Joyland

“Out in front stood a tightly muscled guy in faded jeans, balding suede boots splotched with grease, and a strap-style T-shirt. He wore a Derby hat tilted on his coal-black hair. A filterless cigarette was parked behind one year. He looked like a cartoon carnival barker from an old-time newspaper strip. […] The guy was bopping to the beat, hands in his back pockets, hips moving side to side. I had a thought, absurd but perfectly clear: when I grow up, I want to look just like this guy.”

Devin’s thought—“when I grow up”—underscores the idea that Devin has yet to come of age. Ironically, the description of Lane Hardy couldn’t be further from either Devin’s ambition (famous author) or what he actually becomes (commercial magazine editor). Lane’s description here is reminiscent of the bad boy, Candlewick (or Lampwick), from Pinocchio’s Toyland. In Disney’s version, Lampwick is depicted with a cigar and a Derby hat. Even more ironically, this person that Devin is so strongly drawn to turns out to be a serial killer.

“‘Who knows, this place might be your future.’

‘Maybe,’ I said, although I already knew what my future was going to be: writing novels and the kind of short stories they publish in The New Yorker. I had it all planned out. Of course, I also had marriage to Wendy Keegan all planned out, and how we’d wait until we were in our thirties to have a couple of kids. When you’re twenty-one, life is a roadmap. It’s only when you get to be twenty-five or so that you begin to suspect you’ve been looking at the map upside down, and not until you’re forty are you entirely sure. By the time you’re sixty, take it from me, you’re fucking lost.’”

Devin will never become the kind of writer he dreams of being. He is slated for a comfortable life writing for commercial magazines. The observation that life never turns out the way you plan is typical of the cynicism of the hard-boiled genre.

“There were long and sleepless nights when I thought she deserved something bad—maybe really bad—to happen to her for the way she hurt me. It dismayed me to think that way, but sometimes I did. And then I would think about the man who went into Horror House with his arm around Linda Gray and wearing two shirts. The man with the bird on his hand and a straight razor in his pocket.”

Corruption is a common theme in the hard-boiled detective genre. Fantasizing about revenge on the people who hurt you is a universal—and mainly harmless—pastime. Most people may indulge the impulse, then let it go, repulsed by the idea of doing actual harm. Devin’s connection of his own dark impulses with the vision of the depraved murderer causes him to recognize the potential for corruption and reject his own darkness.

“This is a badly broken world, full of wars and cruelty and senseless tragedy. Every human being who inhabits it is served his or her portion of unhappiness and wakeful nights. Those of you who don’t already know that will come to know it. Given such sad but undeniable facts of the human condition, you have been given a priceless gift this summer: you are here to sell fun. In exchange for the hard-earned dollars of your customers, you will parcel out happiness.”

Bradley Easterbrook, the owner of the park, sums up his philosophy—which is a profoundly generous one. He positions Joyland once again as the magical world set apart from the mundane, and often harsh, world in which we all have to live. Easterbrook tells his employees that to give happiness is a privilege. Over the summer, Devin finds this to be true.

“History is the collective and ancestral shit of the human race, a great big and ever-growin’ pile of crap. Right now we’re standin’ at the top of it, but pretty soon we’ll be buried under the doodoo of generations yet to come […] And, as someone who’s destined to be buried beneath the shit of your children and grandchildren, I think you should be just a leetle more forgiving.”

Pop Allen is expressing an idea that has become more contentious in recent history. It is easy to believe oneself to be the pinnacle of moral integrity, but someday, our great-grandchildren will look back on our actions and beliefs and quite possibly despise us for our moral failings. It is unjust and irrational to judge the past by the standards of today. To be forgiving is to learn from the past and move on.

“I was dismayed by the depth and strength of my jealousy […] Nor was jealousy the worst of it. The worst was the horrifying realization—that night it was just starting to sink in—that I had been really and truly rejected for the first time in my life. She was through with me, but I couldn’t imagine being through with her.”

