Reader Beware

Teju Cole’s Every Day Is For The Thief

It’s a short book. It’s clearly in part autobiographical.  Yet it’s presented as fiction.

It describes present-day Nigeria, but it’s really about various uses of language, some to express, others simply to deceive.  Indeed expression may be at least in part always deceptive. Like memoir presented as fiction.  What is true and what is not? Can there be such a thing as truth?

Cole represents Nigeria as a country riddled with corruption and deception. From internet scams to street crime enabled by verbal intimidation to false history to willful misrepresentation and honest attempts at communication that inevitably fall short.  It’s all language, and language is inherently manipulative. There are some hopeful signs in Nigeria.  They are mostly in the arts (yes, the magical and deceptive arts), and they have their own limitations.

And then there are the author’s black-and-white photos interspersed here and there in the text. What place can photos have in a work of fiction?  The author’s photos?  They further obscure the line between documentation and fiction. They are blurred and unclear, subject to the interpretation of the viewer but also suggestive representations of portions of the text.  But they’re photographs (not drawings or paintings).

A representation of Teju Cole

Cole seems intent at exploring a gray zone where all must be questioned, and where there are no absolute answers.  He brings much of the ambiguity and resonance of poetry to his prose.  The writing is clear and plain, and that also is part of the deception.  Like the acquaintance that says “I’m just tellin’ you how it is, man”, it’s hard not to trust him.  But part of his point is that nothing can be believed, nothing can be taken at face value, we all seek to deceive one another, we all willfully misrepresent.  What makes the scam work is the false modesty, the appearance of trustworthiness, the veneer of truthfulness. And the resulting isolation.

Ultimately the main character can only rely on himself, his own values (even if conflicted and very privately held), his own preferences.  I guess Freud would quibble with even that, but that’s all Cole has. It’s lonely and disheartening to think that any human communication or connection is in part deceptive. Are we all just authors doing our best to create in a world where publication must always include misrepresentation and skepticism? Perhaps.

Should that be the case, I take solace in deception: the deception of honest communication, in the false comfort of empathy, and in generous caring for others.  Works for me.  Don't really care all that much if it's true.  It’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it. 

But it is a story.

February 12, 1809

That Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin share the same birthdate at first seems a marvelous coincidence that must carry a deep meaning.  On the other hand, we’ve all been amazed by how often the birthday coincidence occurs, and I at least am still surprised that it only takes 23 people in the room to have 50-50 odds that two will have the same birthday (day, not year).  Nonetheless the Lincoln-Darwin alignment prompted Adam Gopnik to write a short book, Angels and Ages, about the two men, their lives, families, work, writing, and contributions.  There are uncanny parallels and of course real differences.  Gopnik also speculates on the role that each played in pushing Western society into a new political and scientific age.

The title comes from the historical controversy about exactly what Stanton said at Lincoln’s deathbed.  Did he say “He belongs to the ages now” or “He belongs to the angels now”?  Reports differ, and it’s interesting to think about the differing implications of each.  Ultimately Gopnik (like others) can’t really decide, but he does provide an interesting discussions and a conclusion of sorts.  Gopnik visited the death room as a tourist, and writes about the experience.  I can best do him justice by quoting him directly:

“The sentence forms in the mind, and with it the thought that there would be a good place to end: he belongs to both. But as the queue inches forward and I can see, at last, into the room that I have been reading about – I want to laugh.  This place isn’t small; it’s tiny. They brought him here, to this back room, I had learned, because all the other rooms in the house were to messy for a president to die in, and yet – four people would make it crowded; six would overwhelm it; the forty or so who passed in and out, and the ten or twenty who crowded inside at the end, would have turned it into the stateroom scene in A Night at the Opera.

In the brief moment given to a visitor to look inside, I wished for a machine that would be able to re-create every breath of air, every vibration that ever took place in a room.  And then I knew that we probably would not have understood any better had we been standing there then than we do now.  Stanton was weeping, Lincoln had just died, the room was overwhelmed, whatever he said was broken by a sob – the sob, in a sense, is the story.  History is not an agreed-on fiction but what gets made in a crowded room; what is said isn’t what’s heard, and what is heard isn’t what gets repeated.  Civilization is an agreement to keep people from Shouting “Fire!” in a crowded theater, but the moments we call historic occur when there is a fire in a crowded theater, and then we all try to remember afterward when we heard it, and if we ever really smelled smoke, and who went first, and what was said. The indeterminancy is built into the emotion of the moment.  The past is so often unknowable not because it is befogged now but because it was befogged then, too, back when it was still the present.  If we had been there listening, we still might not have been able to determine exactly what Stanton said.  All we know for sure is that everyone was weeping, and the room was full.”

Of course the book’s title also refers to the tremendous religious and cultural controversy stirred by Darwin’s theory. Darwin was reluctant to publish.  His wife was very religious,  His family was dear to him.  He in no way welcomed the storms that would necessarily follow.  Yet he stayed firmly rooted in his scientific methods of observation, and his writing can indeed tire us with countless details before even hinting at the radical conclusions to come.  Nonetheless, when they come the arrive with the force of the inevitable denouement of a great novel.  In retrospect we see that it could be no other way.

And on the question of geological time (a concept very much at odds with theology and in some ways plain common sense) Gopnik writes about Darwin:

“For that, far more than God and man, is what Darwin is really always returning to: live and time, life and time, and their complements, death and sex, and how they make the history of life.  In Darwin’s work, from The Beagle to the earthworm, time moves at two speeds; there is the vast abyss of time in which generations change and animals mutate and evolve, and then there is the gnat’s-breath, hummingbird-heart time of creaturely existence, where our children are born and grow and, sometimes, die before us. The space between the tiny but heartfelt time of human life and the limitless time of Nature became Darwin’s implicit subject, running from The Beagle to The Origin. Religion had always reconciled quick time and deep time by pretending that the one was in some way a prelude to the other -- a prelude or a prologue or a trial or a treatment. Artists of the Romantic period, in an increasingly secularized age, thought that through some vague kind of transcendence they could bridge the gap. They couldn’t. Nothing could. The tragedy of life is not that there is no God but that the generations through which it progresses are too tiny to count very much.  There isn’t a special providence in the fall of a sparrow, but try telling that to the sparrows.  The human challenge that Darwin felt, and that his work still presents, is to see both times truly – not to attempt to humanize deep time, or to dismiss quick time, but to make enough of both without overlooking either.”

