Leave No Trace

The motto of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area (BWCA) is “Leave no trace.”  A permit is required to camp and canoe there and guidelines are provided for minimizing the human impact on this wilderness area in northern Minnesota close to the Canadian border.  Outdoor enthusiasts, as well as environmentalists, are fiercely protective of this natural preserve, “the largest remaining area of uncut forest in the eastern portion of the United States” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boundary_Waters_Canoe_Area_Wilderness).

Most recently “Renewed proposals for copper and nickel mining in northern Minnesota has…been a source of tension. Mines would be situated south and west of the BWCAW upstream of the wilderness and within its watershed, leading to concerns among conservation groups that surface runoff could cause damage to the area. In December 2016 the federal government proposed banning mining for 20 years while the subject was studied. The new administration cancelled the study in September 2018, clearing the way for mining leases in the national forest.^”   

Mindy Mejia’s recent novel, Leave No Trace, does not directly address the land use disputes of the BWCA, but it does make an understated plea for the preservation of wilderness areas.  The wilderness theme has a long history in American literature, dating back to William Bradford’s Of Plimoth Plantation: “What could they see but a hideous and desolate wilderness, full of wild beasts and wild men?” These early colonial narratives morphed into the nineteenth century frontier novels by James Fenimore Cooper and Catharine Maria Sedgwick, who borrowed from earlier American “captivity narratives” (https://yourbrainonbooks.blogspot.com/2010/02/narrative-of-captivity-and-restoration.html). 

Not only does Mejia’s novel harken back to the wilderness theme, with its contrast between nature and civilization, but also to the captivity narrative, in which European settlers recount their experiences being captured by Indians. In Leave No Trace, however, civilization is the enemy, nature is the source of restoration, and the systems of law enforcement and mental health treatment are the captors, who prevent the narrator, Maya Stark, Assistant Speech Therapist at the Congdon mental health facility in Duluth, MN (those in the know will find the name of this facility hilarious), and her patient, Lucas, from tracking down Lucas’ father, Josiah, who has disappeared deep in the BWCA. 

Which brings us to the theme of disappearance, not by captivity, but by choice.  Josiah and Lucas Blackthorn had escaped into the BWCA wilderness ten years earlier, after Josiah had been arrested for obstruction of justice in Ely, MN, a gateway to the BWCA. Mejia underscores this theme by drawing parallels among the fictional Josiah and historical instances of voluntary disappearance, such as that of Agafia Lykov ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agafia_Lykova) and Ho Van Thanh (https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2013/08/09/210477419/father-and-son-coaxed-from-jungle-40-years-after-vietnam-war).  In addition, Maya’s father, operator of a salvage tugboat on Lake Superior, has received a grant to search for the lost “ghost ship,” the SS Bannockburn, a Canadian freighter, that (involuntarily) disappeared on Lake Superior in 1902 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Bannockburn).  In another parallel, one of the orderlies at Congdon refers to Lucas as “Tarzan.”

Other forms of “disappearance” occur in the novel.  Lucas’ mother had disappeared from his life when she died suddenly of an aneurysm; Maya’s mother had abandoned her and her father when Maya was a child.  These parallels, as well as a budding romantic attraction, bond Lucas and Maya, as together they scheme to escape the mental facility to go in search of Josiah.

 

Having lived in the BWCA with his father for ten years, Lucas, now nineteen-years-old, had suddenly reappeared, caught breaking and entering into a camping outfitter store in Ely. Violent and uncommunicative he is committed to Congdon. Though he is violent toward her at first, Lucas eventually connects with Maya and she with him.  Maya learns that Josiah is sick; Lucas had left to get help but is arrested and confined at Congdon before he could get back to his father.  Finding Josiah and getting him help is Lucas’ mission; with Maya’s help he is able to succeed, though, in the end, Josiah finds another way to disappear.

Maya’s journey into Lucas’ past takes her on a journey into her own past.  It turns out they share, not only the loss of their mothers, a history of law-breaking, and of mental health treatment, but also a history that neither of them knows about. 

The tangle of coincidences in their pasts is barely believable, but despite an unlikely plot, the themes of disappearance, of being lost and found (or in the case of the Bannockburn, not found), of captivity and restoration, of recovery and redemption resonate powerfully. 

And the BWCA wilderness is not the only one in the novel where people can disappear; there is the wilderness of personal history, of social alienation, of mental instability, in which one can get lost, but from which one can also find truth, human connection, and mental health. 

Maya’s mother had been a geologist, and the rocks of the BWCA become part of the setting and the story. Agates, a type of volcanic rock, become a dominant symbol in the novel.  Maya’s mother had taught her: “The Earth took violence and decay and made agates…Agates can only form when something in you is destroyed, when the hollows of grief or depression can never find the light, and the sediment that accumulates inside them is dense. Their power changes you.”

