I’ve had a
“bad back” since I was 11 or 12 years old, when I was diagnosed with scoliosis,
although for the most part it doesn’t bother me that much. It is just something that is there, in
the background, mostly ignored. I
remember when I was typing up the transcription in G’s office, and he would see
back patients who would complain bitterly that their life was ruined because
they could no longer roll over in bed, they had to wake themselves to change
position. I have not been able to
roll over since I was 16, when I had a Harrington rod installed in my
back. On my back I am somewhat like
a turtle that has been upended, although eventually I can right myself. I wake up, change position, and go
right back to sleep; I’ve been doing this most of my life so I suppose I was
not very sympathetic.
Occasionally
however, my back does act up a little bit. I did something early in the week, trying to wrest the top off
of the pool chlorinator I believe, and spent the first few days of the week
pretty much on my back as both standing and sitting were excruciating. Yesterday my low back was better but my
neck was stiff and I could only look down – perhaps convenient if one is
walking the streets of Paris – but other wise not particularly enjoyable or
productive. I’m not really
complaining about these days, I actually have far fewer back spells than I did
when I was younger, and the down time did give me ample time for reflection.
One of the
subjects that caught my wandering attention concerned a book I had been reading
last week, WE by Yevgeny
Zamyatin. I was actually
re-reading We, and finishing
it reminded me of my teens, when I first encountered this book, and the strong
impression this book and several others made on me at the time.
Why this
book? Well, as I was lying down
looking at the ceiling, I recalled that I had discussed this book, among
others, during a college interview, and my father, who was with me during the
interview, was shocked and appalled.
Reading the book now, in my 50’s, I was reminded of that interview and
the shock on my father’s face.
The books I
discussed in that interview at Rice University were: We, Inside the Third Reich, All Quiet on the Western Front,
and Pere Goriot.
Why these
books? They all challenged the
idea of who I was and my view of the world, even as they struck people who knew
me as books I most definitely would NOT
enjoy. I remember a friend being
surprised that I was so involved in Albert Speer’s memoir, pointing out that it
was not the kind of book he would expect me to enjoy, and for the most part it
was atypical: I read fiction and
nonfiction, but really preferred happy sunny stories, fantasy, and good-versus-evil
sagas where good always won. This
fit with my bouncy happy outer self, which is the greater part of myself, but
not the whole.
I read All Quiet on the Western Front
when I was 14. I remember
finishing it in class, I don’t remember which class, although I do remember the
classroom itself; it was one of those classes where the teacher had us do our assignments
during class time and I had worked far ahead of the rest of the class. This was one of my “bad habits” that
would plague my teachers throughout most of my time in high school, culminating
in senior year “pre-calculus” where I did all the problems in the book in the
first six weeks, correctly to my teacher’s consternation, and spent the rest of
the year quietly and subversively reading books of my own choosing.
Remarque’s
book shocked me; I had nightmares for weeks. I was plagued not by the physical
horrors of war, but the emotional horrors of war, the idea that war could
destroy all hope. This book
changed how I looked at authority and cultural identity and history. We were
still at war with Vietnam, some of my classmates had siblings in Vietnam, some
of them wanted the war to end, some of them wanted to go off to war
themselves.
I had a
quotation from this book pasted above my desk throughout high school and
college:
“I know
nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over
an abyss of sorrow. I see how
peoples are set against one another, and in silence, unknowingly, foolishly,
obediently, innocently slay one another.”
It is a
common quoted passage, although I did not know it at the time. I saved it
exactly because it represented the antithesis of my own experience, my own
hope, and it struck me that the tenor of a life could change so irrevocably,
how blindly and hopefully people set out to follow what they believe to be
right, and how cruel and unjust are the paths of history, of civilization, of
power. I believed that everyone should have to read this book, that the mere
act of reading it could change everything. I was still quite young.
Later, when
I was reading We, it struck
me that the emptiness of the soul and despair that I saw in Remarque, was also
present in Zamyatin. In this
wonderful utopia, freed of the cruelty and passion of human life, cruelty was
still present, but it was robed in a cloak of virtue. In D-503’s world the
individual life is as empty and without hope as Paul’s life after he survives
the killing fields, and the way in which the soul is stripped from a man is no
less shocking.
There is a
certain commonality between Speer’s memoir and Zamyatin’s fiction, in that both
Speer at D-503 initially extol the praises of their respective worlds. Speer is practically besotted with
Hitler, worshipping him as a hero, and only gradually becomes disillusioned. Both write memoirs, which serve to
explain and attempt to justify their experiences. Speer’s is autobiographical, written after the fact, and
undoubtedly paints a picture tainted by the infallibilities of memory as well
as a human need for self justification and redemption. D-503’s “journal” is of
course, a work of fiction, but even so D-503 writes it proclaiming his honesty while
also self-editing for how things might be perceived by others – this is after
all, a journal he intends to be read.
D-503 begins by singing the praises of his perfect society. He cannot
imagine the more “primitive” world that came before, but he too changes,
develops a soul, begins to doubt.
Both Speer
and D-503 appear to be very naïve, and they probably are naïve in some sense:
at any time humans have a great capacity toward self-deception and blindness. And yet both come out with some degree
of redemption in the eyes of their respective societies. Speer, one of the few Nazis who
expressed guilt or remorse, is given a prison sentence and escapes death, and
has a chance to redeem himself further by writing a book. D-503 returns to his society of order
and the mind and turns in his co-conspirators, dispassionately, and a bit
sanctimoniously, watching as is former “love” is tortured. Both know how to adapt to the world and
come out on the winning side.
But how do
these books relate to poor old Pere
Goriot?
At that
fateful college interview, having mentioned that I was an avid reader, I was
asked which books made the greatest impact on me and why. These were the books that came to
mind. Pere Goriot was only the most recent of them. My father was most appalled by my choice
of Pere Goriot (he had not
read We) because he saw it as
a book about a parent who does everything for his children and is subsequently
abandoned by them.
That was not
completely the point that I was making, although it did play a role. Pere Goriot was also not the man
he believed himself to be, and he created for his daughters the lives he wished
he had, not necessarily what would make them happy. Having achieved his goal,
he was surprised to learn that this did not necessarily endear him to these
same daughters, for whom he had sacrificed everything. He was a classic of example of “getting
what one wishes for, but not liking what one gets”. No one in this novel comes out smelling like rose. Neither does Speer, or D-503.
In Pere Goriot I saw the tragedy of
every family, of parents dreams for their children, of the children who were
perhaps too successful of embodiments of their parent’s aspirations. In Speer I saw the dangers and tragedy
of greed and ambition. In D-503,
and in Paul, I saw the tragedy of every man, trapped in our own small bubbles
of the world, far to often oblivious to the greater forces that have the power
to shape and destroy our lives.
I am sure my
reflections today are formed by the decades of thought and experience that has
intervened since that interview. I
do not remember exactly what I thought at 17, but I know I was attempting to
put a form to these nascent thoughts.
I do
remember watching my father’s face turning red and then purple as I spoke about
Pere Goriot, about D-503, and the other characters. Perhaps it is only now, in my 50s that I can begin to
appreciate the shock of a parent watching his fledgling child take flight in
ways previously unexpected.