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.