Gopnik also writes extensively about the way Lincoln and Darwin used language, and how in each case that was integral to the personality, mission, and success of each.  Gopnik is a skilled writer.  I’ve read him for many years in The New Yorker. I’m glad to hear his thoughts on language and writing, and I’m glad to read something by him that is longer than (even a longish) New Yorker piece.  He is a very talented writer, a skilled journalist, and a thinker as well.  Good company for a reader.  Very good.

Soll's Ja So Sein

It’s the first line of the fourth verse of an early 17^th-century Lutheran chorale. The most famous setting is by Bach in cantata BWV 48, and it’s one of the most profound Bach chorale settings.  The theology underlying the verse is horrific (hence the unusual setting), so let’s just say that the line itself translates roughly as “If it must be so …”.  (The full translation takes us directly into Lutheran fire and brimstone.)  I hate fire and brimstone, and this chorale downright frightens me.

If it must be so ...... If we accept Richard Flanagan's premise in his Booker-winning novel The Narrow Road to the Deep North .... then we really have no control.  Larger forces are always in play, and those forces make our own efforts futile.  We struggle, we try, we love, we fail.  It's all in service of larger forces that we cannot and probably should not try to fathom. The book is a wonderful and painfully poignant representation of that fatalistic point of view, though I strongly doubt that Flanagan actual espouses it.

Cruelty, love, violence, sensuality ... it's all the same, all a manifestation of unknowable controlling forces combined with biological inevitability.  We simply play out the hand we're dealt.

I very much admire this book.  I very much dislike the outlook that this book represents.  If this really is life, then 'check, please'. But the representation is fascinating and captivating. I live in Silicon Valley in 2014, where failure is simply a rest area on the way to success, where cash is sloshing around looking for a home, where real estate valuations are more insane by the day, where programmers have agents, where life is good for many.  The novel portrays the plight of allied POW's in Burma forced under terrible duress to build the Burma Railway of Death. Thousands of lives lost under brutal conditions. But that plot line is just the most radical manifestation of people caught up in larger forces beyond their control.  Love, war, family, illness, accident, fire ... they all are beyond our control, yet seemingly part of a larger pattern that we can only imagine exists ... that we actually must imagine exists.  We must simply assume that it exists and go on.

Flanagan skillfully weaves in traditional Japanese haiku as well as 19th-century British poetry. In his hands both seem to resonate on similar wavelengths despite the cultural disparity. Yes, the plot is a little contrived here and there.  The writing is superb. This subject matter is full of pitfalls, and Flanagan navigates the waters with aplomb.  There are some thrilling moments, some lyrical moments, and very few thuds indeed.

I'll quote the rest of the chorale here, though the philosophical point of reference is quite different. Nonetheless, every time I think of this text I shudder.  And my most important reaction to the book is to shudder in a similar way.

Solls ja so sein, Daß Straf und Pein Auf Sünde folgen müssen, So fahr hie fort Und schone dort Und laß mich hie wohl büßen.

If it must be so, that punishment and pain must follow after sin, so go on (punishing) here and be merciful there (in the next life) and let me well suffer here.

Awful thoughts, inhibiting and oppressive thoughts.  Downright scary thoughts.  A scary book.  I so hope it isn't true. But I must consider the possibility.

This Is Personal

Marilynne Robinson is receiving accolades and awards by the bucketful these days.  I’m not sure why I hadn’t read her until now.  Some would say that Home was not the best choice for a first read, but it’s what happened to be on my bookshelf.  It’s a lovely book with gracious writing.  The content makes me angry, and that’s clearly my problem.

Home is the second of the Gilead trilogy.  It takes place in rural Iowa around 1960, though at times it seem more like 1860.  There’s an ageing patriarch (retired Protestant minister), a wayward though kind daughter who has come home to care for him, and a prodigal son whose return is the main event of the novel.  Yes, the language is lovely.  Yes, writerly skill is on full display here. 

“Your Honor, I object!”

What does it mean to apply a high degree of literary polish to a septic (my take) human environment? The father is, while clothed in the clerical robes of immunity, passive aggressive, controlling, inaccessible to those who care for him, and incapable of honest emotional communication.  Everything is expressed indirectly.  Censure comes out as praise; silence is the ultimate punishment.  Religion becomes an excuse for lack of honesty and openness. Scripture is the perfect way to comment: it judges from afar, and it is invulnerable to criticism or refutation.  It’s the perfect refuge for those who have shied away from life, chosen a sheltered and safe (though perhaps limited and sad) path, and wish to denigrate those who have taken greater risks in hope of greater reward. That stance is IMHO cowardly and self-serving, and I will have none of it.

Some choose a riskier path.  Some have to deal with more difficult individual impulses.  For some, the safe haven of conventional theology just doesn’t work.  And when some of those risk takers run into trouble, how are they treated by the faithful?  Not with compassion.  Not with genuine empathy.  Instead they encounter a condescending mercy whose primary intention is to protect the forgiver.  Those who cloak themselves in religion have to keep reapplying that coat of immunity whenever they encounter those who stray and sin.  Because the coat keeps wearing off no matter how they smile, no matter how much scripture they quote, no matter how conventionally charitable their actions.  They refuse to acknowledge their own double-edged emotions, their own destructive and selfish impulses, their own humanity, the sadness that is the result of their own decision to shy away from challenge and genuine emotion.  They hide their sadness and their flaws, they go underground, they act in secret, they whisper and titter.

Yes, the growth of trust between the brother and sister is marvelous to observe.  Yes, the historical resonances from the time ring true.  Yes, even the neighbors deserve our empathy. But the suffering imposed on those who choose an alternate path is inexcusable, and witnessing it as a reader makes me angry. Very angry.

I’m told that Housekeeping is a safer bet.  It’s on my list for the future.  For now I need to step aside from this skillful and gracious portrayal of hypocrisy and resultant suffering.  It hurts too much.

Sorry.

Masculinity

Many of the stories in Paul Theroux’s new collection Mr. Bones follow a pattern.  We start with a depiction of a character or situation that seems familiar. We’ve seen it ourselves, or we’ve heard of it or read about it, and it makes sense.  Theroux shows us that we only understand the surface.  The complete picture is actually quite different, and often very disturbing.  Behind love can be violence, behind care can be abuse, behind innocence can be perversion, what seems at first to be threatening can turn out to be playful and harmless.  The twists that take us there as readers are sometimes abrupt, but more likely the hints of what’s to come are there from the beginning if we’re paying attention.  The stories are useful reminders that though we have to make assumptions about others in order to navigate the world, we actually know very little about others, and perhaps not so much about ourselves either. The conventions of society keep crucial truths hidden, truths that we choose not to face very often, truths that a skillful writer can bring to light.