If Wendy is seen as representing Devin’s childhood, then he is confronting for the first time his ejection from childhood, and although it is high time, he still isn’t ready for it. Childhood may be through with him, but Devin can’t imagine being through with it. His transition is still to come.

“As I made my tail-wagging way down Joyland Avenue, followed by crowds of laughing children, I thought it was no wonder Wendy had dumped me. Her new boyfriend went to Dartmouth and played lacrosse. Her old one was spending the summer in a third-tier amusement park. Where he played a dog.”

Devin is comparing two different sets of values. He understands that society grades on a financial scale, and Devin rates low on that scale. A reader who loves Devin for his sweetness will see the comparison between those two values as an indictment of a society with distorted priorities—what Mr. Easterbrook describes as a broken world.

“[The other photographers wanted] what Erin had already gotten, a picture of me with my Howie-head off. That was one thing I wouldn’t do, although I’m sure none of Fred, Lane, or Mr. Easterbrook himself would have penalized me for it. I wouldn’t do it because it would have flown in the face of park tradition: Howie never took off the fur in public; to do so would have been like outing the Tooth Fairy. I’d done it when Hallie Stansfield was choking, but that was the necessary exception. I would not deliberately break the rule. So I guess I was carny after all (although not carny-from-carny, never that).”

Shortly before Devin spotted Hallie Stansfield choking, he had been thinking it was no wonder Wendy had dumped him—seeing how little he conformed to the values of the broken world. Now he has the opportunity to take off his Howie head and be admired in light of the same values. Instead, he demonstrates his devotion to the magical world of Joyland. It isn’t just loyalty to Mr. Easterbrook’s philosophy of selling happiness; it is a defiance of the broken world and a stubborn insistence on his own values.

“I answered honestly. ‘The guy offered me five hundred dollars, but I wouldn’t take it.’

Tom goggled. ‘Say what?'

I looked down at the remains of the s’more I was holding. Marshmallow was drooling onto my fingers, so I tossed it into the fire. I was full, anyway. I was also embarrassed, and pissed off to be feeling that way. ‘The man’s trying to get a little business up and running, and based on the way he talked about it, it’s at the point where it could go either way. He’s also got a wife and a kid and another kid coming soon. I didn’t think he could afford to be giving money away.’

‘He couldn’t? What about you?’

I blinked. ‘What about me?’”

Tom is questioning Devin’s decision to not accept money from Hallie’s father. Tom believes that Devin has value, in worldly terms, and must think of himself as well as of others. He deserves happiness himself and to be recognized for what he gives to the world.

“She was right, I wanted to know if she was a fraud. Here was her answer.

And yes, I had made up my mind about what came next in the life of Devin Jones. She had been right about that, too.

But there was one more line.

You saved the little girl, but dear boy! You can’t save everyone.”

Rozzie Gold has demonstrated that she does indeed have second sight, which means the final line of her note is a foreshadowing. Passing through the winter, Devin will encounter people that he cannot save: Mike, Eddie, Linda, and (far in the future) Tom. Devin will learn that he isn’t required to save everybody, only, perhaps, sell them a little happiness.

“I have examined and reexamined my memories of those days to make sure it’s a true memory, and it seems to be—it was because it had been our Doubting Thomas to see the ghost of Linda Gray. It had changed him in small but fundamental ways. I don’t think Tom wanted to change—I think he was happy just as he was—but I did. I wanted to see her too.”

Seeing death in the form of Linda Gray changes something in Tom. Many years later, Devin will learn that part of the change was to instill an existential doubt, a fear of the potential horror that Linda represents. In spite of the way the vision unsettled Tom, Devin nevertheless wants to experience it. Unlike Tom, Devin feels a need to come to grips with death and transformation, with endings and the unknown, before he can move forward.

“‘You’ll get over her.’ Her eyes were on mine. She wasn’t wearing makeup that night, and didn’t need any. The moonlight was her makeup.

