Author: 459856pwpadmin

As I was dithering, putting off writing this post, I picked up a book to begin my next read.  The Book is The Vulnerables, by Sigrid Nunez, and I found this quote on the first page:

 

Only when I was young did I believe that it was important to remember what happened in every novel I read.  Now I know the truth:  what matters is what you experience while reading, the states of feeling that the story evokes, the questions that rise to your mind, rather than the fictional events described.   (page 3, paragraph 2, line 7)

 

And so, in the beginning of a novel is a statement that completely encapsulates my approach to reading in general, particularly fiction, but I would argue that there is a corollary that relates to non-fiction as well.    Yes we read non-fiction for knowledge, but how we approach a chemistry text for example, should be different than how we approach history.  We are not empty pitchers waiting to be filled up only to disgorge the contents unfiltered.

 

I read five books in January 2024:

1.  Lord of Chaos, Robert Jordan.  Fantasy. Book 6 of the Wheel of Time series.
2. The Fourth Turning: An American Prophesy,  William Strauss and Neil Howe.  Reread from the 1990s. American History, Sociology, Generation Theory.
3. A Crown of Swords, Robert Jordan.  Fantasy, Book 7 of the Wheel of Time series.
4. Generations: The History of America's Future1584-2069, William Strauss and Neil Howe.  Non-fiction. American History, Sociology, Generation Theory.
5. The Vaster Wilds, Lauren Groff.  Literary. Themes include patriarchy, female autonomy, climate change, ecological degradation.

 

In my mind they can be broken into two groups:  the first four, then the final one.

I started both Lord of Chaos and The Fourth Turning before the close of 2023.  They were both slow reads. Oddly, or so it seemed at first, they complemented each other.  But it is not really odd.  They both revolve around a cyclical view of time.

 

I picked up The Fourth Turning, which I had read when it first came out in the 1990s, because I read somewhere that Neil Howe had come out with a new book, The Fourth Turning is Now.  I remembered reading the first book, and the general outline of Strauss and Howe's theory, and wondered whether or not I really needed a further explication of the theory as it relates to current events, or, if would be better just to reread the previous book.  I opted to reread before making a decision. Once I started The Fourth Turning, I thought I should read Strauss and Howe's previous book, Generations, and procured a copy.

 

Both books discuss history, specifically American History, although in the second book they have expanded their timeline backwards to the Reformation in Europe.   Their premise, that history is shaped by generations and that these generations fall into a repeating pattern of approximately a four-generation cycle of 80 to 100 years, called a saeculum, is thought provoking and worth reading.  The idea of the spaeculum is not new, it goes at least as far back as classical Greece.  Nor is the idea of differences in generations or the idea that time and history are cyclical in nature new.  These ideas have a much longer hold on human thought than the relatively new idea that history and time are linear.  

 

In general, people do react to the ideals and actions of the generation that came before them, every era has its own events and stories that shape its particular narrative, and much as many an older generation wishes the younger generations were more like themselves, this cannot be so. We all leave our marks on the culture in which we live, and the world in which our grandchildren live is not precisely the world in which we grew up.  This was as true in the past as now, although rapidity of change is much more marked at this point in time.   There are ages of heroism, ages of rebellion, ages of calm and peace.   Unfortunately the way the previous cycles played out grows dimmer the further removed we are from any particular time.   I am not saying that time or history is strictly cyclical, not in any sense of predeterministic, but I am also not saying that history is strictly linear either.  It seems to me we see what we need to see to survive and in this we see only a fragment of what is true.

Strauss and Howe combine a view of history with sociology in describing social movements and the way ideas shape history.  Was this new at the time? I don't know.  I think both books are good, although the latter book trends a little more toward pop sociology than appears to be the case in the first book, Generations, seems more solid to me, even if a little dry.   In both books, the authors sometimes appear to take great pains to adapt the flow of historical events to their four-generation, four-season outline, and sometimes  they leave out events that I might have thought important.  I am not a historian, but my father was, and he drummed the idea of historicity into me from an early age.  I am also aware that the way we look at the past, the way anyone looks at the past, even a historian attempting to be objective, is shaped by his/her understandings of the world in which he or she lives.  There are facts, but we see them darkly.

 

Anyway, reading these books along with the 6th and 7th volumes of The Wheel of Time was fascinating.  In once sense, the entire series, which takes place over the course of just a few short years, very much fits into the patterns of a crisis or "turning" as Strauss and Howe use the term.  Jordan also employs the idea of time as being a wheel, not repeating exactly, but themes and cycles that recur again and again.  He artfully weaves in "legends" that refer to events of our time, although so misconstrued and misremembered that they could be missed if one was not paying attention.

 

In retrospect I think the first few volumes of The Wheel of Time were a sort of prologue, defining the world and its boundaries.  Now, in the middle of the cycle, I find myself fascinated by the world itself, the societies, the individuals, the complexity of this world that also seems all too familiar in its humanity.  Everyone sees the world through different lenses.  Everyone believes they are right.  Everyone, absolutely everyone, is wrong.  We have a group of young adults who are changing the world, but not so much changing it because they want to, but because they see circumstances that others do not, respond in ways others do not.  They too make mistakes.  Everyone, in trying to help, in trying to guide the future, compounds the crisis. 