Theroux gives us glimpses of many men that unhinged.  Male aggression and violence is a theme that he weaves into many of the stories in one way or another.  Anger and aggression are channeled in lots of different and unexpected ways, some relatively harmless, some with devastating consequences.  Through it all Theroux also explores the role of the writer and his need to write.

Many of Theroux’s novels are place-centric, and of course his travel books are well known.  So I expected that the stories might be shorter depictions of exotic and interesting places.  While some of the stories do take place in unusual settings, the focus is on the characters themselves.  Sometimes the setting is integral to the story, but only as a way of getting to the characters themselves.

There’s not much subtlety or softness here, but rather sharp edges pretty much everywhere.  Yes there is the occasional clumsy turn of phrase or plot contrivance. The female characters are sometimes just as dangerous as the men but more often hollow foils to the aggressive and confused male characters. The plots are not particularly delicate either, and are sometimes a bit gimmicky.  Lots of extremes and hidden agendas, all potentially dangerous and threatening in one way or another.

There’s a reason we hide behind conventions.  We can’t spend much of our time actually living out all of our feelings and desires.  That would be inefficient, messy, and dangerous.  But it’s good to be reminded of the existence of those strong impulses, especially in men.  They do sometimes come out into the open, and even when behind the scenes they can get hold of the controls. If we’ve been paying attention we won’t be so surprised. Look carefully and you’ll see the evidence even in our tame and conventional lives.  Theroux extrapolates to extreme cases for us, but if we retrace diligently we’ll find the sources within ourselves just about every time.

Late, But Finally Onboard

I may be the only English-speaking human on the planet that has not been able to read Hilary Mantel’s two award-winning historical novels.  For some reason I get bogged down fifty pages in and I’m done.  That’s unusual for me; I’m pretty good (some would say too good) at pushing through reading discomfort.  So when Mantel’s new collection of stories, The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher, was highly recommended to me by trusted sources I was concerned that once again I would find myself alone off the Mantel bandwagon.

But these stories are highly polished gems.  They’re not short versions of yet-to-be-written novels.  They’re really stories that work on their own terms.  They’re done when they’re done.  The language is highly calculated but not contrived.  No more is said than needs to be said, and often what’s not said (and left ambiguous) is the just as important.  These are not avant-garde DFW stories, but they’re not in the traditionalist Alice Munro mold either.  They are adventuresome, fresh, and unique in their own ways.  I even like the book’s typography: the abundance of white space nicely reflects the open-ended nature of the stories.  Lots of space to do your own thinking.

The stories with tricky or punchy endings are less successful.  The best ones lead the reader to places, times, and characters with contradictions and unanswered questions.  My favorite is probably “Sorry To Disturb”, but “Harley Street” and “How Shall I Know You?” are very good indeed.  And the title story, though entirely improbable, is deliciously executed.  Savor every sentence.  The ending is masterful.

There are only ten stories, none of them very long, but just about the entire collections is worth rereading.  I find myself thinking about them at odd moments, and I have already gone back to reread a few.

Time to give Wolf Hall another go? 

O welche Lust!

When the prisoners in Beethoven’s opera Fidelio emerge from their dark cells into the light of freedom, they sing a chorus, O welche Lust (Oh, such Joy). Only gradually do their eyes adjust to daylight and their minds to freedom. Such is my reaction on finishing a month reading Solzhenitsyn’s In the First Circle.  The sentence was a long one, and the reading experience not as edifying or rewarding as I had hoped.  But finally, yes, sweet release.

Never read (past tense) Solzhenitsyn.  Nobel Prize in Literature.  Gotta try, right?  Well, I encountered numerous obstacles:

Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Enter Here

It’s long.  Very, very long.  There are many, many characters.  (After all, it’s a Russian novel.)

It relies heavily on a thorough knowledge of Russian philosophy, history, and literature (which I don’t have).

There must be a translation issue, because I found the writing to be very bland and uninteresting.

I came away totally dispirited, to say the least. Yes, there are ‘uplifting’ moments near the end …. The end where the one quasi-heroic figure is hauled off to prison, and a bunch of intelligent men already prisoners and put in an impossible position are hauled off to a horrific labor camp, some as punishment for their lack of cooperation, others for no particular reason.  But uplifting only in comparison to the total desolation depicted in much of the book.  I guess an inch above the floor of absolute despair and meaninglessness is an inch to be treasured, but it doesn’t make for pleasant reading, not by a long shot.

I learned quite a bit about the Soviet Union in the late 40’s and early 50’s with Stalin at the height of his power.  Russians have their own peculiar blend of intellectual rigor combined with intensely felt emotion.  Contradictions abound, and cruelty is everywhere.  Much of what passes for kind and humane in the book is such only in contrast to the stunning lack of collective and even individual caring.  The justifications for that cruelty are long and numerous. And that can make for some pretty oppressive 750 pages.

Only after 200 pages did the book have any traction for me.  The focus is so broad, so many characters with little large action from any of them.  It takes a while to learn to look for the small plot turns that eventually carry the day.  In 750 pages only a few real events take place.  The rest is commentary and a series of side events.  Solzhenitsyn seems more interested in painting a very broad picture of the Soviet Union of the time, so much so that to make a particular tangential point, he simply introduces a new character for a few short chapters, then drops the character totally.  The character was there as an illustration, not as any kind of dramatic player in the action itself. This instead of a deeper dive into the psyche of a few key individuals.

Well, Solzhenitsyn was a very smart and courageous man.  Nobel Prize in Literature I’m not so sure.

I’m hoping to remove the dark glasses soon.  Daylight is painful for now, but I’m ever so grateful for the discomfort. 

Dr. Murakami

I’m sold.  Have been for a while. A new Murakami book is announced, I pre-order. On arrival, I read it ASAP. That’s how it’s been for me for some time, and the latest book,  Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki was no exception. Is it because of years of therapy? Reading Murakami for me reopens an internal voice, a voice that I learned only with professional help. It’s a voice that has become essential to my ability to guide myself, to know myself, to live as myself.

Very handsomely and expensively printed.

I won’t say much about this particular novel. No need. I don’t think it’s his best work, but it is quintessential Murakami.  For me, just about anything he writes in that special voice will awaken the therapeutic experience.  As usual it’s about a male character who is stuck in life, caught in a period of unhealthy stasis.  The cause is sometimes vague, sometimes clear.  The character’s means of (at least partial) escape is partly psychological, party magical, partly circumstantial.  I liken the approach to that in Freud’s case studies, i.e. Dora.  There’s a problem, there are symptoms and periods of turbulence, there’s exploration, there are dreams, and then there’s a sorting out that leads to tentative healing.