However “hideous and desolate,” however “full of wild beasts and wild men,” however violent, however capable of destruction, the wilderness has the power to create beauty, strength, and preservation.  As Henry David Thoreau wrote, “In Wildness is the preservation of the World…From the forest and wilderness come the tonics and barks which brace mankind.” And such is the underlying message of Leave No Trace.  There is healing value in exploring both the wilderness without and the wilderness within.

And such is the value of preserving the wildness of the BWCA and other wilderness areas.

In the end Maya and Lucas seem to make peace with civilization and find some semblance of balance between it and the wilderness.  The fate of our planet may depend on the ability of all of us to find such balance.

   

Under the Influence

The theme of deception, of illusion vs. truth, and of appearance vs. reality continues to fascinate.  See blog posts on The Goldfinch (Oct., 2015), “Eisenheim the Illusionist” (March, 2015), “and “A Game of Clue” (Jan., 2016).  Epistemology is more than an obscure philosophical sub-discipline; it is a challenge of daily life, whether we are following the news or navigating our own personal lives. 

How do we know the truth?  Even when relying on direct sense perception, we may be vulnerable to deception. Even when facts can be established and agreed upon, they may be open to multiple interpretations.  Even, perhaps especially, when applying strict standards of observation, logic, and rationality, we may overlook the unpredictable, often irrational human equation.  To what extent do we see what we want to see and believe what we want to be true?  It may even be possible to base our whole lives on a false belief (See blog post on Blame, Nov., 2015).

Joyce Maynard’s recent novel Under the Influence could just as well be titled Under the Spell, as the first-person narrator, Helen, a recovering alcoholic who has lost custody of her son because of her drinking, falls under the spell of a wealthy couple who “take her in,” not only in the sense of providing friendship and support, but also in the sense of deceiving her with their false show of glamour and goodness, charity, and kindness. 

Granted, Helen, a professional photographer, provides multiple services to the Havillands in return for their favors, but, even so, it is a bit too good to be true.  Does this couple have to use their wealth to buy friendship?  Blinded by her own neediness, Helen falls under the spell of this upbeat couple and their exciting, glittery life style, ignoring one red flag after another, abandoning her one faithful friend, and eventually choosing the Havillands over a dull but wise fiancé, who tries to warn her that “something’s not right here.” 

Helen’s greatest need is to get her son back.  She uses the couple, especially the husband, Swift, who admits he is a just a grown-up, fun-loving kid himself, to lure her son back into her life.  Swift teaches him to swim and keeps him entertained with toys and games, acting almost as a bribe to draw young Ollie back into Helen’s life.  Swift also promises to have his lawyer pursue the legal means for Helen to regain custody. 

Despite becoming Ollie’s favorite playmate and serving as the means by which Helen hopes to get her son back, when a tragic accident occurs involving his own grown son, Swift quickly turns on Ollie, trying to shift blame for the accident from his own son to Helen’s.

That becomes the wake-up call that Helen finally hears.  In the end she does regain custody, but as much because of problems in her ex-husband’s new family as the friendship with Swift.  Along the way she has lost her previous best friend and her fiancé.

Meanwhile, the Havillands crash and burn as financial irregularities are uncovered that lead to indictments for both Swift and his son, thanks to some behind-the-scenes sleuthing by Helen’s ex-fiancé.

In a recent commentary (http://theweek.com/articles/608203/joyce-maynards-6-favorite-books), Joyce Maynard identifies her key theme as the seductiveness of friendship and The Great Gatsby (see blog post, June, 2014) as a key source of inspiration.

The traditional seduction narrative, as she notes, involves romantic relationships, but there can be a fine line between romance and friendship, and any relationship can, no doubt, be subject to the manipulation and deception often involved in seduction.

The traditional narrative also often ends in tragedy for the (most frequently) female protagonist, thus serving as a kind of cautionary tale of warning to its young female romance readers, and the novels Maynard cites in her commentary all involve friendships that go awry, often ending in tragedy, though the sympathetic protagonist may survive to tell about it, as Helen does.

It is really Ava Havilland, the wife, who takes Helen under her wing and befriends her.  The novel begins with a chance sighting that Helen gets of Ava years after the dissolution of their friendship.  Ava has become a tragic and lonely figure, sans Swift, sans glamour, sans Helen.  The rest of the novel is a flashback to their first meeting, the blossoming of their friendship, the increasing importance of Swift to Helen’s relationship with her son, the accident, the betrayal and end of the relationship, Helen’s recovery, and the Havillands’ decline.

“The painful dissolution of a friendship is a universal theme, “ Maynard states in the above commentary.  “In my life,” she says, “the ends of certain friendships have hurt as much as the end of any love affair.”  Given that she kept a copy of The Great Gatsby on her desk as she wrote, it is tempting to see Gatsby with his wealth, glamour, grandiosity, and hidden dark side, as a model for the Havillands.

