls tell lies, and shy, vulnerable guys can cheat. Rarely do they intend the pain they cause.
Like all Blume’s novels, In the Unlikely Event is a slice of life — a cross-section of a community — and not a neatly plotted tale. It ends with some stories up in the air. And though its younger characters feel comfortingly familiar, this book continually reminds readers that death and disaster can strike as randomly as love and acne. Other sorrows are more inevitable.
Blume never lied to us. She can’t take the fear away. But she continues to hold out a warm, fallible hand to help us face the music and dance.