Myths of Pete Najarian

 Mutual In Love Divine by Pete Najarian

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I read Pete Najarian’s The Naked and the Nude, then when his stories of fear, desire, “love,” disappointment, guilt, rejection, rage and loneliness began to repeat themselves, his Mutual in Love Divine. A slightly less objectifying perspective in Divine, but still caught in a cycle into his eighties, unresolved.

Although his paintings on the covers and throughout both Regent Press Berkeley’s books are beautifully reproduced and well-executed; his repetition of woman-as-object, everyone-as-other and everywhere-as-lonely lean towards too much. There’s little dialogue, which he admits he’s “not good at” writing; characters are named but barely described, and the only really good narrative of his environment comes in a day-long trail ride up and down a high Sierras mountain with his friend Bill.

Divine matured as he went along, especially in “Freud’s Story,” about his Mother. She had survived the Armenian Genocide, but a million others did not. It’s an outstanding portrait, much more empathetic, descriptive and narrative than the internal self-examinations of the other pieces. She had Petros, called “Pete” in the U. S., and there were “seven years of happiness” before her second husband had a stroke, working in a sewing factory and then working at home with no time for complaints. 

The word “love” comes up a lot in Divine, but Najarian’s fear and resentment stop him right at the edge of the trust and openness that real love needs to live and grow. According to Freud, that’s his Mother’s fault. (Not.)(Traumatic “ancestral memory?”)

The “eternal boy” who feels abandoned: “Remaining a bachelor son, however, can be so painful I want to die… the older she grows the more enlightened she appears, and nothing seems to bother her except the ants in her kitchen.” (He fails to haul the concrete to patch her walls, however, and she, elderly, injures herself trying to.) 

“Keep the refrigerator full and the sheets clean and the walls clean and everywhere clean because that’s what being a mother meant, to feed and to clean and not to complain about petty things.” 

Maybe he could take a life lesson from hers?


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