The friendship theme hasn’t received a lot of attention in Gatsby, though some have seen a same-sex attraction on Nick’s part.  Certainly Nick is as fascinated and drawn to Gatsby as Helen is to the Havillands.  Also, just as Nick is self-deceptive about his role in the dark underside of Gatsby’s romantic idealism, so Helen is self-deceptive in the way she rationalizes the Havilland’s behavior when those red flags go up. 

It is not just that appearances can be deceptive, but, all too often, we participate in our own deception.

Both Nick and Helen escape the worst.  Gatsby is murdered and the Havillands lose their lavish lifestyle, just punishment for the latter, perhaps not such just punishment for the former.  Nick leaves the East Coast and returns to the, in his mind, more “decent,” less corrupt Midwest of his upbringing.  Helen remains in California, raises her son as a single mother, and, as he prepares to go off to college, decides to call that ex-fiancé to see if there is any hope for rekindling their relationship.  We’re left in uncertainty about both Nick’s and Helen’s futures. Presumably, they’ve both learned some lessons along the way, about illusion vs. reality, about self-deception, about friendship.

Whatever comparisons and contrasts there may be between the two novels, Under the Influence does not rise to the level of The Great Gatsby in terms of literary quality.  It’s a B novel, at best, though it resonates with those universal themes.

Blame

I had panned Michelle Huneven's 2014 novel Off Course as “Loser Lit” (see Aug. 19, 2015, post), but Blame (2009) deserves to have been nominated for the National Book Critic’s Award, not only for its thought-provoking variation on a literary convention, but also for its unusual structure and noteworthy style.

One of her friends refers to Patsy's story as a cautionary tale or recovery narrative. I don't really equate the two, however. A cautionary tale usually ends in disaster, thus underscoring the story's warning against certain behaviors. A recovery narrative, on the other hand, typically ends positively after the protagonist has overcome illness, bad fortune, or poor choices. And usually the recovery is self-directed, testifying to the protagonist's strong character.

Blame is a recovery narrative with a twist, in that the poor choices and bad fortune turn out to be not quite what Patsy thought she was recovering from.  The title could just as well have been Guilt, since the novel mostly focuses on Patsy's efforts to make amends and redeem herself from a terrible mistake resulting in the death of two people. In the end she discovers she is less guilty than originally thought.

The most interesting question in this situation is what you would do if you suddenly discovered the assumption you had based your life on was false.  Would you second-guess every decision you had made? Would the false assumption negate the validity of the life you built based on it? Would it undercut your very authenticity?  Pasty doesn't take it that far, but she does make some changes as the truth of the past reveals some truths in the present.

Unlike the typical recovery narrative, this one leaves us, not with the sense of redemption so much as a sense of uncertainty, uncertainty about our responsibility for the past, our self-knowledge in the present, and our prospects for the future.

I say "our" because we all base our life choices on certain assumptions, which may or may not be true; we've all had the experience of suddenly "seeing the light" as the truth is revealed to us, of suddenly realizing what we thought was true was false all along, or conversely that what we thought was false was in fact true.  And we all know what it's like to have to question our lives, our expectations, and ourselves.  Just when we think we've got our act together, something unexpected throws us off balance. Real lives just don't easily fit the neat formulas of literary convention.

The first chapter of Blame is narrated from the point of view of a minor character, who introduces us to Patsy and later becomes the means by which Patsy learns the truth that has been withheld from her. The rest of the novel is recounted from Patsy's point of view. I found this shift awkward and puzzling, but it does provide some foreshadowing and a glimpse of the main character from another perspective.

Michelle Huneven is a good writer.  Her style is not particularly distinctive, but it’s not pedestrian either.  On almost every page there a striking image or turn of phrase that makes the reading experience worthwhile, even when you’re not terribly keen on the character or plot.

But what is most noteworthy about the novel is its haunting question: What if the assumption you had based your life on turned out to be false?  As one character says, “It does kind of set you up for a major life review.”

In Patsy’s case it leads to a newfound freedom in the present, uncertainty about the future, and lots of ambiguity about the past.

The Goldfinch

This 2013 novel by Donna Tartt won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction this year.  It received mixed reviews when it was first published and mixed reviews from my literary friends.  Some gave it a thumbs up, some a thumbs down, and some, like me, a sideways thumb.

The strongest reaction from my friends was that it is too long (784 pages), too heavy on detail, repetitive, etc., etc.  I agree that economy is not the author’s strong point, and especially since a lot of the detail involves copious consumption of drugs and alcohol, I almost didn’t finish it myself.  I stuck with it, partly because I was looking for a good reason to award it a Pulitzer Prize; partly because I was curious how the main character, suffering from multiple psychological wounds, was going to end up; and partly because I was quite mesmerized by the actual Fabritius painting “The Goldfinch” as well as its fictional fate in the novel.

