There is always a story connected to Mother and me, a story made all the more frightening through each inventive retelling among neighbours. It is a story, effectively vague, of a young man deeply “troubled”, and of a younger brother carrying “history”, and of a mother showing now the creep of “madness”.
Here's my awful confession: Whenever I hear that there's been some gang-related shooting in Scarborough, it doesn't feel like a full-blown tragedy to me; you run with gangs, you run those risks (naturally, I do empathise with the families who lose their sons; with the neighbourhoods terrorised by drive-by shootings; the unintended victims). And note: Just because the Scarborough gangs tend to be made up of young men of colour, my reaction isn't race-related; I am also emotionally unaffected by white bikers or mafiosi gunning each other down, blowing each other up; this is a them thing that feels unrelated to me. So what author David Chariandy does in Brother feels important and overdue – by giving voice to these young men of colour and exposing the reality of what a newspaper might label their “gang”, I was given that one person to identify with that removes the barrier between “them” and “me”; I felt and personalised the tragedy. This is what good books do.
“I still think of Francis,” she says.
Brother opens ten years after an unnamed event in which the main character, Michael's, older brother Francis has apparently died. Raised by a single mother – a Trinidadian emigrant who is now confounded by “complicated grief” – Michael still lives in that same apartment in the same run-down housing complex in Scarborough, now taking care of the mother who did her best to care for her two sons. Although Michael has tried to shield his mother from the sadness of being reminded of Francis over the years, when people from their past begin showing up in the present, it's unclear which one of them is too fragile to confront the memories. In each chapter, the narrative shifts between the present, the childhood of the brothers, and the events that led directly to Francis' death in 1991; each stream adding vital information to the whole picture.
Had I recognized it only then? We were losers and neighbourhood schemers. We were the children of the help, without futures. We were, none of us, what our parents wanted us to be. We were not what any other adults wanted us to be. We were nobodies, or else, somehow, a city.
For a rather short book, Chariandy includes just enough scenes in each time stream to show who these brothers are: Their mother locking them in the apartment as young children so she could go to cleaning jobs, hoping for double shifts and overtime just to fill the fridge; the boys sneaking out to explore the Rouge Valley (a garbage-strewn rift of green that runs through the neighbourhood); their mother stressing education (despite teachers recommending that the bright brothers be lowered from the academic level to the basic; apparently this happened to Chariandy – now a PhD and professor at Simon Fraser – at a school in the same neighbourhood). These are good boys, even if shopkeepers watch them warily; even if they must stand by raging impotently as strangers hurl racial slurs at their mother; even if the nightly news has conditioned them to be scared of “black criminals”. When, in the stream leading up to Francis' death, they witness the murder of Anton – a neighbourhood acquaintance and the kind of low-level criminal that I generally find it hard to empathise with – the brothers are cuffed and roughed up by the police in a “round up everyone and sort it out later” operation. Francis is angered by this emasculation and starts spending more time with his “gang”: a group of boys who are experimenting with vinyl and turntables, exploring the musical possibilities at the dawn of hip hop. These are good boys, but in the atmosphere following Anton's death, compounded by further injustice, Francis starts to push back.
Brother explores many issues – masculinity, race relations, police brutality, poverty – and lays bare the challenging immigrant experience. I loved the spicy meals that the boys' mother would fry up, empathised with her need to work constantly as menial help to provide her sons with the bare necessities, and respected the dignity that she brought to her life; wearing thin and never complaining. The family makes one trip back to Trinidad when the brothers are young, and they know better than to speak up when their aunt says that she is jealous of the “perfect life” her older sister had found in Canada:
Mother stayed quiet. She did not say that our father had left us years before. She did not admit that she had not had the time or money to complete her studies to become a nurse. She did not hint at the debt or struggles or the aches she often felt. As we headed to the airport, she just nodded and looked out the window at the coconut trees towering black against the evening sky, and the old untended fields of cane stretching out like a sea.
And after the racism – subtle and overt – that she experiences in Canada, the abandonment, lack of real opportunity and social mobility, and most tragically, the loss of her eldest son, I have to wonder if this stoic character thinks the move away from her large, loving family and community had been worth it. There's just so much to think about with this book.
Again, this is a short book, and if I had a complaint it would be that it could be longer – and especially in the present stream, which never felt completely developed – but Chariandy does include enough narrative to give a voice and presence to these youth of Scarborough; he makes them people and that challenges me in a good way. This is what good books do and I hope that Brother's appearance on the Giller Prize longlist gets it the readership that it deserves.
