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What Is The Ha-Ha? by Dave King
Probably the question most frequently asked of any author finishing a
manuscript is where exactly did the book come from? In the case of The Ha-Ha,
the question has two parts. The first part involves the origins of protagonist
Howard Kapostash, a character whose traumatic brain injury limits his
communication within the world of the book, though he speaks articulately and
intimately to the reader, while the second part involves the genesis and
significance of the ha-ha itself. I think that by answering each part
individually I may illuminate the book's genesis.
Howard's most obvious antecedent is my older brother Hank, who was profoundly
autistic throughout his life. When I was a child, my understanding of Hank's
disability was complicated and unresolved, and my long interest in those who are
different--and differently abled--undoubtedly stems from this childhood
curiosity. In some ways, my boyhood vision of Hank was that of most little
brothers: he was a robust and handsome presence, big and blond and athletic and
gray-eyed. At the same time, it was clear that whatever interesting sibling
relationship my friends and cousins enjoyed was not happening with us. My
brother was unpredictable and unreachable, and he had the autistic's
characteristically evasive glance. He was a person of mystery.
These were the days before autism had much entered the public discourse, and
in New England, where we spent summers and holidays, even the word 'autistic'
tended to prompt the question, "What type of art?" My parents were
reasonably straightforward with my sister and me, but they relied on euphemisms
("different;" "not well") to explain Hank's condition to
those outside the family. And because Hank's condition was such an absolute
constant, I never felt my understanding of it developing or deepening. He was
how he was, and at some point I grew old enough and responsible enough to keep
an eye on him at the beach or on a bike ride. Only later did I realize how this
upended the ordinary older brother/younger brother dynamic.
While he was alive, Hank was such a vivid presence that I didn't spend a lot
of time wondering what his life would have been like if… (though surely my
parents thought about it all the time). But after his death at age 44, I found
myself returning again and again to that life he might have lived as a more
normally abled person. And it was a shock to realize that one thing he'd have
had to deal with was Vietnam. Vietnam was the great shadow hanging over my own
adolescence, but because it was so thoroughly out of the question for Hank, I'd
never considered it in terms of him. Of course, at six years older, he'd have
been in the thick of the risk.
At this point, I'd like to state categorically that Howard Kapostash is not a
thinly veiled portrait of my brother Hank. The roman á clef doesn't
interest me at all, and with the exception of Vietnam itself, The Ha-Ha
is very much a work of the imagination. Nevertheless, the character of Howard
did grow from thinking around Hank's life--from considering my brother
and myself in relation to Vietnam and in relation to disability, in relation to
families, and even in relation to that nebulous quantity we think of generally
as expectation. For The Ha-Ha is very much a book about expectation
thwarted, and it's in this respect that Howard's injury differs most
significantly from congenital conditions like the one Hank had. Because he's
experienced "normality," Howard's world encompasses several qualities
which Hank's presumably did not--in particular, loss.
If the development of Howard's character was the result of careful thought
and calibration, the use of the ha-ha as a metaphor came about much more
organically. A ha-ha is, in simplest terms, a sunken fence used to contain
livestock without interrupting a view; the goal is to create an optical illusion
so that the land appears to roll on continuously, with no evidence of
this concealed division. In the novel, there's an actual ha-ha, of course, and
it plays a major role in the story, but initially all I wanted was to present
the convent grounds as an urban, rather than rural, paradise: a little
compromised, a little artificial. I came up with the image of the interstate
passing so close to this "landscaped Arden," as Howard calls it, that
one could hear the sound of traffic from the rectory, and because I knew about
ha-has from a college architecture class, I simply wrote one into the story as
an interesting detail. Only as the drafts progressed did I recognize the
metaphorical significance of a concealed break--not only in the land that Howard
mows for a living, but also in the very landscape of his life. In The Ha-Ha,
Howard's brain injury is itself the unaddressed rift he works so hard to
conceal, and as the book progresses, this is the fissure he's forced
increasingly to confront.
Reproduced by permission of the publisher, Little Brown &
Co
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