All of that may be beside the point. It may be just the flat unemotional narrative style that appeals to me. That desert is a familiar if unhealthy place for me; I’ve been there many times, and it’s a challenge for me to find my way out.  I have managed it (sooner or later, for better or for worse), and I think reading Murakami’s fiction reassures me that there is always an exit path, no matter how consistently solid the prison walls might seem.  There is an opening if only I could see it. I have constructed the prison myself, and I can also imagine it out of existence.

I’m sorry, we have to stop now. See you next week.

The Power to Please

I recall watching Robin Williams interviewed at the desk on The Tonight Show years ago when Johnny Carson was still hosting.  Williams was absolutely brilliant.  Carson skillfully played the straight man, and Williams changed accents, characters, pace, gesture styles every few seconds.  It was amazing to watch but at the same time it deeply saddened me.  Williams couldn’t NOT do it; because he could please, he couldn’t stop.  He couldn’t just be himself, and to me he seemed manic, desperate and lost.

Of course I have no idea if Williams’s abilities had anything to do with his battle with depression and his eventual suicide.  But I wouldn’t be surprised if his power to please made it more difficult for him to stay in touch with his inner self. 

Celeste Ng’s first novel, Everything I Never Told You tells the story of a teenage girl with the power to please her family (her mother in particular), and also to serve as the glue that held together her fragile immediate family.  In so doing she sacrificed her own pleasures and goals, her own well-being, and ultimately her life.  The story touches on a number of modern themes, including cross-cultural issues and parenting styles.  The approach is very traditional, a straightforward story told in a straightforward way.  We learn about the main character from several points of view.  In the end we piece it all together. The writing is serviceable if not remarkable.  The plot unfolds predictably.  Like The Lovely Bones, we know from the beginning that the girl is dead. The book is about how and why that comes about.

I did learn a few things about my own past.  I too had the power to please my parents, and most often I couldn’t resist it, even when I should have.  I can blame my parents, who to a large extent tried to live through my successes, but I also used their tendencies to avoid my own difficulties, and in the long run those pressures and consequent confusion and pain were my own doing, not theirs.  I don’t think I particularly longed for the applause, but they wanted it for me, and I wanted them to be happy.  If I could provide that, I did, even when I knew (or at least sensed) that there were better paths for me as an individual.

It’s hard enough for an adult to skillfully draw the boundaries between self and others, to navigate the waters in a way that provides both self-fulfillment and strong connections with others.  Children need good models in that way; they need to see the important adults around them make good choices for themselves and lead their lives with appropriate focus and grace.  When parents don’t provide good models, children often make bad choices, or at least choices that may work short-term, but in the long run lead to serious problems.

Ng’s book is an easy read, and I think worth the time if these issues interest you.  If not, move on.

Doris Lessing

I have a vague memory of hearing about a talk that Stravinsky once gave in which he drew some sketches on the blackboard.  This, he said, represents Wagner’s music.

This represents Schoenberg’s music.

Those are my hand drawn recollections of the sketches, but I trust you get the point.  Wagner had lots of irrational expressionist impulses brewing inside, but he framed them in a strictly tonal structure.  Schoenberg simply removed the frame.

Never read a single work by Doris Lessing.  My bad.  Not sure that Briefing for a Descent Into Hell was the right choice for my initiation.  It is maybe the strangest most complex book I’ve ever read.  It is very much like the Schoenberg sketch by Stravinsky:  stream of consciousness and lots of expressive language with no clear or helpful overarching framework.  It’s up to the reader to figure it all out … or not.  It’s a short book, but not easy to get through.  There were numerous places on the way where I almost gave up.  But it does reward the reader that hangs in.  There is meaning even without the framework.  It’s up to the reader to provide the framework.

Unlike, say, David Mitchell’s literary pyrotechnics, where the foreground might be messy but the overall structure is strict (and where the overall structure actually informs the local narrative), here there is no overall structure.  We float.  We have no idea where we are and what it might mean.  We have no clue where it’s going and what the images might signify.  The reader has to place himself in the same uncomfortable uncertainty (and perhaps insanity) that the narrator is experiencing.  We don’t know where we are, what’s real, what’s not. It's a kind of inner science fiction.

What results is an extraordinary view from a higher level, from an almost god-like point of view that is both enlightening and frightening.  To understand at that level is almost more than a mortal can bear, more than we can handle and at the same time cope with day-to-day life.  Hence the insanity. 

But I take comfort in Lessing’s strong assertion that there is something larger, some bigger purpose, some higher level of existence which really is out there.  In our daily lives we struggle to sense it, but every so often we get a signal that it’s out there.  The book is a kind of mythology about those signals.  If you’re often disappointed by your day-to-day life, take solace.  Read Lessing.

Thoroughly Unmodern

This isn't just a throwback.  This is what you get when you bring out the way-back machine.  My former colleague Jeannette Haien's second (and last) novel, Matters of Chance, is old-fashioned in many ways.  The prose is the product of a highly educated and intelligent mind, but dated indeed. Quotations from classic literature abound, and the stilted language hangs out there just waiting to be speared.  I wonder if it took a conscious effort from Jeannette to avoid all temptations and references to modernism ... and by modernism I mean anything on the forefront of English literature in the 20th century.  I got used to the style, and ended up not bothered by it, but the prose is very unusual indeed for a book written in the 1990's.

More to the point though are the characters and the story itself. This book is the very embodiment of that 1930's to 1950's approach to life:  Buck it up.  It won't help you to express those feelings, it will only lead you into a self-indulgent black hole, so be strong, be tough, and do what you have to do.  It's a view that I grew up with and know first hand, and it certainly didn't work for me.  But I'm willing to believe that it was appropriate for a large proportion of a few generations that experienced the Depression and WWII.  It got done what had to be done; it got them through. Is it an ideal approach to life?  Well, I guess there really isn't an ideal universal approach separate and apart from a specific cultural and temporal context.

I don't think this book is nearly as successful as Jeannette's first book.  The war scenes are telling, but the second half of the book drags on and on with superficial plot, a surfacy account of lives well led. I wish we had the opportunity to know these characters better, but that's pretty much the point.  They didn't know themselves better, and they didn't want to.  Repression is very useful at times.  But I'm not sure it makes for great fiction.

From a recent New Yorker

Oh, well.  I have great respect for Jeannette.  She was a great musician and teacher.  Her presence would fill a room (yes, often to the uncomfortable exclusion of all others).  There was only one Jeannette.  I witnessed the strength of her convictions on many occasions, and she was a formidable presence.  I urge anyone with an interest to watch her interview with Bill Moyers (you can find it easily).  It does provide a glimpse into her power, her insight, and her moral authority.