I was born long ago I am the chosen I'm the one I have come to save the day And I won't leave until I'm done So that's why you've got to try You got to breathe and have some fun Though I'm not paid I play this game And I won't stop until I'm done
But what I really want to know is Are you gonna go my way ? And I got to got to know
I don't know why we always cry This we must leave and get undone We must engage and rearrange And turn this planet back to one So tell me why we got to die And kill each other one by one We've got to love and rub-a-dub We've got to dance and be in love
But what I really want to know is Are you gonna go my way ? And I got to got to know
Are you gonna go my way ? 'Cause baby I got to know, yeah
I know I've said it before, but I've gotten pretty bored of my own life story (it's strange that, even today, stories from my childhood feel more urgent and interesting than the things I've done as an adult; and all those childhood stories have been told by now). I haven't added to this project since early July, when I wrote about my decision to go back to college, so I think today I can summarise those two years of school, and hopefully, get to something a little more interesting next week. As for today's song choice: The first time I heard Are You Gonna Go My Way was on Saturday Night Live - I had never seen or heard of Lenny Kravitz before, and I found him absolutely mesmerising; the guitar playing, the swinging dreadlocks, the absolute cool radiating from him, the driving beat of this song; it was an instant infatuation. The lyrics don't have deeper meaning for me this week, but this was one of the few songs from 1993 that have stayed with me (funny how the songs from my childhood are also more vivid in my memory than those that came later).
My two years of college are a bit of a blur to me now, the days all running together, but the most important thing I can say about that experience is that it was the first time I ever put any effort into my education, and I succeeded completely. Getting a diploma in Early Childhood Development meant studying everything from the psychological theories of Freud and Piaget to safety, nutrition, and conflict resolution. I loved the homework, loved learning in an all female environment, and I was just old enough (at 24) to feel like a peer to my professors; I thrived.
Now, this was in Edmonton, and for my first year I had to attend classes at the far southside campus of Grant MacEwan. We lived north of downtown, and although it could have been an easy bus ride for Dave to get to his job at Theatre Network, he didn't think that would look professional and he insisted on having the car every day. Which put me on the bus; which took two transfers and about an hour and a half travel time in each direction. Which in the end, I didn't really mind: That was a whole lot of reading time I could enjoy each day and I was able to read everything even tangentially related to my courses; how could I not do well? Even in the winter, when Edmonton famously gets to forty below, I would be dressed in my long down coat, at the bus stop, in the early morning dark, and just happy to be doing exactly what I wanted to be doing. I'd bring a thermos full of coffee to school with me every day and have my first cup on that first bus - warming up down to my toes - enjoy my reading time, and when I got to campus, would go find my friends and sit for another cup. Sometimes different professors would sit with us before class started, and we would have interesting conversations beyond the scope of what we were being taught. I had more than one instructor ask me why I wasn't at the university instead and I took offense to that - I deeply believed in the philosophy of early childhood care that we were being taught, and on behalf of all the future preschoolers I could be moulding, I figured that they deserved to be cared for by "book smart" people such as myself; if I was considered bright enough for university, then I was just bright enough for ECD as well.
The first year at the southside campus went well - even if it would be annoying for me to get home at the end of a long day to find Dave and Curtis playing Nintendo, waiting for me to come and make dinner for everyone - and the following summer, I decided to get ahead on my second year by taking the mandatory English class and writing a challenge exam for the second year nutrition course (I had read that you could challenge this course, so I taught the syllabus to myself over the summer, and when I went to write the exam, I was nearly not allowed: this "challenge" was meant for people who had extensive experience in the field and wouldn't benefit from further instruction, but since that wasn't stated in the course handbook, I was finally allowed to write the exam and I aced it. I can't really explain why I didn't want to take that course; I guess it just seemed like an opportunity to advance.) The English class was taught by a professor from the U of A, and although I didn't technically need to take it - having taken a couple of English courses at the University of Lethbridge that I could have transferred over - I was really keen to take what was advertised as a University-level course, now that I was actually trying. This course had a lot of reading - we needed to read and pretty much memorise countless short stories and essays - and a lot of writing, and I loved every minute of it: I remember spending long days out in the warm sun on the back deck, my big dog Moe by my side, and closely reading Orwell's fiction and nonfiction; finally understanding how to write a proper essay. I loved this course and the professor praised me often. (I told a couple of stories at the end of this book review, which I won't repeat here.)
The second year was transferred to the newly renovated downtown campus, which was one short bus ride from my house, or when the weather was fine, a less than thirty minute walk that I took often (even if it meant being on foot in some dodgy neighbourhoods; I wasn't scared of much in the daylight.) Again, I loved the learning and my classmates and my professors, and most of all, I just loved feeling successful.
