Reconciling a Strained Relationship

‘Well, laughter is the best medicine,’ he says though neither of us is laughing. Neither of us even smiles. He just looks at me with a deepening sadness, the way it happens sometimes with him, going from one emotion to another the way some people channel surf.

Will makes this observation early in the novel, in “My Father’s Death: Take 1.” He begins to tell the story of Edward’s death, and Edward asks for a glass of water and tells an old joke about a panhandler. It is one of the few times that Will acknowledges Edward’s deep sadness and the way Edward’s emotions can quickly flip from negative to positive, from melancholy to laughter, without warning. The detail that neither man even smiles at the joke is significant, for they share the reality of Edward’s impending death the same way they share storytelling. Throughout the novel, Edward remains an enigma to Will, and the only way he reveals himself is through his stories.

The truth is, most things are hard to talk about with him. By that I mean the essence of things, the important things, the things that matter. Somehow, it’s just too hard for him, and maybe a bit dicey, a chore for this very intelligent man who has forgotten more facts about geography and math and history than I’ve ever learned . . .

Here, in “My Father’s Death: Take 2,” Will names the quality of Edward’s that infuriates him the most: his avoidance of the essence of things. This observation is followed by Will asking if his father believes in heaven and God, a question that Edward answers by telling a worn-out joke about Jesus and Pinocchio. Will compares Edward to a turtle with an emotional shell that lets no one in. Edward defends himself by saying that there is no proof about God, only doubts, and he doesn’t want to leave his son with a “bunch of doubts.” Ironically, the conversation does turn serious at the end of this chapter. Edward and Will agree that Edward has been a good dad, despite his jokes.

I look into his gray-blue dying eyes. We’re staring at each other, showing each other our last looks, the faces we’ll take with us into eternity, and I’m thinking how I wish I knew him better, how I wish we’d had a life together, wishing my father wasn't such a complete and utter goddamn mystery to me . . .

At the very end of Will’s last “take” on Edward’s death, in “My Father’s Death: Take 4,” Will finally names what his father is to him: a “goddamn mystery.” Will also finally expresses his wishes that they might reconcile, which they do, in a way, in the final chapter of the book. What follows is the greatest mystery of all: Will releasing Edward into the river as a fish. Immediately following this quote, however, is Will telling Edward the joke about a man and his ill-fitting suit. It is Will’s way of honoring how Edward has chosen to live his life: as a comedian, a jokester, a storyteller, and a wisecracker. In the end, Will both releases his father and becomes his father. Edward becomes immortal because of all the stories he leaves with his son.

Storytelling as a Way of Making Meaning

    ‘But even that’s a story, Dad. I don’t believe it for a minute.’
    ‘You’re not necessarily supposed to believe it,’ he says wearily. ‘You’re just supposed to believe in it. It’s like—a metaphor.’

Here, in “My Father’s Death: Take 3,” Edward waxes philosophical for a brief moment while he dying. Will has just accused his father’s jokes of being “stupid,” and begs Edward to lay off the stories and just talk man-to-man. Edward replies by saying that his father would wake him up in the middle of the night just to tell him a story, a story that Will claims is a story in itself, a story within a story, an apt metaphor for Edward’s entire life. When Edward makes the distinction between believing something and believing in it, he’s commenting on himself. Edward wants Will to believe in him even though Will doesn’t believe everything Edward tells him. For Edward, truth isn’t revealed by historical fact. Truth and meaning are revealed by stories.

In Specter, history becomes what never happened. People mess things up, forget and remember all the wrong things. What’s left is fiction.

The dreamlike town of Specter is a metaphor for Edward’s imagination, and in “In Which He Buys a Town, and More,” readers hear Edward’s voice more than in any other chapter in the book. Readers see Specter through Edward’s eyes. Although he never marries Jenny, she becomes his wife, the photographic negative to Sandra’s positive. In Specter, everything is a story. It’s like the place that has no name, a place that only exists in fantasy. Edward comes and goes from Specter with regularity but without warning. Everyone knows and loves him there. It’s peaceful and calm . . . until it’s not, and he must leave it forever. Perhaps Specter is a story-town that houses Edward’s psychosis. Perhaps it is just a dream.