In any case, apart from the suspense surrounding Theo Decker’s life drama, starting at age 13 as a motherless, practically fatherless, unintentional art thief, the novel is worth our time for the complexity, the artistry, and the profundity that makes any work of fiction worth reading, however long and drawn out.

By the way, at one point the text indirectly defends the excessive detail in the novel, suggesting that no detail in a work of art is wasted.  The artist is trying to tell us something with every brushstroke.  That may be true, but a writer might be wise to attend to her readers’ capacity, lest she lose them.

As for the complexity, The Goldfinch can be read, studied, and appreciated from numerous perspectives.  It is a coming of age story as Theo is initiated into a world of violence, homelessness, drug addiction, petty theft, as well as not so petty theft, and a whole dark underworld of criminal activity.  It is also a conversion/recovery narrative as he eventually meets what he himself calls his Damascus moment, alone and suicidal in an Amsterdam hotel (on Christmas Day no less), and begins to take responsibility for his past misdeeds and heal from the early and sustained effects of his traumatized childhood.

It is also a realistic study of the dark underside of modern civilization in contemporary settings like New York City, the Las Vegas desert, and Amsterdam.  In these settings the disease of modern life is played out with drugs, alcohol, family dysfunction, gambling, deception, , crime, heartbreak, anxiety, pain, loss, and the incessant longing, not only for freedom from our history and circumstances, but also for the love and belonging that could somehow fill the absence of family and romantic fulfillment.

It is a psychological drama of Oedipal conflict, repressed desire, hostility, and relentless anxiety.

And it is a captivity narrative as Theo is trapped by his personal and social circumstances, his own desires, and the painting itself, his “fateful object.”

At another level it is the universal story of human tragedy and redemption—the hero’s entrance under dangerous conditions, his initiation into evil, withdrawal, trial and quest, the encounter with death, rebirth and return.  In this case the mythic promises of redemption and atonement are muted by the compromises of reality, but they are not entirely denied.  Though in the end Theo calls himself a nihilist, he leaves the door open for God and an afterlife. 

What redeems the “cesspool” of life, Theo comes to see, is art, illusory as it may be, for it is in art that reality strikes up against the ideal, and it is in that space that we glimpse a mysterious something that transcends the human tragedy and the “wreck of time.”

And what redeems The Goldfinch, for all its failures, is the way it weaves great works of art through its narrative, reminding us, as Theo comes to see, how beautiful objects can speak to us past the limitations of time, space, and mortality.

Thus in the first chapter, titled “Boy with a Skull,” Theo’s mother shows him Hal’s painting of the same name just moments before a terrorist explosion rocks the museum, killing her, turning Theo’s like upside down, and thrusting him into a future in which his mother’s absence becomes his constant psychological companion.

In that chapter, his mother, an art lover and student of art history, also delivers a commentary on “The Anatomy Lesson,” in which a cadaver, laid out on a table, is being dissected, surrounded by students and doctors in a medical school.  In chapter two, titled “The Anatomy Lesson,” Theo learns the lessons of loss in the immediate aftermath of his mother’s death.  As the painting exposes the stark mortality of every individual life, so Theo continues to be haunted by his mother’s death just as we are all required to live our own lives in death’s shadow.

But the painting Theo’s mother had really come to see that fateful day is “The Goldfinch” by Fabritius, a trompe l’oeil of a goldfinch “chained to a perch by its twig of an ankle.”  In the 17^th century goldfinches were popular as indoor pets, chained to their feeders in this fashion, instead of being caged as pet birds are today.  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Goldfinch_(painting))  A trompe l’oeil is a realistic painting that “deceives the eye” into seeing it as an actual object.  Theo’s mother first loved a reproduction of the painting in an art book she had as a child.  These details become significant later when Hobie, a furniture refinisher who becomes Theo’s surrogate father and the one stable point in his chaotic life, reflects on the value of art even if it is a copy or fake, and when Theo reflects on the value of art even if it is an illusion, because it saves us from gross reality.

The painting of the goldfinch also symbolizes Theo himself, chained to his time and place; chained to his life circumstances; chained to his addictions; chained to the painting itself, which he takes from the museum and has to hide and later rescue; chained to the memory of his mother; chained to a “self one does not want” and “a heart one cannot help.”

The painting thus represents layers and layers of reality and layers and layers of illusion.  The reality of a goldfinch chained to a wall is almost repulsive, but somehow the painting, the deceptive copy of reality, redeems that grossness, that “cesspool,” as Theo calls human reality. 

And the painting, which becomes Theo’s burden, also becomes his salvation, as it lifts him “above the surface of life” and teaches him who he is.  Surrounded by secrets and lies the painting becomes the means of Theo’s redemption, and such is the paradox at the heart of the novel—how truth cannot be separated from falsehood, good from evil, beauty from corruption, love from loathing, life from death.