I could write about what I remember from my courses, but more interesting in my memory were my practical placements and how they evolved my thinking about child care. My first placement was at a public school in a very poor neighbourhood. The school offered free breakfasts, had a couple local bakeries donate day old products that any parent could help themselves to, had a clothing exchange (or, if the parents had nothing to exchange, they were free to just take what they needed), and one of the free programs they offered was a preschool drop off. Three of my classmates and I were given totally free reign: We could design any program we wanted, request whatever snacks we wanted to provide, decide on our own what age ranges we could care for. The program room had toys and books and supplies for any aged baby/toddler/preschooler, and it was totally gratifying that my first practicum was in providing a service for parents who needed some time out; but more so, for children who might not be getting enough "proper" stimulation at home. I was intimidated by the idea of being totally on our own in this project, but as the other three in my group had all worked in daycares before, they knew the drill and we ran a great program. I really felt like what I had decided to do with my life would make a difference.
My second placement was in a kindergarten, and there I had far less freedom and responsibility. The teacher was very good at her job - the children were all well behaved and engaged - and I was pretty much a gopher. It was an interesting look into how a kindergarten runs, and when the teacher asked me why I wasn't at university, where I could certainly handle becoming a teacher myself, I was taken aback: after seeing the difference I could make on my first placement, I really believed that my destiny was to prepare preschoolers of every situation for kindergarten; that making sure every child had an equal footing before school even began was the most noble of aspirations.
I really was starry-eyed about the importance of Early Childhood Education and I totally swallowed every progressive theory that I was taught. I believed that the government should fund universal daycare because I was being indoctrinated to believe that properly-trained ECE workers were better qualified to prepare children for school and life than even their own parents. It wasn't until I began to see this philosophy in action in my second year that I started to have doubts.
My third practicum was at a publicly-funded daycare; what I had been led to believe would be the very highest quality of care. The workers were ECD educated and unionised, and it was stressed to me that it would follow that that would mean the best care possible. This daycare was in a federal building, and for the most part, served the federal employees. What I soon discovered was that these daycare workers were totally by the book - the program was run with military precision (changing from this activity to that despite the children's levels of engagement), workers' breaks likewise ran by the clock instead of following the flow of the day - and for the most part, these workers had little affection for the children, and zero for their parents; complaining about the one mother who insisted on coming in to breastfeed her two-year-old before naptime; raging about the parents who left their children in for the maximum time, despite the workers knowing that these parents were done work at four and went grocery shopping after work every day instead of picking up their kids immediately. (There was one federal holiday during my placement and it drove the workers nuts that any of the parents who worked in the building would drop their kids off like usual and take a day to themselves.) At every turn, these educated and unionised daycare workers believed that they knew better than the parents what their children needed, but as these were secure and higher-than-average-paid jobs, they were treated like any union jobs; there was nothing creative, spontaneous, or child-focussed about the daily programs. As this was presented to me in school as the Cadillac of programs - so much more beneficial than anything you would find in a soulless, capitalistic, for-profit daycare - I began to experience a crisis of faith: where were the high quality, progressive, equality of opportunity programs that I would want to emulate in my own career?
My last placement just made me sad: This was in another low income neighbourhood; this time in a community center that also offered free food, clothing, laundry and resume services, in addition to a drop-in preschool program. This program was run by two butch lesbians (I assumed they were a couple), and they took an immediate dislike to me and my trembling dreams of wanting to make the world a better place. They mocked my inexperience, made jokes at my expense, and challenged me with their stories of the "real world" of the families we were there to help. One of them told me that the mother of three little siblings that we cared for daily (children were only supposed to be dropped off a max of twice/week, but they allowed these kids to come any time; they never enforced the maximum numbers they were supposed to, by law, care for) was a drug addict who once disappeared for a week after dropping her kids off at the centre. These women took the kids home with them, never notifying the police or Social Services of what had happened, and with her chin thrust out at me challengingly, she said she'd do it again in a heartbeat; wouldn't I? No. No, I wouldn't.
This placement destroyed the last of my ideals. When I learned that my two year college diploma, along with the three years I already had at university, would give me enough credits towards an Education Degree that I could be a teacher with just one more year of schooling, I seriously began to think on that.
