Cliffhanger Notes

[fictitious]

Diner Dharma

By A. D. Thompson

A Buddhist Monk tells stories to folks in a small town diner in Ataboy West Texas.

LIFE OF A. D. THOMPSON

Thompson gathered folktales during his travels around the world. He studied in Paris and later was a forester in the Sahara. He honed his storytelling as a teacher on the Navajo Nation, summering in Mexico to compare Maya and Dine folktales, also as a professor of English in China. His mother is British but his stepfather was raised in Amarillo, Texas. Thompson spent his formative years in Austin.

Thompson’s creative family influenced him greatly as well. His brother illustrated his children’s classic Well Wished (cover art by his mother), a story which appears in a longer form in Diner Dharma. Thompson also wrote fantasy (Mageland) and science fiction (Starkey) in his early career and included some in Diner Dharma. He wrote some poetry (see “Wildflowers” in Diner Dharma) and numerous travel essays, one on joking cousins in Mali, West Africa in particular. The mystery element to Diner Dharma was followed up in Dan Greene, MSW: Therapist to the Dead. Thompson’s deep interest in Buddhism can be seen in works like Sidewalk Satori a play about homelessness and how we are all transitory. He wrote a sequel to sequel to Diner Dharma entitled Monkin’ Around in which Monk travels. Many consider it Thompson’s enduring masterpiece.

DINER DHARMA IN CONTEXT

This is a book of surprises. Monk is not who he seems. The Mexican busboy is arrested for a crime he did not commit. The police chief is not interested. He loves trains. What started as a gimmick to house his stories, Thompson, has said, took on a life of its own as this little Texas town is visited by artists, activists, journalists, and a delegation of monks who eat from a stone soup pot in a scene reminiscent of Babette’s Feast, Chocolat, or Like Water for Chocolate. Some of the characters are pretentious- Monk has a story duel with the town principal and mayor- and some of Monk’s exploits are a bit fantastic (running off armed robbers, winning the rodeo bareback, backwards) but the premise remains simple as most Monk meets are transformed by his stories into remembering their original goodness. They are all kinds of peach cobbler good!

At times this is a pure romp with pebble boy and opossum boy and even bubble boy, but at times reads like a novel of ideas; luckily there is sentiment too as in Monk’s scene with the kind, hurt waitress- Thompson’s version of the Buddha’s famous flower sermon. He originally conceived the work as a way to address major problems of our contemporary society by way of teaching stories, and while he at times wandered a bit in the West Texas plains from that starting point, he returns skillfully to his premise and vision again and again proclaiming this then the true mission of storytelling- to heal our world which, while broken in ways, remains always beautiful and wonderful.

CHARACTERS

Monk: tells stories to folks mainly, gets beat up

Red: has a disciple relationship to Monk at times

Tony: greedy small businessman in love with

Betty: aged beauty queen and salon owner

Chuck: pathological liar cook with a habit

Isabela: gossiping waitress speaks in proverbs

Rique: Mexican busboy suffers discrimination

Miller: police chief loves trains and his son

Prof: pompous school principal and mayor

Lionel: fire chief fond of puns, loses his father

Jerry: mechanic, science fiction fan, and hothead

Pete: married farmer involved in a love triangle with

Mags: the agricultural agent and her lesbian lover

Martha: a Goth visitor who gets knocked up

Visitors: caravaners, another monk, truckers

Nana: Rique’s grandmother and wise woman

PLOT

Red the narrator moves to Ataboy, Texas and becomes a regular at Tony’s Diner when a Buddhist Monk walks in the joint. Turns out the staff all know and love Monk. Mags brings Martha in to visit and they all try to figure out why they love the old dustbowl town. Shortly thereafter Rique the busboy is arrested by Officer Miller for possession and theft. The drugs are Chuck the pathological liar cook’s, but Miller jumps to a fast conclusion about the thefts, committed in fact by someone else. Monk knows who but will not tell, causing some tension between him and Red who plants Monk’s beads at the scene of a crime to implicate him. Monk warns Miller of his blind spot and tells the story of Issa the Mason who would not become King to illustrate the interplay of destiny and fate, not discounting history or even telegony, and balancing a lot (of eggs) along the way. Pete gets Martha pregnant but she goes off with Mags and Tony proposes to Betty who accepts provided they stay in Ataboy.

ESSENTIALS

Place written: Texas, Mali, China, Navajo, Mexico, Thailand

Time written: Over ten years, Thompson’s college/graduate school days

Published: 2007

Type of Work: Roman à Clef

Genre: Literary humor, folkstory

Setting (place): Ataboy, West Texas

Setting (time): late 20^th Century

Tense: mostly past (in embedded stories)

Tone: Uplifting, Liturgical at times

Narrator: Red, an anthropologist-participant

Point of View: Shifting (in various stories)

Protagonist: mainly Monk

Antagonist: The Prof (if any)

THEMES

Gratitude: The two Djinns do not need to try to trick mortals into unhappiness as a result of their wishes. The Sata however accepts life and the world as it already is- wonderful.

