Correction of Drift: A Novel in Stories by Pamela Ryder

Fiction Collective 2, 2008

Nonlinear Flight
Review by Elizabeth J. Colen

What do you remember of the Lindbergh affair? That lost baby? Perhaps you heard once about how the man who flew the “Spirit of St. Louis” across the ocean lost his baby to thieves through the second-story nursery window. Older generations could never forget this sad and media-frenzied event if they tried, while younger generations might know no facts of the kidnapping and murder at all. Regardless of the amount of knowledge you bring to Pamela Ryder’s Correction of Drift: A Novel in Stories you will be horrified, saddened, yet overall entertained as she transforms this historical event into tangible personal histories of the people involved.

The novel, written in nine stories linked by content and separated by nine different perspectives (from the kidnappers, to Lindbergh, Mrs. Lindbergh, the maid, wife of the accused, etc), contains the beautiful and unconventional/experimental poetic style for which this press (FC2) is known. Sometimes the prose moves through events and descriptions purposefully, as when Ryder is describing the immigrant culture of New York City in the early part of the twentieth century. Other times the language is playful, pure poetry—“Did he ever see the birds that dip into the waves, just above the foam where the sea becomes air?”

Moving from the first to the second (and title) story, the extreme close third-person narrative, including ominous flashbacks to the kidnappers’ childhoods, has become the highly self-conscious compulsiveness of a man who has always been so careful to see to every detail trying to come to terms with what overlooked factors could have led to his son’s disappearance. Thanks to Ryder’s elegant prose one can almost agree with him. How could someone steal a baby out of a room with a newly silvered mirror? “There had been self-reliance, priority, order.” Cross-atlantic flight is compared to “solitude, safety of woods surrounding the house.” At times the comparison becomes too adamant, “he sees the crib, the rails, the bars of moonlight”—as if for one second the reader might miss the parallels, the repetition. Even these distractions can be overlooked as Ryder’s wording remains lovely and engaging throughout.

As the second (his) story turns into the third (written in the bad grammar of the ransom notes), then fourth (Mrs. Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s perspective), his focus on details leads to her fastidious homemaking. In his story we note her meticulous dress, in hers we see the commanding woman of the house who keeps her famous husband together. While the characterization of Mrs. seems simplistic in its primary focus of things commonly known, such as her love of fashion and seashells, we are drawn in by the repetition that runs parallel to Mr. Lindbergh’s checking and rechecking. In this (her story) his tendency to thoroughness is used against him. That the nursery window never shut tight is a contentious detail that becomes an obsessive, recurring image that shifts slightly in tenor with each passing mention. Even their luggage in leaving becomes equated to the window: “She will attend to the lock, the straps, the latch. She will see to it that nothing else is lost.”

Each subsequent story not only adds something new but also complicates and transforms, building upon and re-imagining the previous stories and information given. With the novel wrapping up in a tourist’s perspective of visiting the house years after the fact, it seems the only angle missing is an account from one of the many men who have come forward claiming to be the Lindbergh baby.

Also striking is the heavy use throughout of historical headlines about the event to precede each story. The headlines, often heartbreakingly conflicting, fill any gap in the reader’s basic knowledge of the Lindbergh history, so that Ryder’s lyric prose can get at the emotional experience behind each separate perspective. A truly fascinating read.