But here's the most important factor that kept me out of working in the ECE field: I was pregnant, by design, in my last year of school. And after having had placements in a variety of care situations - each of which was presented to me as the best of its kind - I knew I would never want to put my own children into daycare; that this progressive notion of the state knowing better than parents what is best for their children is utter bullshit. I complained to my mother that I now had zero plan for where or how to work as a mother while keeping my children near me, and she asked me why that was my priority; who said I needed to work outside the home? I answered that it was common knowledge that the days of a single income providing for a family were long gone, and again she challenged me with, Says who? We may not have had a second car or fancy vacations, but my parents had gotten along on one income; by focussing our priorities, Dave and I could, too. And somehow, that's what happened: After being raised in the 70's, and being told repeatedly that when I grew up I could be anything I wanted, except a housewife, I became a housewife; a stay-at-home Mom.
And I may have felt undervalued in that role if I hadn't taken my two year ECD diploma: I was able to transfer everything I learned about early childhood needs and development into the way I parented my girls; they will never remember it, but their preschool days were filled with planned and spontaneous activities, lots of toys and books and guided play, periods of stimulation and rest that followed their own rhythms. They could not have received that kind of personalised attention in group care, and I was confident that I was giving them the very best of me.
So, there's no such thing as a wasted education: The two years I spent in college proved to me that I could succeed in school if I actually put some effort into it, and that experience still makes me feel like I haven't wasted my life. And those years also taught me how to be an effective early childhood caregiver for my own children; I had no idea at the time that I would eventually provide care in my home for other people's children after all.
Not long after they were married, French Canadians Agathe and Réjean moved to the mostly English-speaking village of Pinto – in rural Acadian country – and everything from their remote cabin in the woods to their refusal to speak anything but French bonded them as two against the rest of the world (“Il n'y a que nous.”). In the week before their twentieth anniversary, therefore, it's inconceivable to Agathe that when Réjean's beloved Silverado is found abandoned at the side of the road, he could be a “Voluntary Missing Adult” as the police insist. Switching between the aftermath of “Now” (in which Agathe is forced to get a job in town and mingle with Anglos, even as she insists that Réjean will eventually come home) and the recent past of “Then” (in which small secrets that both Agathe and Réjean guard grow into an unseen gap between them), I Am a Truck sketches a tragicomic narrative, with the two time streams converging on a present that explores the ideas of identity, love, and allegiance. This book is weirdly funny (not quite laugh out loud, but like a Coen Brothers movie), totally charming, unequivocally Canadian, and asks the all important question: Will the world ever see peace between those who drive Chevys and those who favour Fords? (Also: Why would anyone even be thinking about buying a Renault?)
The beginnings of a love story, which I am including at length to capture something of the tone of this book:
Agathe had been watching the eaves for birds while her mother examined potatoes. When Réjean suddenly appeared, his eyes already on her, he saturated her field of vision. Agathe's knees buckled and she slid to the ground. Édithe Thibeault was quick and sharp, tossing the bag of potatoes into the air and catching her daughter before she hit the ground. As the potatoes rained down, Édithe looked up and also set disbelieving eyes on Réjean. At only fifteen, he was close to seven feet tall, with a chest as big as a rain barrel and arms the size of a normal man's legs. His hands were like a bunch of bananas. He was already working on the downy beginnings of his moustache. For her part, Agathe had just the year before peeled her way out of a rind of unremarkability, emerging that summer a very pretty girl. Her mother's friends would comment that Agathe was now pretty enough to be a newscaster or a figure skater and that perhaps, her beauty would be the thing to finally put P'tit Village on the map. For Réjean, she became existence itself. He broke from his brothers and swept in, hands extended, and, without a word, pulled up both Agathe and her mother so that their feet briefly left the ground. His eyes locked on Agathe's until he turned to join his brothers, gazing over his shoulder at her. When she had finally lost sight of his back in the crowd, Agathe began to cry.
On returning from the market, Réjean asked his mother for a haircut and presented himself at the Thibeault's door later that same afternoon, hair clippings still in his ears, asking if Agathe would like to go for a walk. He couldn't have expected that once they reached the woods at the end of the street, Agathe would grab him and pull him to her, knocking the breath out of them both. They had to wait three years to get married.
Twenty years later, Réjean goes to work in the woods every day while Agathe stays home to make date squares and rappie pie, they spend their evenings playing gin rummy, and look forward to acting out inventive role-playing scenarios in bed at night. Why would Réjean walk away from all that? And how could Réjean simply walk away from his Silverado; a new model of which he buys every year? The secrets they keep: Despite loving their time driving together in Réjean's pickup, Agathe has grown tired of the French folk songs her husband insists on listening to on the truck's radio; Agathe wouldn't mind turning to the English rock and roll station every now and then. As for Réjean, when he confides to an acquaintance that he feels something is missing in his life, and this friend recommends that Réjean find a hobby, the big man begins to fantasise about hurting men whom he imagines forcing themselves on his wife (strange hobby, n'est-ce pas?). Wherein these two secrets intersect lies both the tragedy and the comedy.
