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.