Rest in peace.

Abradacabra

It’s an illusion. When it works we temporarily believe with all our heart and soul, even though we know it's an illusion.  It happens to me when listening to a great piece of music.  The real world falls away; the music creates an alternate reality which my brain accepts as a complete, self-contained, and satisfying space.  All that I need and want is there; if I just surrender, truly believe, I will be enriched.

 

The creator (composer, author, actor, whatever) needs great technical skill to bring this off.  He must be on intimate terms with his medium; he must know every nook and cranny, every nuance and subtlety.  And he must use consummate skill in stitching together his work so that no seam shows, no evidence of his craft is left visible. We just believe.  And he also must have an underlying message, something important that gets communicated without ever being explicitly stated.

The wizardry displayed in David Mitchell’s prose continues to impress me.  Cloud Atlas is downright virtuosic.  The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is more constrained, but nonetheless impressive.  So in working my way back through Mitchell’s fiction the next step was Black Swan Green.  It’s a straightforward first-person narrative of one year in the life of a young British teen.  No sci-fi here, no narrative jumbles, nothing but a traditional narrative.

Yes, it’s an eventful year for Jason, the main character, but the primary strength of the book is not plot but rather the prose itself.  There’s dialect and dialogue, there’s a good bit of superficial detail, there are lots of words, but none of it seems the least bit contrived.  The main character is totally believable and lovable (I wonder how much is autobiographical.).  It’s a credible and realistic depiction of what that awkward age actually feels like. And there are lessons to be learned here.

Maybe I’m just a naïve reader.  Like the person watching the magician, I probably allow my attention to be diverted easily so I don’t notice what’s ‘really’ happening.  But I don’t actually want to know how he does the trick.  I like being entranced.  I want to believe in magic.

Freedom? At Last?

The fifth and final Patrick Melrose novel by Edward St. Aubyn, At Last, is a fitting conclusion to this important literary series.  The book focuses on the funeral of Patrick’s mother and includes many flashbacks to earlier periods.  This may be the one novel in the series that might not stand so well on its own.  There are many references to characters and incidents from the previous books, and I wouldn’t pick up this one without having read at least some of the others first.

Patrick has suffered terribly over the years from both the overt and passive cruelty of his two parents.  Now that his mother is dead (his father passed away some time ago) he can circle back yet again and try to put it all in perspective.  The pain has been punishing, as have the self-limiting and sometimes self-destructive habits learned to avoid feeling the full brunt of the blows. At times Patrick’s intelligence is his own worst enemy as he willfully contorts reality in his efforts to survive emotionally, to support his children, to satisfy his own needs.

As always the writing is condensed, striking, and often just plain stellar.  St. Aubyn is a great prose stylist.  Even if the emotional drama isn’t your cup of tea, the words are to be savored.  These are really, really good books.  They will last. Serious readers need to read them.

Has Patrick found some measure of safety?  I dearly hope so. His parents are gone. Free?  At last?  If this is freedom . . .

Wishing peace for Patrick.

I'll Take the Apple Pie, Thanks

Mother's Milk is the fourth of Edward St. Aubyn's Patrick Melrose novels.  The book may be somewhat uneven, but nonetheless it is St. Aubyn in his most cynical and writerly mode, and as such it is not to be missed.  I won't go into the particulars.  I've blogged about the previous three books, and this one is no different.  The writing is a joy, the outlook anything but joyful.  I suspect this is not for most female readers, but I would happily be corrected on that score. In this book we witness scathing prose on a young child's view of the world, motherhood, long-term marriage, alcoholism, sexual desire, philanthropy, assisted suicide, and American culture in general. 

Edward St. Aubyn

It's a short book that won't hold you up for long, but there are so so many gems to be examined and reexamined along the way. As you please ... go straight through or dally along the jaded way.

If you haven't read the Patrick Melrose books, you're missing something important. They may not be your cup of tea in some ways, but no serious reader should be without that particular tasting experience.

Still Life

In my 1968 high-school biology class, we were shown a human fetus floating in formaldehyde inside a glass jar.  On the outside of the glass was a label that named the fetus “Al Most”. It sat on a shelf for any of us to contemplate at any time.

A little gross, a lot tasteless.  And given the today’s contentious political climate I’m not sure that the presentation would pass muster in most public schools.  But it was striking to view something potentially human that never quite got there, but instead was caught in a kind of permanent suspended animation (or de-animation). I couldn’t help but wonder what “Al” might have become.

Something similar occurred to me when reading Yiyun Li’s KinderThan Solitude, a new novel by a talented writer born in China, living in America. Much has been made of the book in terms of the immigrant experience, but for me it there were other more striking elements.  Three main characters are all transformed and suspended by the unsolved poisoning of a Chinese compatriot.  The political and cultural chaos in China at the time also muddy the waters. Two of those characters immigrate to the US, the other stays in China.  The two that leave China live tightly self-circumscribed lives, limited and safe, and at least in part defined by Eastern cultural norms.  Paradoxically the one how remains in China leads a more outwardly Western and outwardly active life, but he too is caught in a kind of suspended animation until current events open a door forward.

This is not a long book, but it is not to be taken lightly.  The voice is serious and the language is compact.  I often had to reread paragraphs that I knew I didn’t get on the first go round.  But the rewards are significant.  In a larger sense I did learn something about Eastern values and a particularly not American approach to life, and that was very rewarding.  This is cross-cultural fiction at a very high level.

Three lives suspended, in a way wasted, or at least in no way living out their full potential.  There is no obvious scapegoat.  But I did appreciate the tremendous loss of what could have been. 

What might “Al” have become?

Controversy

Not sure how a book can be both wonderful and in parts almost unreadably awful.  Reactions to Donna Tartt’s acclaimed novel The Goldfinch tend to be strong, even extreme, and mine are no exception. In some ways it’s a very special book indeed; in others it’s very very ordinary. Reviewers have voiced strong opinions on both sides, and then there's that Pulitzer thing.

First of all the novel is a very straightforward first-person account of a very straightforward story. In that way it almost feels like children's literature in approach.  No flashbacks, no literary high-wire acts, no new tricks or envelope pushing here.  It’s long …. really long ... about 800 pages.  The writing is easy to digest.  Nothing difficult there.  The plot is a bit complex but again not overly complicated.  The cast of characters is appropriately limited (not as limited as in Tartt’s A Secret History, where the constant intense focus on a small group of friends feels downright claustrophobic after a while) but also interesting.