“C'est ne pas un crime, Martin,” he laughed, “driver un Ford.”
So much in this book is about identity: Chevy drivers vs Ford drivers (and what do you make of a Chevy salesman who drives a Ford?) seems an ironic substitute for the all-too-Canadian dichotomy of Anglos vs Frocophones (and what do you make of the English-speaking man who secretly learns French to better communicate with a man he admires? What of the French-speaking woman who tries out, sotto voce, the English phrases of the brash blonde who whirlwinds into her life?). I liked that in the town of Pinto, there are whole conversations with one person speaking English, the other responding in French, and the two of them understanding each other perfectly (and I also appreciated that the French is untranslated, but not beyond what I learned in school). I even liked the frequent descents into a bastardised Franglais as people sought deeper connections. Mostly, I liked the weirdly comic moments:
He was drinking from a brown bottle, singing, and nodding his head with the momentum of the song. He really approved of this song. There wasn't much to do with this one, except agree.
It's a little hard to pinpoint the timeframe of this book – a character gets a job in Computer Programming, but no one appears to have a cell phone – and the specific rock songs that get Agathe's motor running seem to point to the late Eighties/maybe early Nineties: Agathe laughed and turned it up as Sheriff told her they'd never needed love like they needed her...Cheap Trick wanted her to want them...Trooper told her to see how it felt to raise a little hell of her own. (Unless the radio and the clubs are only playing the “classics”, lol.) Perhaps author Michelle Winters needed to place her story a bit in the past to make it preglobalisation; perhaps it's no longer possible to imagine a French-speaking couple, outside of Quebec, successfully isolating themselves from the wider Anglo community, and there's something interesting to think about in that.
I picked up I Am a Truck because it was longlisted for the 2017 Giller Prize, and while it doesn't feel as weighty as some of the other nominated titles that I've read, I'm really glad that I was introduced to this book; ah, therein lies the beauty of the longlist.
Emptied, Culloden heath: crows, distant hills full of birches. Dettingen: mud, rubble, my lifelong horror's tender shoot. Ghundy Ghar: from our new trenches fell bones from old wars over the very same land.
On September 2, 1752, England followed the rest of Europe in adopting the Gregorian Calendar; causing varying degrees of inconvenience for those who effectively “lost” eleven days. One so affected was British soldier James Wolfe – eventually to be promoted to the level of General and sent to fight the French on the Plains of Abraham – and the lost eleven days that he had planned to spend on leave in Paris so haunted him that today, he annually spends those eleven days haunting Montreal; searching for justice, truth, and understanding for his battlefield misdeeds. Living in a tent on Mount Royal and lurching around the city in the dirty attire of a homeless man (except for when he at last claims his fresh-pressed redcoat from a dry cleaner's), Wolfe encounters those who accept that he is the long dead General made flesh, those who would help him make peace with his past, and those who abuse him as the bum he appears to be. Lost in September is gorgeously written: beautiful sentences that capture both a painful inner journey and a hugely pivotal period in Canadian history (about which I know I wasn't taught enough in school), and has much to say about family, love, duty, and the toils of war on the battlefield soldier; whether the year is 1759 or 2017. I loved just about everything about this book. It would be easy to spoil this read for others, so I'll just record some general observations.
I hear a man hail a taxi shouting old French slang for a chariot – Montrealers mangle quaint, backwoods French with chopped American, yet wield baguettes and bottles of Bordeaux like Parisians.
Lost in September is delightfully specific about its Quebec setting: from the backstreets of Montreal to the tourist-crawling areas around the Plains of Abraham in Quebec City, this book totally captures La Belle Province on the page. It visits the Gaspé Peninsula, the Mordechai Richler Gazebo, La Bibliothèque Gabrielle-Roy; notes the Dollaramas, Vachon cake trucks, Jean Coutu pharmacies. Anyone who has visited Quebec will recognise the references; the people. And it is also specific about the historical period in which General Wolfe made his way up the St Lawrence – burning down homesteads and slicing fishermen's nets – and recounts a rueful narrative of the daybreak raid on General Montcalm's camp. This book is worth a read for just the historical detail.
How long scalped Canadians caterwaul depends on how much blood they lose before you peel 'em. I've seen a yowl fit to wake the Duke of Cumberland's dead father rise out of a completely skinned head. Sound travels slower than death.