 

I find this fascinating because I see it play out all around me.  In global events.  In local politics.  In petty feuds and misunderstandings, some of which drive people apart because they can't let go of their own tiny piece of the world.  I am no better.  This is part of what it is to be human, although I still believe we have the option to attempt to reach beyond this, if we can.   This is what fantasy and science fiction do so well, they explore the everyday themes of human life, society, religion, in an abstract way that allows greater depth through distance.

 

I will continue reading The Wheel of Time but I will also probably take a break when I finish my current book.  I feel no need to read Howe's newest iteration of his theory.  Even in The Fourth Turning, I thought the book was making missteps as it tried to apply a general theory to the specifics of what is happening today.  I still find the ideas fascinating and thought provoking.  Reading the books was time well spent.  The same for Jordan.  But that is about the extent of it. I'm not sure any of us can really understand the forces that govern our life while we are in the midst of living it.    

 

And that takes me to my last book, which is a different thing altogether.

The Vaster Wilds, by Lauren Groff is definitely a literary novel.   The setting is roughly 1609-1610, Jamestown, but this is not specifically an historical novel even as it definitely references some of America's founding myths.  The story takes place over the course of a week or two, and revolves around the struggle of a young girl who has run away from the Jamestown settlement, who is pursued, and is sick and dying in the wilderness.  The scope is simultaneously very small and very grand.  The plot is minimal, and yet the story is compelling. I did not want to put it down.  

 

To this reader, the novel explores many of the themes that were explored in Groff's last novel, Matrix: patriarchy, misogyny, loss of female autonomy, capitalism sometimes masquerading as evangelism, climate change, ecological degradation.  Yet where Matrix explored these issues in a very external way, through a fictionalized character  based roughly on Marie de France, in this novel the exploration is very internal, through the musings of a young unnamed girl.  Yet this story is also very internal to the experiences of a woman in any age.  That the girl has no name is important to the story, as is the fact that she is called by many names, none of which feel real even to herself.

 

There are several things I like about the story and the structure of the story.  I like that Groff has intentionally chosen to write in a voice that is not modern, deliberately evoking the period.  And although our narrator is omniscient, and sometimes perhaps anachronistic in that between alternating sequences of dreams vs the reality of her plight, our young narrator explores issues of male sexual violence, discrimination both on the basis of sex and differences in religion/race, as well as the human need for possession and domination.  Groff bridges this gap well, with beautiful prose.  She also manages to make her protagonist not sound like a 21st century girl trapped in a 17th century setting, a problem I find rampantly annoying in many historical fictions.  In fact we don't know all that much about what 17th century women thought about all of these things, but I suspect their thoughts were not that different than ours even though their contexts and expectations would have differed wildly.

 

I was particularly struck by the question of dominion vs domination and the way it plays out through the story. Although the author addresses this question head on in the middle of the book, as one reads, one realizes that the theme has been pervasive throughout the novel in the various relationships between the characters, both men and women, but also adults and children, englishmen (deliberately not capitalized in the novel) and native americans, humans and nature, even to some extent in the struggle between outer life and inner life, or the ego and the soul.    

 

In this sense, I find the ending of the novel fascinating and necessary.  Our dying protagonist experiences a series of fever dreams in the moments before death in which she has survived and lived for some years, self-sufficient and yet lonely, in the wilderness. Through each iteration of her dream she makes a new realization about the meaning of life and what is truly important, another way of looking at dominion vs domination,  not just of the world, but of the way in which we are willing, or not willing, to embrace wisdom and who we truly are.  

 

In this story of a nameless girl I found, in one sense at least, the story of humanity.  Life is filled with nameless people who lived brave, sad, honorable or terrible lives.  We do not know about most of them, but they are no less important to the world we know today just because they as individuals are forgotten.  The same is true for each of us, each of us embodies humanity.  Most of us will not be remembered a few generations from now, much less hundreds of years.  But each of our lives is valuable, each of us is valuable for the choices we make.   I may be reading a lot more into this book than the author intended but I am not sure whether or not that is the point. I continue to maintain that a book opens the opportunity to form a relationship with an idea.  Reading this book opened a conversation. Discussing this book with my book club, refined and shaped that conversation in new ways, as have my meandering thoughts since that date.  Definitely a book I will want to read again.

 

I am going to conclude this post with a quote from near the end of the novel, during the prologue to the period of fever dreams, as much because I love the wording, as because it captures both the sweep of awareness of grace as the acceptance of peace to come. 

 

And in the air, now, she had a single bright flare, a vision that extended her life vastly beyond this moment of her dying, both in the greater sweep and in the smaller grains.

                                                                   page 233, paragraph 5

 

 

I want to get caught up with 2023 before January ends, which means there will be no review of the remaining books on last year's list.  Not that I am inclined toward toward such a task.   I do, however, want to think about my favorite novels, and so I shall.  