Ironically, Theo’s friend/enemy, Boris, a Russian immigrant who had lived for a while in Indonesia, converted to Islam, and been given the Arabic name Badr al-Dine (“Badr” means “light”), for all his darkness—drug addiction, crime—becomes the means by which the painting is rescued and Theo is saved from punishment for having innocently removed the painting from the museum in the aftermath of the explosion.  And it is the light that draws Theo’s mother to both the paintings that she loves (“that clear pure daylight” in “The Goldfinch”) and those that she hates (that “radioactive” quality of the corpse in “The Anatomy Lesson”). 

No light without darkness, no darkness without light; no imagination without reality, no reality without imagination; no truth without illusion; no illusion without truth.

Healing Emotional Wounds

Having heard the story before it was written, I anxiously awaited the publication of this 2013 book (http://healingemotionalwoundsbooks.com/) by my college classmate Nancy Welch, a pediatrician and Director of the Health Department in Chesapeake, Virginia, my home state.

We had met during orientation week at Lynchburg College in Lynchburg, VA, in 1964.  She took the biology and chemistry academic track and I took the English and humanities track, so we didn’t have a lot of classes together, but we always knew each other.  In 1968, she went off to Duke Medical School and I,  to the University of Virginia.  I can’t remember exactly how we reconnected in the 90s, but she always sent a Christmas card after that, and when I visited relatives in the Tidewater area of Virginia, we would get together for lunch.

That’s how I came to hear the story behind this book, not only of the events it recounts but also the story of its composition, the editing process, and, finally, the long-awaited publication.

It is hard for me to believe that I know someone who went through the experiences Nancy narrates in this book, the story of suddenly deciding in her fifties to adopt two children from the Ukraine and raise them as a single parent.

I had lived, as the military dependent of my career Army father, first in Taiwan, then in Okinawa; later I had lived in Germany for nine months as an adult, never having studied the language.  Even so, I was shocked by the conditions Nancy endured on her two trips to the Ukraine, not knowing a word of the language.  Those circumstances, it would turn out, were the least of the challenges she faced.

The two children she adopted (Alec and Alyona—not their real names) had both suffered early infancy and childhood trauma from neglect and abuse.   Alec was later diagnosed with Asperger’s and Alyona with Bipolar Disorder.  Into Nancy’s staid, professional, single life, they brought chaos, disruption, and violence, which were what they knew and how they coped with their own internal pain.

Alyona had already been adopted once by an Italian family and returned to the Ukrainian orphanage because she was so violent.  Nancy was determined, however, that she would succeed with these children.  It took years of patience; the support of church, neighbors, colleagues, friends; the help of therapists and counselors; professional care; sheer endurance; a stubborn refusal to give up; and a seemingly bottomless reservoir of love; but eventually Nancy, Alec, and Alyona became a family, bonded by love, trust, and a sense of pride for having overcome such tremendous odds. 

Were you to meet Alec and Alyona today, at age 21, Nancy says, you would not believe the events of the book were true.  They are thriving young adults ready to move on into their future lives, knowing that their mother will be there for them, no matter what.  It is hard to imagine how any obstacle they might face in the future could be insurmountable, given all they have been through.

When Nancy wrote the first draft of the book, she says, her editor tossed it back to her, saying, “You've told the story of the children, but you haven’t told your own story, the story of why you did this and how.  This is your story too.”

A private, professional person, Nancy had to learn how to open herself up to self-disclosure, allow herself to become vulnerable, and share her motivations; her doubts and fears, as well as her hopes and dreams; her failures, as well as her successes; and her own personal story of growing up in a loving, supportive family; building a successful career; and finally deciding, based on a personal conviction of being called by her faith; to become a mother.

As a literature and rhetoric scholar, I recognize the story of the children as a classic redemption narrative, following the pattern of sickness-recovery-health, and the story of the author as a kind of quest tale, as trials are suffered and obstacles overcome.  It could also be read as an identity quest as Nancy's character and self-concept are repeatedly tested and ultimately vindicated.

It might not even be too great a stretch as to view the narrative as a kind of salvation story, for Nancy, with help from her community and from health professionals to be sure, was the primary agent by which these two severely wounded children were saved from what could have surely been a very dark fate indeed.

But, for the most part, I read her book, as a personal friend, full of admiration for all Nancy had accomplished, not only with her children, but also with her task of turning her parenting experience into a readable, sometimes heart-pounding, sometimes heart-wrenching, always inspiring testimony to the power of determination, commitment, and ultimately, of love.

Every Last One

Coincidentally, immediately after The Scent of Rain and Lightning (see previous post), I read another novel about an ordinary family experiencing extraordinary tragedy, Anna Quindlen’s Every Last One (2010).  This time I’m reminded of Judith Guest’s Ordinary People (1976), which I taught to college students in a course on gender issues in literature. 