And this is the story of a soldier – a General who obeyed orders and achieved his objectives and who, even so, was probably suffering from PTSD long before there was a term for it. Little wonder he haunts the present: demanding his lost leave, wanting to tell the truth of his history, struggling with the memory of his too-clinging mother. There are several letters between mother and son quoted in this book, and I would love to know if they are historically accurate; if the following is actually excerpted from a letter Wolfe's mother wrote to her son's commander on the battlefield:
I am in my son and my son is in me. I bleed by any blade stropped in a room where he dwells. Cold wind near him blows my skin like the membrane enclosing peeled onion or egg: the cloudy layer silken under the carapace. If he perishes, I will with joy abandon my own so-called life: I'll clench and break beyond this wooden agony into freedom. So summon my son to death, if is your plan for him, but know that in doing so you condemn his mother to the same bliss.
The only thread I didn't really like was about the writer who was confronted by Wolfe as she was researching his history for a book she intended to pen. Perhaps this was meant to be an ironic representation of author Kathleen Winter herself in these pages, but her search for his “emanations” – whether reading tarot cards, throwing runes, or having his handwriting analysed – felt a bit flakey and ended the book on a sour note. Even so, I thought that this was a beautifully written, interesting, and weighty examination of many important themes and I think it should have wide appeal.
The 2017 Governor General's Literary Awards Finalists:
Won by We'll All Be Burnt in Our Beds Some Night - which seems an odd choice to me. I liked it, but would have personally given the award to The Water Beetles.
*****
And in the kind of synchronicity of experience that feeds my solipsism: When Kennedy and I were on our recent trip to Italy, one of the other families in the tour was a husband-wife-young-adult-son-unit. After asking Kennedy what she did, and being underwhelmed by her answer, "I just graduated with a Theatre degree", Kennedy asked the son what he was up to, and he replied, "I'm working on my PhD in Philosophy". Kennedy replied that she has a friend whose boyfriend just finished his Masters in Philosophy and is currently looking for a suitable Doctorate program in Europe, and at this, the son looked at his mother and said, "Oh, maybe that'll be a good idea for me, too." That sounded funny to Kennedy -- if you say "I'm working on my PhD", doesn't that mean you're already in your Doctorate program? -- and at her confusion, the son said, "I have six more years to go." Which to us would mean he has finished two years of undergrad (which he confirmed; at a local community college). Funny way to have put it, but since his father has a PhD in Physics (and sounds like he has a cool government job developing AI), "working on a PhD" likely means something a little different in their family. So on the bus one day we noticed that the Dad had a French for Beginner's workbook out, and he did a few exercises as we drove along. That evening at dinner, he said that he thought he'd get a PhD in French (which we thought was a joke, but after he repeated it, I guess it wasn't), and he had some questions for us about French as it's used in Quebec vs. France. Kennedy and I answered what we could -- the other Canadian on the tour, Stacey, was able to answer that at her bank, all Quebec-based contracts are written in formal Parisian French -- and we got to talking about the language police in Quebec (they found it hilarious that a few years ago, Italian restaurants in Montreal were forced to change the names of menu items from the familiar Italian to awkward French equivalents [I remember something about a suggestion to change "spaghetti" to the French for "string noodles"]), and while on the one hand I like to join in laughing about such things, I also added a sympathetic voice about how nearly impossible it is to maintain a separate culture in the middle of a sea of English. And after Stacey started talking about transfer payments, our expensive and useless system of Bilingualism, and the intermittent threats of Quebec separation that we Anglos find a drag on the national project, I made some flippant remark about how General Wolfe beat Montcalm on the Plains of Abraham two hundred and fifty years ago; that that made all of Canada a British colony and that it was only through British largess that Quebec was afforded the right to keep their language and their culture. What I said was meant to be taken in the broad strokes of ancient history (as any Canadian would recognise), but the Dad we were talking with -- the would-be French PhD from Baltimore -- interjected with, "Wait? What? What happened on the Plains of Abraham?" And I had no specifics -- I knew there had been a battle which the British Wolfe won, even as he lost his life, but I could only lamely reassert the bit about France losing (I couldn't even add the bits about Wolfe being lucky and desperate and Montcalm having been abandoned by France as they pursued European conquests as detailed in Lost in September), and as if only then suddenly realising that I was speaking to a PhD who likely expects a conversation to be fact-filled, I felt like a bit of an underinformed flake. And then the universe provided me with Lost in September -- I had no idea it would be about Wolfe and Montcalm and the Plains of Abraham -- and it gave me a beautifully nuanced picture of the men and their pivotal battle. I wasn't going to write about our encounter with this family -- we found them to be lovely people (especially the Mom), but this "I've got six years left on my PhD" was bizarre to me and Kennedy, so I decided not to write about them -- and indeed, I didn't mention them at all when I wrote briefly about our tour -- but something about reading this book, filling in my knowledge, made me think that the universe also wanted this story told. (Yes, I'm as flakey as an author looking for "emanations"; reading tarot; casting runes; analysing handwriting at the universe's behest.)