 

I've always avoided the arbitrariness of best lists, but somehow now that is exactly what I wish to embrace.  This blog, after all, is extremely arbitrary, wrapped as it is in my choices, my thoughts, my interests.  

 

In December a member of my book club proposed that we each think of our favorite book from the year.  It seemed that, for the most part, each of us chose a different book and I found the discussion fascinating.  My own favorite book was not the book I had initially chosen for book club discussion, so let's start this post there.

 

Small Things Like These, by Claire Keegan would have been on my "favorite books" list from 2022, had I made one.  But my book club read it in 2023, and it was my favorite book of our selections.   It is a book that holds up to subsequent readings, and reveals more of itself with each encounter.  But I don't think my thoughts have changed significantly since I reviewed it in 2022. (here).  I read this for both of my book clubs this year, and it would be my favorite selection from each, although since I had read it the previous year as well, I would only put it in fifth place among this year's favorites.

 

In position number 4 on my list would be Sheena Patel's novel I'm a Fan.  I thoroughly enjoyed reading this novel and I found it entertaining, challenging, and thought-provoking.  The story and the experiences of the protagonist are completely outside my experience, completely outside the possibility of anything I would consider.  Perhaps this is part of what elevates the novel because the protagonist is nothing like me and yet she becomes completely sympathetic and at times even understandable.  I feel like the author is helping me with insight into the inner world of a girl I would otherwise never bother to understand, who in a way lives in a world that is nothing like mine, even though it is the same world.  I would still read this again and, as I stated in my previous review, I would still love to discuss this book with someone else or perhaps even in a multi-generational small group.   I don't have much beyond that review to say, but ideas and images from that novel still arise regularly in my thoughts.

 

Number three on the list is completely different.  Although Patel's book is deeply artistic, intellectual, interior and polemical, Abraham Verghese's novel The Covenant of Water is a large, thoroughly enjoyable and engaging, family drama set among the Christian community in Kerala, India.   I read this twice, once in hardcover, and again listening to the audiobook on Audible, where it is narrated by the author.  Both formats are worthwhile.  This is the kind of novel that I can get lost in and am reluctant to put down, a book a friend once referred to as the kind of book you "read, read" meaning the kind of book in which she would completely lose herself in the story.  Here, this novel, yes.  

 

All of Verghese's novels have some medical component, or at least all the novels I've read, and this no exception.  I find that the medicine is artfully woven into the warp and weft of the story, and that even the parts I don't care about, or the characters about whom I am initially doubtful, all become essential to the makeup of the fabric of the story.  This is a novel to savor.

 

And just like that I'm to number two, the runner up.  That would be This Other Eden by Paul Harding.  This novel was nominated for the Booker prize, and it did make the short list, but I didn't read it until after the winner was announced. (It did not win).  But I've already stated I wasn't somehow engaged in Booker-mania this year, and that is okay.  I did however thoroughly enjoy this book.  

 

The novel is inspired by the true story of Malaga Island, which was once the home of a mixed-race fishing community, until the state of Maine evicted the residents.  But Harding has firmly held that although he was inspired by the true story, he has made no attempt to tell the specifics of that story. Instead we get a luminous story of well-drawn, all-too-human characters told in poetically mesmerizing prose.  Even though I knew how the story must end, I felt compelled to to dive further and further into this deeply haunting novel.   The story told is as much a story of a community, how they relate amongst themselves, as well as their position relative to the society as a whole.  At times allegorical, it is an exploration of humanity, wisdom, ignorance, power and loss.  The writing is fluid, imaginative, metaphorical.  Biblical references abound and this reader found them entertaining, but the author is not particularly heavy-handed about driving home lessons.  

 

The character of Matthew Diamond, a retired schoolteacher who strives to help the residents of Apple Island,  while at the same time battling his own aversions to their mixed race heritage, is particularly compelling.  Diamond brought to mind both the work and the life of the theologian Karl Barth, even before I knew the author modeled Diamond in part on Barth.  

 

There are also strong correlations to The Colony, by Audrey Magee, another novel about the incursion into and destruction of a unique and "lost" way of life, partially at the hands of well-meaning but misguided souls who only wish to "help".   The side story where young Ethan, sent away from the island, falls in love with Bridget, a young Irish serving girl, herself from a small isolated island community, seals both the link to Magee's novel and the universality of the themes that are playing out. This book satisfies both my love of a good story, and my intellectual leanings.  It is also a book that I am sure will reveal itself further with future readings.

 

Which leads me to my first choice,  The North Shore, by Ben Tufnell, a novel all about liminality and metamorphosis.  I do realize that this means it is not, perhaps, most people's cup of tea, but it is perfectly mine.    I am not certain that I have more to say about this novel above what I wrote in my previous review, here..  I found it an absolutely fascinating novel, a novel which I pick up occasionally to reread selected passages.   Just thinking about it makes me want to read it again, but I can admit that this is a novel in which I cannot separate the story from the intellectual process that it evokes.  It very much feels to me like a novel almost attempting to form its own metamorphosis, of blurring the boundaries between art, and life, word, experience, and how we know what we know.