Guest’s novel focuses on the aftereffects of the accidental drowning of the older son and attempted suicide of the younger one on an affluent, suburban family.  The traumatic events have already occurred when the novel begins, and we watch as the younger son travels his journey to health and healing, with the help of an able psychologist, and as his parents, particularly his mother, slowly unravel.  In The Scent of Rain and Lightning, we learn of the tragic events through a lengthy flashback.  The death of Jody’s parents thus occurs near the center of the novel.  Similarly, the tragic event of Every Last One occurs at almost the exact center of the novel, after 17 chapters on the everyday life of the Lathams, another affluent, suburban family.

During those 17 chapters there is a continuous sense of foreboding.  There is the middle school son suffering from depression, the teenage daughter who breaks up with her boyfriend (who doesn’t take it well), the stable but humdrum marriage, and the hint of previous infidelity, but nothing that really seems to justify the ominous air of impending doom.  Will there be a divorce? Suicide? Something worse? Something will happen, but what?  Nothing prepares us for the “something worse” that occurs to that family on what seems to be a typical New Year’s Eve, though the signs have been there all along.  I read those signs no better than the mother of the family, the ever-vigilant mother ceaselessly looking out for potential threats to the well-being of her family.

The last 16 chapters tell of the restoration of order, of health, of something approaching normal life, punctuated by mini-crises and transitions.

The novel is structured by the passing seasons and the annual events (high school prom, summer camp, Halloween, Christmas and New Year’s, high school graduation, summer camp, etc).  The primary sections are marked by three houses: the original family home, the transitional guest house of a friend, and the new house, where Mary Beth, the mother, seeks to build a new life.

On one level this is a story of motherhood, the process of maintaining the order, health, and happiness of the family.  Although Mary Beth runs her own landscaping business in the community, her primary focus is the caretaking of her family: keeping house for them, feeding them, surveilling them, disciplining them, creating opportunities for them, and supporting them.  At one point, late in the novel, she says that every fear is a fear of dying, “every last one,” and it has been her mission to keep disorder, illness, and death at bay.  It turns out that no amount of education, affluence, privilege, caretaking, or vigilance can ensure her success.  And so her mission must become learning to live with that knowledge.

As with all novels there are political messages if you look for them. For example:  with all our progress women still bear primary responsibility for domestic life and therefore the blame for its failures and oversights; or, while class privilege cannot protect you from tragedy, it can sure help insulate you as you pick up the pieces (friends with guest houses, prescription medication, life insurance, a generous inheritance, psychologists, grief counselors).   

Mary Beth can be seen as a social “victim” in one case and a beneficiary in the other.  Transcending her position in the matrix of social power, however, is the universal quest for order, health, and happiness in a world in which death is the universal end and the universal fear.

Kiernan, the boyfriend that the Latham’s daughter, Ruby, breaks up with the night of prom, had been a childhood friend, the son of a family who had once lived next door.  Their quest for order, health, and happiness had been derailed early, first by the drowning death of Kiernan’s younger brother in the backyard pool, then by divorce, and, then, apparently, by  the emotional instability of the mother, Deborah.

Much later, in Kiernan’s makeshift room is found a wall of photographs he has taken of Mary Beth’s family, especially of Ruby, with the words “Happy Families” spray painted over them.  This reference to the famous quote from Tolstoy in *Anna Karenina* is suggestive: “Happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”  Whatever you think of the quote, Kiernan seems to prefer Ruby’s family to his own.  At least the Lathams are intact.

The quest for family happiness and the contrast between “happy” and “unhappy” families are central to the book.  Further, if the Lathams represent the “happy,” then Kiernan’s family represents, not only the “unhappy,” but also the shadow, or dark side, of the “happy” family. 

The two have been closely connected: they lived next door to each other, Deborah and Mary Beth were best friends, Kiernan and Ruby had been a “couple” almost from childhood, and, it turns out, Mary Beth had had a brief adulterous fling with Deborah’s husband.  Did Deborah know? Did Kiernan know?  The husband had been a serial adulterer, so when Deborah threw him out, it’s not clear how much she knew about all her husband’s partners.  Whether Deborah “knew” or not, Mary Beth’s own guilt might have weakened the friendship.   In any case, after the divorce Deborah and Kiernan move, and, while Kiernan continues to be a regular at the Latham home, Mary Beth’s friendship with Deborah wanes. 

Mary Beth’s affair, however brief, is one indication that all is not well in the “happy” Latham family.  And how much does her own family know about that?  If Kiernan knows, did he tell Ruby?  Does Mary Beth’s husband know?  Another sign is the tension between the Latham twin sons, one of whom is a successful athlete, who has lots of friends, unlike his brother, who is more of a loner with an artistic bent.  The latter son shows signs of depression and starts seeing a psychologist, who specializes in twins.  Then there is the break-up between Ruby and Kiernan, which seems to liberate Ruby, but devastates Kiernan, who keeps finding excuses to see Ruby and visit the family.