The plot concerns a present-day young man and a famous painting (The Goldfinch) by Fabritius, a 17^th-century Dutch painter .  The first 150 pages or so are excellent.  Tartt is very deft at making interesting connections between the present-day plot and the historical paintings that figure in the events.  She clearly has a deep feeling for visual art, and her ability to describe multiple dimensions of meaning that resonate from paintings is very telling.  The art in question comes alive in her prose in surprising and credible ways.  Visual art really matters to her, and she manages to make those feelings come alive for the reader.

The last hundred pages are also excellent.  Each of the major characters gets his moment on stage to summarize his view.  The scene in which Boris comes clean with his take on life is particularly compelling.  In these closing sections again Tartt manages to express many interesting ideas on art and beauty, why we appreciate them, why we need them, and what they mean to each of us.  And there’s the metaphor of restoring especially beautiful antique furniture.  Tartt makes us understand that beauty is worth the effort to maintain it, and that our lives require a constant restorative effort in order to remain in touch with the best that humanity has to offer. The conclusion is very moving indeed.

And then there’s the middle 500 pages or so.  They could have (should have) been edited down to 200.  This part of the book is very cinematic (there WILL be a movie, I’m sure), but doesn’t make for very interesting reading.  For me it was absolute drudgery to plow through it.   Often twenty pages at a time was all I could take.  Yes things happen, but there just is't anything to hold my interest.  Plot, plot, plot.  Characters that aren't especially interesting or credible, writing that was ordinary at best.  I especially found the endless passages describing drug and alcohol abuse to be flat and unconvincing.

The novel draws on many historical antecedents, especially Dickens and Salinger.  The main character is written very much in the spirit of Holden Caulfield, and the sidekick character (Boris) is quirky and interesting in Dickensian ways.  There’s an orphan or two (or three).  There are very bad guys and very good guys.  There’s an antique store that recalls The Old Curiosity Shop.  There’s an important young female character that has the innocence and purity of Nell. 

The book's strengths probably justify the Pulitzer Prize it won this year, but I’m sorry that reading it was such an uneven experience.  It could have been much tighter and more consistently enjoyable.  Perhaps because the experience of a deep appreciation for visual art is rare for me, I was very moved by Tartt’s ability to make that art come alive in ways that really matter in everyday life.  I will not forget what I learned about the depth of that experience for others.  But I was truly disappointed and bored (almost to the point of setting the book aside permanently) with much of the middle.  Well, what’s good is very good; what’s not is really not.

“If you’re suicidal and you don’t actually kill yourself, you become known as ‘wry.’ ”

That about sums up Lorrie Moore's new story collection, Bark.  Funny, dark, insightful, troubling. The stories are varied and satisfyingly focused, yet I did come away with a sense of Moore as a sharp observer with a cynical yet empathetic eye.  These are traditional stories (nothing Saunderesque here), bleak and contemporary in spirit. I look forward to her next novel.

For me, on to Goldfinch.  I've packed supplies for the long trek. Hoping for the best.

Last Respects

Let’s pay our respects to the omniscient narrator, that rickety old piece of claptrap machinery that served the likes of Fielding, Dickens, and Trollope. Our skeptical twentieth century saw that all-powerful narrator replaced by that of a single character in the drama, one whose point of view was individual and specific, but who could for the most part be trusted.  Then we moved on to the possibly untrustworthy narrator, to multiple narrators, and then on to the blatantly limited or even mentally ill narrator. There can be no viewpoint other than that of an individual, and any individual is deeply flawed.  Snapshots in consciousness, views into the mind of another, glimpses into the void.  These developments reflect an acceptance of the fundamental relativity of all viewpoints.  No single vantage point has any qualitative advantage over another. We’re all good.  We all suck.

Now we have authors whose works are devoted to the point of view of the obviously limited: Rivka Galchen, Mark Haddon, Rief Larson.  These and many others have written fiction that depicts a wrong-end-of-the-binoculars viewpoint that can be fascinating, might instruct us, and can encourage us to deepen our mistrust of our own limited powers of perception and analysis.  Very cynical, verging on the bitter.  Jenny Offill continues that trend with Dept. of Speculation, a short novel that portrays a marriage from the point of view of "the wife", a young, intelligent, and disturbed female writer.  The character is funny, witty, unhappy, pitiful, and perhaps unsalvageable.  She sees what she wants to see.  She manages to make the worst of just about any situation. She gradually descends into a terrifying personal hell far from her early aspirations:

“How has she become one of those people who wears yoga pants all day? She used to make fun of those people. With their happiness maps and their gratitude journals and their bags made out of recycled tire treads. But now it seems possible that the truth about getting older is that there are fewer and fewer things to make fun of until finally there is nothing you are sure you will never be.”

And then there’s the literary form.  Offill follows the lead of Jennifer Egan in her short story Black Box (The New Yorker, 2012). Egan’s story is told as series of tweet-like paragraphs. The NewYorker published it in traditional hard copy, but also put it out as a series of tweets. Offill’s main character narrates in much the same way: a series of short self-contained paragraphs, seemingly random thoughts or diary entries direct from the therapist’s couch. Is that the point? Are readers now therapists for these disturbed characters?  Instead of the author presenting characters and situations with an explicitly "objective" point of view, perhaps the reader is supposed to connect the dots and supply a diagnosis from the random thoughts and expressions brought forth by the narrator? We don’t read someone else’s interpretation of a series of incidents, rather we witness those incidents not through a character’s eyes, but through their mind’s deeply flawed memory.  We get heavily edited and biased reports, and it’s up to us to piece together whatever truth we can find.  Or maybe there is no truth, there is just experience, and the most we can hope for is to bear witness to another’s experience?

This novel is short, easy to read, insightful, and ultimately coherent. It's definitely worth your time and effort.  It will make you think, and more importantly you will feel. Yet I for one miss the omniscient narrator, the one that invited us to gather round and listen to his story, who lent his special voice and tone, who offered his comments on the action, who teased us into coming back for the next installment, who didn’t hesitate to chide us when we exhibited bad behavior like that of his characters or praise us for holding to our better instincts, and who thanked us for our loyalty and attention over the long haul.  He still makes an appearance here and there, but in progressive circles he has pretty much vanished, or at least now hides furtively in the prompter’s box. Perhaps we should put the bearded old chap into the ground and shovel some dirt into the grave. The objective storyteller is dead.  Long live the objective storyteller.

