Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club

The novel foregrounds the way various generations in Bear Jaw, Minnesota, interact with one another. These connections operate in three registers. The first is openly shared intergenerational knowledge, in which characters know and discuss their overlapping histories. The second is trivial intergenerational connections intended as bonuses for readers, such as when Julia’s friend Grubbs dates Al’s great-grandson—a detail only available to readers who note that one of Mariel’s narration chapters mentions the last name of the man Al’s granddaughter married. The third is unshared, but crucial, intergenerational knowledge, which only the reader and one of the characters know—the non-dissemination of which has long-term effects on the narrative. Each of these has a different influence on the novel’s structure, plot, and atmosphere.

When characters openly share their histories with one another, their reactions to these intergenerational stories not only build characterization but also show characters’ relationships to events and to each other. Florence sees Mariel’s conception at the Majestic as an options-limiting fate tying her to Bear Jaw. Mariel, in contrast, sees this story as an unfortunate reminder of her parents’ sex life; given her love of the Lakeside, the fatedness of the event strikes her in a happier light. These differing views indicate how each character structures their differently complex feelings about Bear Jaw, which Mariel sees more positively than does her mother.

The “Easter egg” connections made visible to readers are a form of worldbuilding, a way for fiction in the realist mode to simulate authenticity. By making us aware of details characters don’t pay attention to or can’t see, the novel implies that Bear Jaw exists beyond the page. Readers know that Travis McBroom is Al’s great-grandson without Julia ever thinking of him as such, and Julia’s friend dates Travis without affecting the plot. In other words, life goes on in Bear Jaw, even when that life is not directly reported or immediately important to the protagonists. This manufactured reality lets Stradal emphasize the interconnectedness of the community he has created and builds a meta-relationship between author and reader, bypassing the characters. In moments of recognition, the author winks and asks, “Do you see what I did there?” The “Easter eggs” therefore do not just emphasize a community in the text, they create a community around the text, in which author and reader communicate with one another.

Finally, the unshared intergenerational knowledge draws upon the novel’s theme that knowing someone and loving them are not identical concepts. Mariel, for example, never learns anything about her grandparents’ complicated marriage or about her grandfather’s closeted homosexuality or clandestine affair with Archie. Because of this, she loves Betty and Floyd intensely uncomplicatedly—unlike Florence, who was troubled by this intimate knowledge of her mother and stepfather. The novel ultimately suggests that not knowing every detail about someone may make loving them somewhat easier, as seeing the full truth behind a person can be a difficult burden to bear.