After that fateful New Year’s Eve, when the dark side erupts, Kiernan’s family is further destroyed, the Lathams are no longer “intact,” much less “happy,” and Deborah blames Mary Beth.   Was Tolstoy right, or is there only a thin line of difference between the two types of families, a line that can be crossed in an instant?

Is hope to be found in the contrast between the ways the two former friends respond to their respective tragedies?  When Deborah takes revenge by deliberately crashing into Mary Beth’s car multiple times in a parking lot, it does not bode well for her recovery.  Mary Beth, on the other hand, while, for the first time, setting a clear boundary between herself and Deborah, appears to be on the road to rebuilding her life and what’s left of her family, not that one ever fully recovers from the kind of tragedy she suffered.  At least, as she says at the end, she is “trying.”  

That may be the most redemption the novel offers in this sadly tragic tale.  There is more reason for hope, but that would give away too much to anyone interested in reading the book for themselves.  In any case, whatever hope we are left with is tempered by the knowledge that death is still the universal end and the universal fear for every last one of us.

Narrative of the Life of an American Slave

In the previous two posts the popular American redemptive narrative, or recovery plot, was mentioned, and the slave narrative was cited as one example. Frederick Douglass' Narrative of the Life of an American Slave is probably the best known, most popular, and classic type of the slave narrative.

By the time it was published (1845), the conventional formulaic structure was well established: moving from an account of life in slavery to a turning point of escape, rescue or manumission and then to an account of life in freedom. Douglass follows this pattern and includes almost all the elements of the slave narrative formula: his birth in slavery; obscure parentage; bleak conditions of food, clothing, shelter, work; cruel overseer, whippings, becoming sensitive to suffering; learning to read and write; developing a special sense of destiny; brutality of Christian slave owners; rebelling against cruel treatment; failed escape attempts; successful escape; new home and identity; reflections on slavery. (http://www.redemptiveself.northwestern.edu/)

What distinguishes Douglass' Narrative from others of its type is the clarity and effectiveness of its style. While there are a couple of places where rhetorical flourishes seem excessive, for the most part the style is understated, matter-of-fact, and transparent.

Appropriate to his primary abolitionist purpose, Douglass crafts a style that is broadly appealing and accessible to a mass audience. He projects the persona of an intelligent, practical man who is sensitive to the suffering of his fellow slaves, yet tough enough to fight back when necessary and smart enough to deceive his captors in order to learn how to read and write and ultimately to plan and execute his own escape.

Some of his white mentors in the anti-slavery movement thought his autobiography would be more credible if it were written in a "plantation" style using slave vernacular, but Douglass insisted on demonstrating his literacy and self-education by aiming at a middle range between the colloquial and the high-flown. In some ways, he anticipates the realistic, journalistic style that came to dominate post-Civil War American literature.

While there are moments of melodrama, for the most part Douglass tells his story in a straightforward, factual, down-to-earth manner, establishing his credibility through a literate, direct, and confident voice. He successfully appropriates Christian symbolism and Biblical language to construct a devastating critique of the hypocritical religous underpinnings of the institution of slavery.

For the most part his tone is either neutral or directly denunciatory of slavery, but he sometimes takes a sentimental turn, sometimes an ironic one. Lest any reader be inclined to view his occasional sentimentalism as somehow weak, he uses the opening chapter to satirically address the oft-cited passage of Genesis 9:20-27, the story of Noah cursing Ham to a life of bondage, regularly used as Biblical justification for slavery: "If the lineal descendents of Ham are alone to be scriptually enslaved, it is certain that slavery at the south must soon become unscriptural; for thousands are ushered into the world annually, who, like myself, owe their existence to white fathers, and those fathers most frequently their own masters." Such ironic touches effectively display a toughness of tone as well as of argument.

Perhaps the ultimate irony and most brilliant rhetorical stroke is Douglass' implicit dramatization of himself as the quintessential American type--the self-made man, the "rugged individualist"-- the personification of Emersonian self-reliance. While Douglass acknowledges his bonds of friendship with other slaves and the help he received from others in his escape, what emerges most strongly is the profile of a man who acts independently to liberate himself from oppression. By presenting himself in these terms, Douglass' makes a powerful argument that a black slave is as much an American as the pioneer, the entrepreneur, or the original settlers throwing off the yoke of European oppression.

Without a doubt, Frederick Douglass' Narrative of the Life of an American Slave is one of the most remarkable works of political rhetoric to have been produced in all of American literature.

The Danish Girl

Americans love the redemptive narrative, the recovery plot (see previous post), and throughout our history it has taken many forms: spiritual autobiography, captivity narrative, slave narrative, economic success story, courtship romance, "coming of age," medical/psychological recovery. All of these genres involve the struggle with obstacles, redemption from suffering, and the attainment of salvation, freedom, fame and fortune, romantic love, maturity, and/or recovery from dis-ease, either physical or psychological or both.