Even the original planners of the dome had been unable to advise how their project might be completed: they merely expressed a touching faith that at some point in the future God might provide a solution, and architects with a more advanced knowledge would be found.
I was in Florence a couple of weeks ago, and although I hadn't really noted the omission at the time, it's now oddly sad to me that at the Accademia we were told, “This is Michelangelo's Statue of David”, and at the Uffizi we were told, “This is Botticelli's Birth of Venus”, but at the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore we were told, “The original architect of the church died without explaining how to build the dome you see here. The church would be under construction for over a hundred years before someone came along and figured it out.” So while Michelangelo and Botticelli are familiar names – and rightly so – it is kind of sad that the “someone” who came along and figured out how to build this iconic dome isn't really known to history; an omission more or less corrected by Ross King's Brunelleschi's Dome. And I only say “more or less” because it would seem that biographical information on Brunelleschi himself is scant, making this book more the story of the dome than of the man; an interesting tale, but not perfectly matched to my own interests.
What is known of Brunelleschi: Trained as a goldsmith and clockmaker, he entered a competition to design the bronze doors of the Baptistery of Saint John. When Brunelleschi was declared a co-winner along with another young goldsmith, Lorenzo Ghiberti, the notoriously hot-headed Brunelleschi declined to work in partnership and left Florence: starting his self-directed training in architecture and beginning a life-long rivalry with Lorenzo. Brunelleschi travelled to Rome (where he studied the dome of the Pantheon and the proportions of various columns and facades), and when he returned to Florence, he reintroduced vanishing point perspective to painting. When the main body of the Cathedral was nearly finished and a competition was finally opened for a plan for constructing its massive dome, Brunelleschi's design barely beat out that of Lorenzo Ghiberti, and once again, they were asked to work together. This time Brunelleschi agreed, but with few of the specifics written down – and many that were, recorded in a cipher – Brunelleschi took control of the project, leaving Lorenzo to share the title of capomaestro in name only (but why should Lorenzo care? He enjoyed equal pay and was free to pursue many lucrative and prestigious projects on the side.) In addition to working out how to construct the huge, uniquely-shaped dome without the need for props and centering devices, Brunelleschi also won every competition for the designs of the necessary hoists and cranes that would be used in the dome's construction. He had many engineering successes (he received the first ever invention patent), a few failures, exchanged insulting sonnets with his rivals, and died shortly after the last brick was placed on the dome (and before construction began on the dome's surmounting lantern; the design for which Brunelleschi also beat out Lorenzo in yet another competition). In many ways, Brunelleschi was as successful, inventive, and groundbreaking as a Leonardo da Vinci, and with his greatest accomplishment dominating the skyline of Florence, it's a sad wonder to me that I've never before heard his name; even while in the shadow of a structure that still stands as the largest brick and concrete dome in the world.
Like da Vinci, Brunelleschi kept ciphered notebooks, but unlike the great Leonardo, Brunelleschi was too secretive of his designs to have left behind diagrams of his greatest inventions; even today, engineers have to guess at how his hoists were built; guess at how he designed and inserted the various “chains” that are hidden within the dome's structure and balance the forces at work there. If I had more interest in engineering, I would probably be more awestruck by what Brunelleschi achieved; more interested in a passage like this one:
The horizontal thrust of an arch or dome varies inversely with its rise, and since a pointed arch rises higher than a rounded one, it naturally generates less thrust. In fact, the architects of the Cathedral of Milan believed that pointed arches produced no horizontal thrust whatsoever. They were mistaken, of course, though a quinto acuto arch does generate as much as 50 per cent less radial thrust than a shallower, semicircular one. It therefore requires less abutment and has a lower tendency to crack or burst at its base.