Redemption: Satan steals a son from a woodcutter who wishes power for the boy and allows Satan to name him. Satan names the child Satan, explaining that only he and god have all the power the woodcutter wished for the boy. Satan relents however weary he is of wielding all his power and desirous of a successor. The woodcutter’s son is spared and his soul restored and Satan in virtue of his mercy ascends into Heaven.

Abundance: such as what the beggar boys in Well Wished realize they already have, it is often symbolized by food- in the Diner and in the stories.

SYMBOLS

Monk’s Robes: are another symbol of abundance and pure potential from which he pulls out a deck of cards to foil a robber, a hurt bird he is healing, and prayer beads which symbolize not only attachment to tradition but also the advice Monk gives the narrator and the reader, which we must ultimately transcend, throw away, killing the Buddha on the Road.

Eggs: another symbol of potential and abundance, they are fragile though and must be handled carefully as Miller fails to do while conducting his investigation of the thefts, despite the vision of the poultry angel Gabriela causing Monk to put three pennies in an egg to catch the culprit- like the eggs laid by the chicken traded for the Lizard Lord’s circus.

QUOTATIONS

“You were a writer when you first left home. You are a writer even here in ‘extremis’. You will be a greater writer still. Buddha nature is already in us. As Christ said- heal your Self! So we wake up and each day is a Becoming. Better and better. Depends on the day. There are times when words flow from me like notes through a flute, but others when I am sick with it and must spit out a story I know will hurt. But I must tell stories. It is in my nature. Just as you must write. Cow must moo.”

WHO SAID IT WHEN? Monk to the Red in the beginning of Chapter One.

#7 [Of the Habits of Highly Ineffective People]

Recognizing the incredible complexity and interdependence of the human condition amidst this universe of toil and potential, they consider too much: long range implications of actions, impacts on all involved, the ideal even. They eschew rhetoric or absolute systems or technological panacea or power games. In short, they just don’t believe that the answers to the ills of all the world can be gift-wrapped for quick mass consumption in say seven little, neat and easy, byte-sized points!

“What do ya think?” he drawled suddenly, blinking, “eh?” We were silent. He was terrible pleased with himself. He interpreted it as acceptance.

“I’m’ a go up to the Station and collect my check,” says Pete, “and buy y’all some BBQ, by God! In Louisiane they say- when the crick’s low, don’t fret and cry. Have you-self a catfish fry! If I could get my hands on some crawdads now boys, I’ll tell you what, we’d have us a big ol’ boil with my load of new potaters and sweet corn, yahum- yum!”

WHO SAID IT WHEN? Monk tells this “story” to Pete, the farm manager, in the section on Townies.

“Rumor travels far,” said Monk, delighted, exploded into poetry:

The empty envelope

contains everything. […]

In March, in Japan, the sweet bean paste

In Texas, in August, sweet peach cobbler

“Now that’s good!” exclaimed the visiting monk.

“Try it a la mode…” suggested our Monk. He held up a single shining spoon as example. And the guest did, and was enlightened.

WHO SAID IT WHEN? Another Monk comes to visit Ataboy and is regaled in the section on Visitors.

“Four things you need to know in life,” said the Trucker.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Life’s hard. Don’t let it get you down. Then you die. So live right.”

“We call these the Four Noble Truths!” declared Monk, the Buddhist.

WHO SAID IT WHEN? In the conclusion to the Just Passin Thru section in the middle of the book, just before the Delegation, Monk himself feels low and requires inspiration which comes- in the form of Bubba, the scary trucker, full of bumper sticker wisdom!

“I do not even know what I am doing here,” Nana said.

“I do,” said Monk. “It is like when the lore keeper is dying and must name a successor, chooses carefully and finally, as he dies, lets the boy see inside the hut where all the lore is kept. It is empty. But will he keep the secret, or she in this case?”

“Now I can go.” He stood up and I knew somehow I would never see him again. But where would he go? “Back to Tibet?”

WHO SAID IT WHEN? Nana is Rique’s grandmother and just found out by way of a letter Monk and Red deliver in the blizzard that Rique has escaped the Boy’s Ranch for Mexico. Monk then reveals who the real thief is, tells the end of the unfinished story, finds a successor at last to liberate him to travel, and goes on to reveal something of his own identity, hinting in the process that he might perhaps take the narrator, and with him the rest of us, on his future journey just Monkin Around…