A contemporary sub-set of the physical/psychological recovery plot is the story of the transexual, who undergoes physical, psychological, and social transformation to redeem him/herself from the bondage of a body and a gender role that do not fit and to achieve a sense of wholeness and authenticity in a new body and new gender identity.The Danish Girl by David Ebershoff (2000) is a recent fictional version of an experience that has been recounted in transexual autobiographies from Jan Morris' Conundrum (1974) to Jennifer Boylan's She's Not There (2003). In this work of fiction Ebershoff imagines his way into the life of Danish painter Einer Wegener, who underwent the first surgical sex change in Dresden in 1931 to become Lili Elbe, all with the help and support of his/her wife Greta Waud.

What strikes me as remarkable about this novel is the way in which it represents the transexual journey as a biological experience. Obviously, it is a psychological and social experience as well, and the novel portrays it as such. But more than any other account I have read, in this novel the body of Einer/Lili is almost a part of the setting of the narrative. Einer/Lili's body is like a stage on which the transexual drama is acted out. Ebershoff captures the biological, as well as the psychological and social, suffering of Einer/Lili, and explores the erotic dimension of the experience more than any other author I have read. One has the sense that Lili's physical survival depends upon a successful transformation from a male to a female body.

Lili's redemption and liberation from this suffering comes by way of three separate surgeries, during which it is discovered that she has ovaries. The last surgery involves a uterine transplant to make it
possible for her to become pregnant. Ironically, the novel ends with the ominous foreshadowing of Lili's death. The historical Einer/Lili did in fact die about three months after the third surgery, possibly from transplant rejection. Thus this redemptive narrative becomes a tragic one. Lili literally risks her life to save herself, and while her redemption is real, it also ironically leads to her death.

The novel also challenges the popular postmodern view of gender as a social construction rather than an essential part of one's identity. While in one sense Einer/Lili serves as an example of the fluidity and indeterminacy of gender identity, in another she/he dramatizes its essential psychological and biological reality, experienced by Einer/Lili as a necessity which cannot be denied.

One of the doctors that Greta consults tells her about one of his early cases of male to female surgery: "Who would think it possible" he says, "going from man to woman? Who would risk his career to try something that sounds like something from a myth?" On the next page, in a book on gender ambiguity, Einer/Lili reads the myth of Hermes and Aphrodite, whose union produced Hermaphroditus, an intersex character. And, indeed, the transgender character in literature can perhaps be traced back to the metamorphoses and shape-shifting of ancient mythology.

As Greta ponders Einer/Lili's plight, she thinks of him/her as being "on a perpetual track of transformation, as if these changes...would never cease, would lead to no end. And when she thought about it, who wasn't always changing? Wasn't everyone always turning into someone
new?" For Greta, Einer/Lili was just a more extreme and dramatic version of all of us.

The Shack

A convergence of coincidences led me to read this book by Wm. Paul Young (2007), which I might not otherwise have bothered with. Three people, none of whom know each other and one of whom doesn't even know me, independently recommended it.

I found myself more interested in the murder mystery and family drama than with the religous fantasy. I was disappointed we didn't get to meet the killer and see him brought to justice. However, I was intrigued by the psychological narrative of a father, estranged from his own father, grieving the murder of his six-year-old daughter finally finding some semblance of resolution by returning to the scene of the brutal crime, the shack. Sometimes, relief from pain can only be found by confronting it directly and moving through it, not by hiding, protecting, avoiding, or repressing.

I found the religious fantasy to be overly contrived. God appears as an African American woman, who is a really good cook. Jesus is accurately represented as a Jewish man, and the Holy Ghost is an Asian woman. Despite the suggestion of an interfaith or multifaith spirituality, I suspect most non-Christian readers will have trouble getting past the dramatization of traditional Christian doctrine: trinity, Jesus as divine, Christ as savior. The non-spiritual, strictly materialist reader may find the whole fantasy quite laughable.

However, the message of spiritual truth being found in relationship rather than orthodoxy, love rather than rules, and forgiveness rather than dogma is a message that transcends religous boundaries. Even the atheist can appreciate the power of the human spirit freeing itself from the toxic effects of anger, hate, fear, grief, and self-loathing to find peace by letting go of past pain and rejoining the human community.

One recurrent theme kept bothering me. "Original sin" seemed to be defined in terms of "independence" from humanity as well as God. Yet, considerable independence from established religious institutions must have been required to write a book which departs from and, indeed, challenges conventional Christianity. Without independence from human institutions, including institutionalized conceptions of the "spiritual," an encounter with authentic spirituality may not be possible. Furthermore, without some degree of independence from the "spiritual," we would not be capable of consciously experiencing it.

Americans love the redemptive narrative, and this text can be viewed as a contemporary psychological/spiritual version of the "recovery" plot, which has a long American tradition reaching back to spiritual autobiographies of the early Puritans. The traditional pattern of sin--forgiveness--salvation is recapitulated in the more contemporary pattern of dis-ease--reconciliation--restoration to health and wholeness.