Reading Response: Interpretation and “My Mother’s Lover” by David Dobbs

Reading Response: Interpretation and “My Mother’s Lover” by David Dobbs

            For a work saddled with a seemingly sensationalist title and a tabloid synopsis (Deathbed revelation! Illicit affair!) I was surprised to find David Dobb’s “My Mother’s Lover” to be subtly complex and movingly honest. The author’s tone of kindness and meticulous approach to both the research and the subjects elevated this piece from the voyeuristic gossip-drama it could have been to a story that converges on real themes of love (both man/woman and parent/child), truth and lives lost. Yet, there are still some aspects of this story that I find troubling.

            In reaching the end of this piece, I was struck by its concluding sentiment of acceptance:

“Then I opened my mother’s crumbling photo album and slipped the pictures into the two remaining empty sets of corner mounts. I considered pulling those mounts off and pasting the photos closer to one another. But I though, No: My mom had glued those holders in that way, and I shouldn’t change it. This was as close I could get them.” (final page)

In this excerpt, Dobbs resists the urge to change his mother’s story, neither for his own satisfaction nor to save the lasting reputation of the subjects involved. It must have been difficult for the author to discover unflattering truths about his mother and the affect she had on a family many miles away, but for much of the text he does not attempt to justify or revise. Instead, he speckles the story with lines that allude to this resolve—most notably the line spoken by one of Angus’s children: “The past is approved and the future is open.” In leaving us with a sentimental scene of acceptance, and by excluding from his text any overt evidence of his own grappling with the truth, it seems to this reader that Dobbs is suggesting that the facts offer comfort enough. Learning the truth of his mother’s love affair and the truth about the man she loved seems to have brought the author closer to his deceased mother, simply because he feels that he knows her and the origin of her emotions a little better.

That truth can be a cure-all is a powerful notion for anyone—if not especially for a nonfiction writer—and would be a warming conclusion to this story, if Dobbs had really found the truth, which I don’t believe he did. I think he manufactured the truth for himself, and in doing so demonstrated one of the pitfalls of writing about family history, or anything close to the writer’s heart. Don’t get me wrong—I’m not saying that Dobbs invented this story or maliciously led his readers astray. This story is laden in facts. Lots of them. He discovered Angus’ dates of deployment, the dates his mother was in Hawaii, the contents of a footlocker. I don’t contest the truth of this information. But I’m troubled by the areas of this story where he strays from these facts and moves into subjective interpretation. I’m talking of course about the photographs. Dobbs takes those black and whites—otherwise objective sources—and attempts to bleed emotion and intention from them.

“But my mother turns an ashen face away from Angus and the camera. She looks distinctly as if she wishes she were somewhere else. Was she suddenly feeling ashamed? Had she and Angus been fighting? Had the regrets latent in the earlier photographs broken into the open?” (from 3. Hawaii)

From a base of facts, Dobbs builds the part of his story around how he infers his mother and her lover to feel and to think. Who is to say that the sun wasn’t simply in her eyes for this photo? Who is to say that this wasn’t one of the happiest days of their affair? Dobbs is inferring the shame and regret he perhaps hopes his mother felt—and he continues to infer the emotions of each subject of every photo he evaluates.

            Is it unethical or wrong that he is placing feelings upon still subjects in a crumpled old photo album? I would argue no—he clearly frames these interpretations around the premise of this photo album and even includes copies of some of the photos for the readers to interpret as they wish. No, I don’t think the author’s use of the photos is wrong, but I do think that it calls into question his concluding sentiment of acceptance and truth. The photo interpretations seem to prove that Dobbs did or does in fact grapple with the truth of his mother’s life and (whether conscious of it or not) is attempting to revise certain parts of it to better fit his own feelings about who she was and what she did.

            Dobb’s slide into personally based interpretation makes me wonder if this is not a problem encountered by all nonfiction writers. In interpreting the facts, do we not place our own expectations, wants or feels on the subjects at hand? Is this a curse of nonfiction or something that brings a further depth and artistry to the genre? I know that very few texts can ever be wholly objective, but where must one draw the line between evaluating the facts and interpreting them for oneself? I hope to delve into these questions throughout this semester.