Pack Up the Moon

Joseph Jones is a reference librarian in the Koerner Library at the
University of British Columbia.

As he approaches the age of 50, the first-person narrator, Karl Marton,
looks back from the early 1990s to his youth. The story centres on his
ambivalent relationship with soulmate Charlotte Fleury, a fellow
graduate student in English at the University of Toronto. Karl’s
recollections of Charlotte, who disappeared suddenly from his life in
1971, intensify when he learns of her murder 17 years after the event.
This discovery occurs in the aftermath of the death of his former lover,
Jay.

Life seems to have passed the narrator by. His relationship with
Charlotte features old movies and other retro tastes, with disparagement
of 1960s styles. A colorless academic, he has written a theoretical book
on archives. As a draft dodger, his antiwar sympathies evaporate in the
face of events and actions. Three references to Ovid evoke exile, but
1992 is marked by his move from Toronto (“in love with its own
boosterism ... charmless yet smug”) back to home state Ohio.

This is both a gay novel and a Catholic novel, and it is more. Although
Jay is a lover who became Karl’s friend, their 1974–76 active
relationship occupies only a few pages, overwhelmed by the preceding
story of Charlotte. Catholic sensibility pervades the novel, most
extensively expressed in Charlotte’s associations and practices. These
facets support thematic development of interconnections among
friendship, love, and faith. The overriding genre is elegiac romance.

Literary reference and allusion frequents the story. Among the closest
cousins are Proust, Graham Greene’s The Heart of the Matter, and The
Great Gatsby. The 1969 moon landing offers the most evident fictional
use of the title theme. The craft of the novel—particularly its
chronological structure and the simple assurance of its voice—is
extraordinary. At the same time, the range of interests strains
narrative coherence.

Although this is a work of fiction, the author’s biography parallels
his narrator’s life in significant respects that include a move from
the United States to Toronto in 1968, one Catholic parent, a murdered
classmate friend (Madeleine Darte), and a Ph.D. earned from the
University of Toronto in 1973.