BOOKS & AUTHORS
Preserving a memory, honoring a life
February 21, 2013 by Howard W. Appell
Wendy Fambro?s book finds meaning in journals of troubled young man
Wendy Fambro?s book ?Improv & Hope? is based on the journals of a young man, Alec Williams, who died in 1999.
Alec suffered from an anxiety disorder whose physical manifestations were probably responsible for his early death. He and his mother Andria lived on Harlem Street, in the Park Avenue neighborhood of Rochester.
Wendy met Andria in 2009 when she answered an ad on Craigslist. Andria was legally blind and seeking someone to read to her.
?I was hired as a reader, but I soon learned that Andria didn?t have many real friendships. She just had people she paid to do things for her,? Wendy related, noting, ?After a while I stopped accepting her payments and was just her friend.?
In her long conversations with Andria, Wendy learned of the woman?s deceased son.
Alec?s diagnoses had been vague, but it seemed his nervous system was running on overdrive. He was medicated for his condition, yet still his body and mind would race. Alec had attended public school through eighth grade, then was home schooled.
?He was intelligent enough to do the Regents program, but socially Alec did not fit well into a public school system,? Wendy said.
To an outside observer, Alec?s symptoms appeared schizophrenic, but the root of his illness may have been physiological rather than mental. Towards the end of his life, Alec had great difficulty digesting food.
With Andria dying from natural causes in 2011, the Williams nuclear family was entirely deceased. Alec?s father had died unexpectedly of a brain aneurysm when Alec was 5 years old. A sister, who had alcohol issues, died a few years after Alec.
Andria believed that her son was a novel thinker. He had journaled his ideas at her request and her hope was that Alec?s three notebooks might somehow be preserved for posterity. Wendy made a promise to Andria she would do what was in her power to put Alec?s thought in published form.
Knowing she was going to die, Andria entrusted Wendy with the task. Wendy, for her own part, had taken the job sight unseen.
?I had not opened the journals until Andria died. I had no idea what I was in for,? Wendy admits. ?It took me a full year to just read through them, to categorize, and to start determining what Alec might have meant at any given moment.?
?In their raw form the entries are very difficult. They were Alec?s thoughts as they occurred to him ? and they occurred rapidly. At first it was a challenge to find any kind of connections.?
Indeed, Andria had been told by others to whom she had shown Alec?s notes that they were gibberish. But Wendy, who has a background in psychology, was committed to finding meaning.
Alec was a prolific reader. Philosophy, Jewish mysticism, alchemy and numerology are frequently referenced in his journals ? and these subjects dominated Alec?s small surviving library of about 15 books which Andria passed along to Wendy.
As she delved into the journals, one of Wendy?s jobs was to insure that the journal represented Alec?s original thoughts; that he was not quoting from works he had read. As far as she has been able to determine, the journals are entirely original to him.
Alec was a deep thinker, but his thoughts were highly disjointed, ?at least for the reader,? Wendy qualifies. ?For Alec I believe there was a natural flow, but on the very same page might be something about a book he read, then something he saw on TV, and then a Dungeons & Dragons move.?
Wendy did her best to pull meaning from the chaotic musings, then began to see meaning in the chaos itself, which to Alec was key to his reality.
?I spent so much time in that space that I became immersed in his brain and his world,? Wendy concedes. ?Alec was a troubled person and when you first encounter the journals, they are alien. But after you live and breath them for awhile, you can enter the place where he was.?
Wendy agrees that Alec?s thinking was at some level profound. He spent time contemplating the meaning of his own life, naturally in the context of what his life was. He was aware of his own differences from others and, perhaps remarkably, saw his differences as a positive advantage.
?Alec was extraordinarily frustrated with the human condition, including what he saw as a lack of self-awareness in others,? Wendy grasped. ?Alec saw others as wasting their time and their lives.?
?He was always wrestling with existential questions and saw himself as part of a larger reality which would transcend this reality,? Wendy relates.
Three voices
The cover of ?Improv & Hope,? a new book from Miche Fambro. The author worked from a young man?s journals to create the book.
In assembling the book, Wendy?s first challenges had been to get through Alec?s journals and extract some level of meaning. After entering Alec?s world, Wendy?s second challenge was no less formidable: figuring out how to present this world to readers who will never meet Alec, or as Wendy says, ?to determine a heart of the story other people will care about.?
Wendy?s method was to weave pieces from the journals with reminisces from Andria, who had audiotaped biographical sketches of herself and Alec, then finally insert her own observations and reflections, ?because, ultimately, I realized I could not stand apart from this story.?
Therefore, while Alec persists as the central voice, the book has two other voices: Andria as a maternal lens and Wendy as an observer. All of speak in first person and each is identified by a different font, close in form to the subject?s handwriting.
?In the end the book is about relationships, and the value of an individual life,? Wendy concludes. ?It?s a story of a mother and a son, but it?s also a story of what makes any of our lives have value.?
?I did this for Andria, but I do think it might be of value to others who are looking for an insight into the human condition,? Wendy said.
While working on the book, Wendy, with the cooperation of Andria?s estate, was able to tap a modest trust fund Andria had at one time started for Alec?s college education. In completing and publishing ?Improv & Hope,? Wendy has fulfilled a contract she made with the trust fund and a promise she had made to a friend.
?I promised Andria I would make the journals accessible and then invite as many people as possible to read them,? Wendy said. ?What I was doing was preserving the memory of her son and honoring his life.?
?Improv & Hope,? 160 pages, can be obtained at www.lulu.com and will be available as well at Sundance Books in Geneseo.
Alec is also featured at alecwilliams.com, a website set up by Andria before her death, emphasizing the experimental guitar music which Alec recorded.
Wendy Fambro is a native of Geneseo, married to popular musician Miche Fambro and the mother of two children. She holds a psychology degree from SUNY Geneseo and a master of divinity degree from Colgate Rochester.
Wendy will be discussing ?Improv & Hope? during a reading and booksigning that begins 11 a.m. Saturday at Burlingham Books, 2 South Main St., Perry on Saturday.
Source: http://thelcn.com/2013/02/21/preserving-a-memory-honoring-a-life/
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