This, That, The Other

Fiction that straddles conventional boundaries is often very interesting, but can also disappoint because it’s neither this nor that.  When it succeeds we know that it stands on its own two feet, but it’s also a little of this and a little of that and a bit of the other.  Francesa Marciano’s story collection The Other Language does indeed straddle, but thankfully it does so gracefully and rewards us with a satisfying and gracious reading experience. We get to interact with a broad range of settings, characters, and situations.  We can sample, savor, and move on.  Each story seems that it could be expanded into a full-length novel.  But that’s what a good short story feels like.  It’s a self-contained and satisfying world unto itself, and who can blame the reader for wanting more? That tapas plate was terrific.  I wonder if they offer that as a main?

These stories take place in locations (some exotic) around the world, and the sense of place in each of them is very strong.  Just as in most of Paul Theroux’s fiction, the place is maybe the most important character.  We get a sense of geography and a stronger sense of culture.  We humans have built peculiar social structures that drastically differ from place to place. And when those structures are juxtaposed (usually by a person from one place visiting or moving to another) the contrasts can be fascinating. And those moves afford Marciano's characters the opportunity to forge a new start, or even a new identity.  That contrast among past, present, and future is important in all of the stories.  Marciano is especially strong in delineating the fine lines of difference and of commonality.  These stories are part travelogues, part character studies, part cultural portraits.

Outwardly very traditional.  No meta-gimmicks here, no preoccupation with self, no experimental structures, no characters in extremis. The language is pleasing if not gorgeous. Just well-told stories that reveal insights into the human condition of the ordinary individual and his cultural context.  The small details are well chosen and telling, even if the writing doesn’t push the boundaries into new territory.  This is a bit old-fashioned, but that’s fine with me.

And the exotic locales and diverse cultural viewpoints makes the reader seem cosmopolitan, wise, a bit jaded. Been there, done that … even though of course we haven’t.  Not even remotely. But we’ve been offered glimpses at people and places that do make us more aware (especially of what we don’t know, even about our own small world), maybe even a little smarter.  Or so it seems.  Well done.

Convergence

Doing IT work for a paycheck, playing the piano two to four hours a day, reading literature, playing tennis, being in a loving, committed relationship, tending to family, caring for pets, maintaining a household, going to church, cultivating friends. Lots of pieces that often don’t fit neatly together.  They all are important to me, but where are the common threads?

At least a few of them were nicely woven together for me by George Saunders Congratulations, by the Way: Some Thoughts on Kindness.  This tiny book is a cleaned up version of his 2013 Syracuse commencement address. It's short and conversational, a good example of the new style of commencement addresses by famous people: low on formality, high on sincerity.  Saunders is a great fiction writer. His stories are full of imagination, complexity, and contradictions.  They challenge and puzzle us, but his commencement address is by comparison simple. How refreshing that a leader in the intellectual world reminds us about the importance of spiritual values, of kindness, of the need to combat selfishness, and of the purity and goodness that resides in each of us. It’s a message I hear regularly at church (Unity Palo Alto), but to get it from Saunders does connect a few strands for me.

In the last few years I have learned a few lessons. Making demands, even just politely asking the people around you to treat you the way you want to be treated doesn't usually get you what you want.  The only way to get it is to give it, freely and unconditionally.  No strings, no explanations, no fuss.  Doors will open, doors you perhaps have never seen or imagined.  Give your love, offer your insights and your music, give your best athletic skills and your best attitude on the tennis court, be a good friend, a good worker, be a caring partner. It really is that simple. The rest will take care of itself.

The Joy of Paradox

Why do we do what we do? Seemingly we long for something different as we continue to invest in what we have? As soon as we get something different, our longing gets displaced to a new goal, a new difference, a new not-what-we-have.  These issues play out especially dramatically in the realm of romance and life partnerdom, and on that heady subject Adam Phllips, a British psyschoanalyst, Freud expert, and writer teases us with insights, prods, tickles, insults, and caresses. 

Monogamy is a short monograph comprised of 121 aphorisms or short meditations.  Some are only a couple of sentences, a few as long as two pages.  They remind us that there are no simple solutions, that contradictions abound, and that we can savor those contradictions at the same time that they baffle us.  Better to be amused and intrigued at our complex human condition than to be defeated by the entanglements, or depressed by the failure to find ultimate solutions.

Some samples:

“We work hard to keep certain versions of ourselves in other people’s minds; and, of course the less appealing ones out of their minds. And yet everyone we meet invents us, whether we like it or not. Indeed nothing convinces us more of the existence of other people, of just how different they are from us, than what they can make of what we say to them. Our stories often become unrecognizable as they go from mouth to mouth.

Being misrepresented is simply being presented with a version of ourselves – an invention – that we cannot agree with. But we are daunted by other people making us up, by the number of people we seem to be. We become frantic trying to keep the numbers down, trying to keep the true story of who we really are in circulation. This, perhaps more than anything else, drives us into the arms of one special partner. Monogamy is a way of getting the versions of ourselves down to a minimum. And, of course, a way of convincing ourselves that some versions are truer than others – that some are special.”

“It is not a question of what we belive, but that we believe at all. It is not a question of who we are faithful to, but that we are faithful.

Fidelity shouldn’t always be taken personally.”

“At its best monogamy may be the wish to find someone to die with; at its worst it is a cure for the terrors of aliveness. They are easily confused.”

“If sex brought us in to the family, it is also what breaks us out of the family. In other words, people leave home when what they have got to hide – their sexuality – either has to be hidden somewhere else, or when it is best shown somewhere else.

If you’ve got nothing to hide you’ve got nowhere to go. Which is one of the reasons why couples sometimes want to be totally honest with each other.”

“We can never be quite sure whether we are competing for something that doesn’t exist, or winning a competition in which no one else is competing. This is why in marriage we are never quite sure who the joke is on. Nothing defeats us like success. It is always more baffling – more essentially ironic—than failure.”

“It is often easier to get other people to do what one wants than to get oneself to. So it’s often the person in the couple who isn’t having the affair that wants to, and the one that is that is bitterly unhappy.

We delegate more in our erotic lives than anywhere else. Someone has to do the dirty work.”

“The compulsive monogamist is like the compulsive libertine. For both of them something is too extravagant. For both of them there is a catastrophe to be averted. Monogamists are terrorized by their promiscuous wishes, libertines by their dependence. It is all a question of which catastrophe one prefers.”

“More has been written about how relationships don’t work, than about how they do. We have virtually no language, other than banality, to describe the couple who have been happy together for a long time. We would like them to have a secret, we would like them to have something they could give us. Or that we could give them, other than our suspicion.

There is nothing more terrorizing than the possibility that nothing is hidden. There’s nothing more scandalous than a happy marriage.”