It doesn’t matter; the story keeps changing. All of the stories do. Since none of them are true, to begin with, the townspeople’s memories take on a peculiar tint, their voices loud in the morning when, during the night, they might have remembered something else that never happened, a story good enough to share with the others, a new twist, a lie compounded daily.

In the chapter, “In Which He Buys a Town, and More,” readers learn more about Specter and Edward’s psychology. Unlike reality which is set in hard stone, stories morph as time passes and as people remember some details, forget others, and enhance more. Life in Specter constantly changes. Stories blend. Significantly, Edward uses the word “lie” to describe this town and his stories, as if the word slips out without full intention. Edward invents Specter, which in turn, invents him, a Mobius strip of meaning that slips through one’s fingers as soon as one tries to pin it down. Halfway through Edward’s life, Specter becomes Edward’s second home, but this story does not end well. Jenny, the woman who holds the key to Edward’s heart, becomes a specter herself, a barely living creature with glowing eyes who hides behind a window in a swamp.

The Boundaries Between Reality and Fantasy

    ‘Let me guess,’ I say. ‘He planted them and a huge vine grew up into the clouds, and at the top of the clouds was a castle, where a giant lived.’
    ‘How did you know?’
    ‘And a two-headed woman who served him tea, no doubt.’

Early in the novel, in “My Father’s Death: Take 1,” Edward recalls his father as a man, like himself, who was gone a lot and whose life was full of fantastic details. Once, Edward’s father hopped a freight train, rode to California, and returned with some marvelous seeds. Edward’s told Will this story before, and the detail about the two-headed woman has jumped from another story into this one. This tale echoes Jack and the Beanstalk, a popular fairy tale from the 1700s, and suggests that Edward’s stories are part of a larger body of fantastic fiction that is true but not true. The anecdote also introduces the fact that Edward never tells a good story once: he tells it again and again until it becomes, like Pinocchio, real.

One day, he realizes that there is something missing in his life.  Or rather it’s a feeling that comes over him slowly as he ages—he’d just turned forty—until one day he finds himself, quite by accident, stuck. In a little town called Specter . . . somewhere in Alabama or Mississippi or Georgia. Stuck there because his car has broken down.

The story of Specter told in “In Which He Buys a Town and More,” launches Part III of Big Fish and begins realistically. It’s completely believable that a traveling salesman’s car breaks down in a small town. It’s completely realistic that while he waits for his car to be repaired, he surveys the town. However, when the car becomes “my father’s magic carpet,” the story soars into fantasy. Edward falls in love with Specter and decides to purchase it, every square inch, and make it into a “self-enclosed ecosystem” The people in the town love Edward, and he loves them all back. The town begins to share qualities with the place that has no name and characters from other stories move in. When he meets Jenny Hill, Edward’s fantasies take center stage. What began as a real car repair turns into a dream, and later a nightmare.

I saw him dart this way and that, a silvery, brilliant, shining life, and disappear into the darkness of the deep water where the big fish go, and I haven’t seen him since—though others have.

Big Fish begins in reality with the anecdote of Will remembering his father putting his pale feet into the waters of a river beside an old oak tree. The novel ends with the chapter, “Big Fish,” in the same setting, but with a fantastic fish-tale in which Edward transforms into a new creature, vibrant and brilliant. Here, Will describes Edward’s transformation. Then, he reveals that he’s heard stories from people whose lives have been dramatically changed or even heroically saved by this biggest of fish. Earlier in the novel, Edward tells Will that he does not know what happens after death, at least in reality. However, as he “dies,” he is reincarnated, and his fantasy becomes his new reality. Edward becomes the big fish that he’s always dreamed of becoming.

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