‘Yes,’ I said. I knew it was true, and part of me was sorry. It’s hard to let go. Even when what you’re holding onto is full of thorns, it’s hard to let go. Maybe especially then.”

A little later, Erin will tell Devin that if Tom had not been there that summer, she would have made sure Devin forgot all about Wendy. That warmth has been between the two of them all summer, but Devin could never begrudge Tom. Devin says that letting go may be even harder when what you’re holding is full of thorns. He is referring to the scar that always remained with him. He will always wonder what was wrong with him that caused Wendy to reject him. It takes him 40 years to fully understand that he wasn’t the one who was wrong. More than that, getting over Wendy means getting over the person he thought he was with her.

“There was no ghost girl holding her hands out to me. Yet something was there. I knew it then and I know it now. The air was colder. Not cold enough to see my breath, but yes, definitely colder. My arms and legs and groin all prickled with gooseflesh, and the hair at the nape of my neck stiffened.

‘Let me see you,’ I whispered, feeling foolish and terrified. Wanting it to happen, hoping it wouldn’t.

There was a sound. A long, slow sigh. Not a human sigh, not in the least.

It was as if someone had opened an invisible steam-valve. Then it was gone. There was no more. Not that day.”

Devin wants to understand the mystery represented by Linda, the goddess of the underworld/symbol of death. If he understands death, perhaps he can make sense of his life. However, Devin is not yet ready. He has more to learn before he will be able to understand that last mystery.

“I was sure Fred Dean wouldn’t mind me touring the kid through Mysterio’s Mirror Mansion, either. But no. No. He was her delicate hothouse flower, and she intended to keep it that way. The thing with the kite had just been an aberration, and the apology a bitter pill she felt she had to swallow. Still, I couldn’t help admiring how quick and lithe she was, moving with a grace her son would never know.”

Annie’s treating Mike as a “delicate hothouse flower” is another framing of the idea that she has built a tower around herself and her son and is fighting to keep death from reaching him. Knowing that Mike will never live to see any woman the way Devin is seeing Annie is a revelation of what Devin would lose if he tried to remain a child.

“‘Whatever it is, her father was asked about [his grandson’s illness] on one of his crusade things, and do you know what he said?’

I shook my head, but thought I could make a pretty good guess.

‘He said that God punishes the unbeliever and the sinner. He said his daughter was no different, and maybe her son’s affliction would bring her back to God.’

‘I don’t think it’s happened yet,’ I said.”

Around the time that Mike was born, the Reverend Ross was trying to make the transition from radio to television, which would make the disgrace of his fallen daughter all the more galling to him. The irony illustrated in the passage is the idea that a God who would torment and kill a child in order to punish the mother is profoundly unworthy of worship. If God is represented as the ultimate father, then the Reverend Ross has certainly created him in his own image.

“The fact that nothing could come of it—she had to be ten years older than me, maybe twelve—only seemed to make things worse. Or maybe I mean better, because unrequited love does have its attractions for young men.”

The older Devin can look back with a sense of humor at the boyish dramatics of young men. Devin is no longer thinking of Wendy. He has developed a crush on Annie. He still hasn’t passed through his coming-of-age, but he is letting go of the past and tentatively reaching out for the future.

“It was a kind of atavistic belief—a mother’s belief—that if they never started doing certain last things, life would go on as it had: morning smoothies at the end of the boardwalk, evenings with the kite at the end of the boardwalk, all of it in a kind of endless summer. Only it was October now…No summer is endless.”

Annie, the ice queen, is trying to freeze time, enclosing the last moments of summer in walls of ice. Devin, on the other hand, is determined to wring every last drop of joy from childhood’s summer before winter ends it forever. Watching her pain, Devin is struck by the inevitability of endings. He has one last little bit of happiness to give, if only he and Mike can melt Annie’s heart.