“We begin to feel safe – a litte uneasy, perhaps, but safe – when a new relationship begins to change into a familiar one. When we have settled into our routines, when all the false notes and small misunderstandings have become part of a larger understanding that we call our life together. We don’t need to think about it – or think about it like this – we just enjoy each other’s company. We cannot imagine ourselves without each other. And when we cannot imagine ourselves without each other, we are no longer together.”

“We are never misunderstood, we are just sometimes understood in ways we don’t like. We are never unfaithful, we are just sometimes faithful in ways we don’t like.”

Good stuff.  I need to look at his other books.

Less Is Different

Family Life by Akhil Sharma is a short novel that took twelve years to write.  Many drafts, many revisions, many fresh starts.  Sharma’s difficulties have been well documented.  Some may have arisen from the autobiographical aspects of the novel (and the inevitable emotional consequences), while others are mostly technical. Such is the life of the creative artist.  He deals with the technical aspects of his art.  Those have their own demands, their own momentum.  But if he’s creating something worthwhile, there will also be pains and difficulties akin to childbirth.  He’s extracting (expelling?) something personal, something that will therefore have special value to the reader, and that process can hurt, and it can take time.

Here the question of narrator is paramount.  The story is told in the first person by one of two sons in an Indian family that emigrates to the United States. As the narrator ages his outlook matures, but nonetheless his viewpoint is limited by his age, his nature, and his cultural background.  He sees life in the USA through the eyes of a young recent immigrant, and as such his take can be misleading, insightful, amusing, and sad.  Like Rief Larson in The Selected Works of T S Spivet, or Mark Haddan in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time, the child narrator (in these cases very special ones) have particular gifts to bestow.  Their limitations are also their strengths.  It’s a way for the author to get us look at things with a fresh (if constrained) perspective.  The limitations here are severe, and the result is rewarding.  This is far from the Indian family epic novel (A Suitable Boy).  There is no sprawling, no horizontal spread of any kind, and little appeal to the senses as well. This is a pared down matter of fact version of events that says as much about the teller as about what is told.

In the end we know what matters to the narrator, but we know mostly because of what is not said, what has been omitted.  It’s a reminder that any viewpoint is limited.  It’s a blow to the heart of the omniscient narrator, and it’s a reminder that humility is never out of place.  Is there a meta-narrator that is offering us this limited view, someone who knows its limitations?  An actor, an impersonator, a master of ceremonies?  Perhaps, but her never makes an explicit appearance.  Except as author.

But for the Grace of God . . .

To complete my first pass at a Didion survey, I had to read A Year of Magical Thinking. While The White Album and Play It As It Lays have elements of memoir embedded in nonfiction and fiction respectively, this book is pure memoir.  So it seemed logical to go for the pure gold. The personal touch made those two books special, so maybe the unalloyed memoir would be especially rewarding.

Yes and no. The writing is awesomely good.  But the focus becomes unrelentingly personal, and yes, self-indulgent. I recognize that unexpectedly losing a long-held significant other (husband of more than thirty years) must be life changing, Yet I’m not sure I would choose to spend that much time in the exclusive company of the bereaved spouse. The reading experience is meaningful, painful, and revealing.  But I’m not there and I don’t necessarily want to go there with you unless you can relate your experience to aspects outside of your own particular context.

Didion and Donne

I’m not sure that Didion manages to do that. Given a strong will to enter her sealed intimate world I did just fine. But if I resisted going through customs and instead remained in my own world, I did at times lose patience with her unrelenting focus on self, her obvious blind spots to the weaknesses of her loved ones, and her inability to see outsider her own necessarily (I guess) limited view. Reading the book was probably just like spending time with such a bereaved and lost soul.  You can hold your breath and immerse for a while, but every so often you must come up for fresh air and reconnect with your own reality.

Particularly telling:

‘When we anticipate the funeral we wonder about failing to “get through it,” rise to the occasion, exhibit the “strength” that invariably gets mentioned as the correct response to death. We anticipate needing to steel ourselves for the moment: will I be able to greet people, will I be able to leave the scene, will I be able even to get dressed that day? We have no way of knowing that his will not be the issue. We have no way of knowing that the funeral itself will be anodyne, a kind of narcotic regression in which we are wrapped in the care of others and the gravity and meaning of the occasion. Nor can we know ahead of the fact (and here lies the heart of the difference between grief as we imagine it and grief as it is) the unending absence that follows, the void, the very opposite of meaning, the relentless succession of moments during which we will confront the experience of meaningless itself.”

I’m glad if writing the book did her some good. Her mastery of language and technique is stunning. The unrelenting honesty is admirable if at times hard to take. I know that I’ll come back to it if and when I find myself grieving a loved one. For now I’ll file it away as “to be revisited when needed . . . hopefully never.”

Didion's Oblivion

I was so taken with Joan Didion’s The White Album, I had to go on to sample her fiction.  Play It As It Lays is a 1970 short novel. It’s set in the Hollywood scene of the late 60’s, and it is truly terrifying.  The language is sparse; the action not quite the point. The main character, Maria Wyeth, is a young actress who is married to a writer/director. Her life, so promising at times, has completely fallen apart.  Her marriage is a shamble, her daughter is institutionalized, her career is on the rocks.  She has lost all semblance of dignity and self-respect. She has truly entered a state of oblivion where nothing applies, nothing matters, nothing holds. She is not evil, but she is broken and helpless. Didion’s prose keeps us staring at that awful place with no chance to avert our gaze.  The book is difficult to read in places.  I just wanted to put it down and seek some small comfort.  If this is life, then …. why bother?

From the 1972 movie with Tuesday Weld and Anthony Perkins

Sex, alcohol, drugs play a part.  But the characters (there isn’t a sympathetic one in sight) bring their unhappiness on themselves with unwavering determination.  In an effort to be known, to be someone (in the world’s eye), to prevail against the odds, to create something worthwhile, they lose their souls in the torrent of the present.  What’s left is wreckage.  Reading this book suggests what it must be like walking through a disaster zone after a tsunami.  Debris everywhere.  Countless signs of what maybe was, what could have been, but is now simply wreckage.  And there are no signs of rebuilding.  These lives cannot be salvaged.

The degree of condensation employed by Didion is remarkable.  Incidents are recounted in few words.  The narrative jumps around, but one can piece together the timeline.  What remains constant is the inevitable slide into non-functional degradation despite the evident talent and considerable financial resources that remain available. It’s the downside of here-all-things-are possible California. Go ahead, try. The gates of hell are wide open.

Intense, scathing and disturbing, this novel will stay with me.