By Terez Mertes
The Interestings, by Meg
Wolitzer, is a compulsively readable new novel that chronicles the
lives of six precocious young people who meet as teens at a summer
camp for the arts, back in the 1970’s. They dub themselves “The
Interestings,” because that’s how they see themselves: bright,
clever, full of artistic talent and urgency. The assumption between
them, as well, is that with enough hard work and determination,
professional artistic success will be theirs in adulthood.
But we adults all know what comes next.
Wolitzer chronicles the characters’ lives through the next four
decades, as the characters learn first-hand, some more than others,
that what sets you on fire during adolescence and young adulthood
often isn’t enough to sustain you beyond your twenties, much less
your thirties and forties, no matter how compelling and special
it—and you—seemed in earlier years. Only a few of the friends are
allowed the luxury of actualizing their youthful vision, while the
others are forced to adjust and re-define goals, ever haunted by
“what once was,” and what will never be.
It’s a great read. I’ve long been
fan of Meg Wolitzer’s writing, but this story resonated
particularly with me, partly because that, too, defined my feelings
throughout adolescence, through middle age. My own solution has been
to write about the performing arts, and take ballet classes as an
adult. And now I wonder about my comrades in ballet class, those
other middle-aged adults I share a barre with. Do they share this,
too—a sense that they once had an extraordinary streak in them, an
artistic impulse, that might have gotten thwarted? A dream, perhaps,
once-crushed and now renewed?
Here’s my own “thwarted” story:
in my late teens, the fiery infatuation with ballet and the
performing arts kicked into full throttle. During my university years
I performed with a local dance company, an unforgettable experience
with a wonderful group of like-minded people. We were a Tribe. We,
too, were The Interestings. When I graduated from college, leaving
behind company and country for a job with the Peace Corps in Africa,
I fiercely told myself ballet wasn’t over. It couldn’t be. I
harbored no further illusions about being a performing arts
professional, but, at the least, I felt assured of a lifelong
nourishing relationship with ballet. There in provincial Africa, I
still clung to my ballet practice, stretching and giving myself a
comprehensive barre twice a week. I did so without fail throughout
those two years. Back home, in the Midwest, I eventually took on a
salaried job, unrelated to the arts. I lived too far away to return
to my former company and dance companions, but found, instead, a
well-regarded local studio with strong ballet classes and a solid
following. But the magic, unfathomably, began to slip away. Even
during class, I started to feel hollow, bereft. I remained an
outsider in this studio, a stranger, even after a year. Class became
something to dread at the end of a long, hard day of work. Yes, I
could have found yet another studio. But something else was dying,
that little frisson of well-being, the voice that whispered to me
that ballet would always be there for me, nourishing my soul. One day
it left and never came back. When, a few months later, I was promoted
and relocated to California, I said goodbye to family and ballet
alike. Out with the childish dreams and illusions. Moving on. I had a
real job now, responsibility, I told myself. A real life; an adult’s
life.
Over the next several years I grieved
losing ballet, even as I scorned it. It was like mourning a true love
who went on to be more faithful to someone else. For a long spell, I
couldn’t watch a ballet performance, even though now I could well
afford the tickets. It hurt too much. Besides, I told myself, that
was the past. Like the characters in The Interestings who’d
been forced to move on, I’d done just that.
And yet, if the urge is inherent in
you, you can’t just push it away. It will return, again and again.
And for me, it did. For a while, I ignored it. But a few years later,
when parenting clogged up my life, pushed me even further from a
nourishing, self-absorbing artistic place, I finally understood that
it was time to take back what I could. Anything I could. Without it,
without art in my life, the flickering candle flame inside my soul
would go out.
And so I went back to ballet.
And I found a home again.
We grown-ups at the barre all fall into
one of a few categories. There are those like myself, who danced when
we were younger, stopped for a while, and understood, only later,
that we needed to return. Others of us are there because we
didn’t do it when we were younger, due to circumstances beyond our
control, even though we’d longed to. Then there is a third
category, those who never even considered doing it in their youth,
due to other obligations, or body type, or gender, and now, in this
more evolved, actualized adult state, we realize that no one is going
to stop us, or harshly judge us, or point and snicker. A powerful
understanding kicks in: as an adult in a recreational ballet class,
anything goes. Anything. How liberating.
When I admit to people that, not only
do I take a ballet class, but I take violin lessons as well, as an
adult beginner, many of them share a common reaction. Their eyes will
widen, they’ll cock their heads at me and say, “Omigosh. How
interesting.” They sound both confused and impressed.
Because, of course, this is the kind of thing a kid does. Not the
mother of a kid. Not a middle aged adult who should be beyond that.
Oh, thank goodness for the impulse we
adult recreational dancers have, to keep life interesting and dynamic
through and beyond middle age. I do believe it would make the perfect
epilogue to Meg Wolitzer’s
The Interestings. And truly,
nothing, to me, is more interesting than an adult who has wised up,
suffered setbacks, battled loss and disillusionment, and has returned
to address and conquer a dream, be it a long-held one, a brand new
one, or even an unnamed one. We grown-ups at the barre are The
Interestings, indeed.
Terez Mertes blogs at
Classical Girl.