“[Erin] gave me a long, measuring stare. ‘You look older, Devin. I thought so even before we got off the train, when I saw you waiting on the platform. Now I know why. You went to work and we went back to Never Never Land to play with the Lost Boys and Girls. The ones who will eventually turn up in suits from Brooks Brothers and with MBAs in their pockets.’”

In one sense, Devin has stayed in his own Never Never Land, where Lost Boys and Girls never grow up and the carnies go on selling happiness forever. Erin sees him from the other side of the fence. He has been working in the real world while she and Tom have been in college. College is sometimes seen as an extended childhood where people who are at least physically adults postpone going out into the real world while they gain additional knowledge and skills.

“I remember Mike’s day at the park—Annie’s day, too—as if it happened last week, but it would take a correspondent much more talented than I am to tell you how it felt, or to explain how it could have ended the last hold Wendy Keegan still held over my heart and my emotions. All I can say is what you already know: some days are treasure. Not many, but I think in almost every life there are a few. That was one of mine, and when I’m blue—when life comes down on me and everything looks tawdry and cheap, the way Joyland Avenue did on a rainy day—I go back to it, if only to remind myself that life isn’t always a butcher’s game. Sometimes the prizes are real. Sometimes they’re precious.”

The description of life as tawdry and cheap and the use of the “carny” slang, “butcher’s game” reflects the cynicism of the hard-boiled genre. By letting go of Wendy, Devin has released childhood’s hold over him, but by keeping this one perfect day of childhood, he has retained an antidote to cynicism.

“Kids half his age had given me the Howie-Hug all summer long, but no hug had ever felt so good. I only wished I could turn him around and squeeze him the way I had Hallie Stansfield, expelling what was wrong with him like an aspirated chunk of hot dog.

Face buried in the fur, he said: ‘You make a really good Howie, Dev.'

I rubbed his head with one paw, knocking off his dog-top. I couldn’t reply as Howie—barking his name was as close as I could come to that—but I was thinking, A good kid deserves a good dog. Just ask Milo.”

The story has been full of dogs, but Howie is the most important of them all. Mike is saying that Devin isn’t just good at playing the role of Howie; Devin is good at playing the role of guardian—guardian of children, guardian of innocence, guardian of happiness—and every child deserves that shield between them and the broken world.

“Slowly, the world opened itself beneath us: first the park, then the bright cobalt of the ocean on our right and all of the North Carolina lowlands on our left. When the Spin reached the top of its great circle, Mike let go of the safety bar, raised his hands over his head, and shouted, ‘We’re flying! […] Now I know what my kite feels like.’”

For Mike, the kite represents freedom, especially the freedom from his frail earthbound body. Devin describes the scene as the world opening up and releasing Mike from the bonds of gravity, setting him free to fly high above, weightless in the wind.

“[Annie] shrugged, as if it were of no matter. ‘I was wrong about not letting Mike go to Joyland, and I’ve been wrong about holding onto my old grudges and insisting on some sort of fucked-up quid pro quo. My son isn’t goods in a trading post. Do you think thirty-one’s too old to grow up, Dev?’

‘Ask me when I get there.’”

Both Annie and Devin are passing through a coming-of-age. Annie’s is a delayed coming-of-age. She has been suspended in time by her (not unjustified) resentment of her father. Being able to let go of that childhood hurt is the moment she steps into adulthood, and it is Mike who has led her.

“‘But it’s what Mike wanted.’

‘Strange request for a kid, isn’t it? But yes, he was very clear. And we both know why.’

Yes. We did. The last good time always comes, and when you see the darkness creeping toward you, you hold on to what was bright and good. You hold on for dear life.”

Mike saw the darkness creeping toward him, and this ritual, this release, was the thing that made it bearable. The older Devin has learned this for himself. His one perfect day in Joyland with Mike and Annie is the thing he holds onto when cynicism threatens to overwhelm him. eventually, when his own last good time arrives, he will know how to face it thanks to Mike.