Ross King is heavy on the engineering of the dome – which is, I suppose, the point – but I preferred the human moments. I liked the idea of the original architect's large scale model having a home in the under-construction Cathedral, which the wardens touched every New Year's Day while vowing, throughout the generations of construction, to follow it faithfully. I also like that once the dome was finally underway, this scale model then served as a lavatory for those same wardens. I liked King's description of the Plague and wars that carried on throughout the dome's construction; liked the description of the decimated Rome that Brunelleschi found himself in:
A million people had dwelled in Rome during the height of the Empire, but now the city's population was less than that of Florence. The Black Death of 1348 had reduced numbers to 20,000, from which, over the next fifty years, they rose only slightly. Rome had shrunk into a tiny area inside its ancient walls, retreating from the seven hills to huddle among a few streets on the bank of the Tiber across from St. Peter's, whose walls were in danger of collapse. Foxes and beggars roamed the filthy streets. Livestock grazed in the Forum, now know as il Campo Vaccino, “the Field of Cows”. Other monuments had suffered even worse fates. The Temple of Jupiter was a dunghill, and both the Theater of Pompey and the Mausoleum of Augustus had become quarries from which ancient masonry was scavenged, some of it for buildings as far away as Westminster Abbey. Many ancient statues lay in shards, half buried, while others had been burned in kilns to make quicklime or else fertilizer for the feeble crops. Still others were mangers for asses and oxen. The funerary monument of Agrippina the Elder, the mother of Caligula, had been turned into a measure for grain and salt.
The bottom line: I was a little bored by the engineering details (but appreciate their importance), and while King was forced to repeatedly say, “Little is known of this period in Brunelleschi's life”, I was grateful that he was able to assemble what is known; Brunelleschi deserves this and more; tour guides ought to say, "This is Brunelleschi's Dome." Four stars is a rounding up, only reflecting my own reading enjoyment.
Okay, I said in my Augustusreview that I was done obnoxiously adding photos from our Italy trip to my book reviews, but I only read this book because of a recommendation from John at work; a recommendation based on this recent trip. So, here are a few more pics of me and Kennedy in Florence:
In front of the Baptistery doors
In front of Santa Maria del Fiore (dome not visible from this angle)
On the roof of the Uffizi (dome visible in background; the only pic we have with it showing)
I am cheered with the moist, warm, glittering, budding and melodious hour that takes down the narrow walls of my soul and extends its pulsations and life to the very horizon. That is morning; to cease for a bright hour to be a prisoner of this sickly body and to become as large as the World. Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1838
Author Nina Riggs doesn't quote Ralph Waldo Emerson arbitrarily: she is the poet's great-great-great-granddaughter, and his legacy hovered over her life. And although Riggs had previously published a volume of her own poetry, it is here in her memoir, The Bright Hour, that Riggs exhibits her inheritance of that literary legacy: because, boy, can she write. Begun upon receiving a terminal cancer diagnosis, The Bright Hour is not so much a narrative of a death, but of a life: this book crackles with life and living, and it made me laugh out loud, and it made me cry, and it made me grateful that someone with such a gift for writing took the time to record her final months.
“Dying isn't the end of the world,” my mother used to joke after she was diagnosed as terminal. I never really understood what she meant, until the day I suddenly did – a few months after she died – when, at age thirty-eight, the breast cancer I'd been in treatment for became metastatic and incurable. There are so many things that are worse than death: old grudges, a lack of self-awareness, severe constipation, no sense of humor, the grimace on your husband's face as he empties your surgical drain into the measuring cup.
So, just as Riggs was informed that she had one small spot of cancer on her breast, her mother's long fight against multiple myeloma was entering its final stages. And this dichotomy of experience made for poignant storytelling: Riggs, weakened from chemo but trying to help the mother who desperately wanted to be helping her; Riggs experiencing the loss of her mother and knowing that this kind of loss will be even harder for her own two young sons to understand; to bear. In writing about her mother's death, Riggs captured her life as well: we learn of her parents' early lives and courtship; learn of their quirks and strengths. And ultimately, Riggs captures her mother's end:
Something I didn't expect: She didn't leave all at once. And I don't really mean that in an esoteric way at all. At first she was present, even though she was lifeless. But every time I would go into or out of her room, I would come back to something newly less “there”. The way her fingers were curled on her chest (those softest, most delicate hands – my earliest memory), her lips, the color of her skin. By Sunday morning it was her eyes – they'd changed to a vinyl-looking film; they were not hers at all.
And in writing about her own impending death, Riggs captures her own life: In what seems so few scenes, the reader gets a rich picture of Riggs' childhood and relationships with her family; her marriage and children; her large network of friends (one of whom is fighting a cancer battle of her own and shares snarky texts with Riggs about the “casserole bitches” and their failed good intentions). The Bright Hour is suffused with so much life and laughter, and optimistic treatment plans, that even knowing where the book is going, the suddenly terminal diagnosis is devastating to read:
A stream of doctors after that – one, a radiation resident I have come to know, crouching down at eye level with me, gripping my hand and not pushing away her tears. Then a surgeon. Then a neurologist. Then Dr. Rosenblum standing over me with the face of a mother whose daughter is very late for curfew. She keeps patting my hair: “How could this have happened? I am so, so sorry.” John's eyes from the visitor chair reflect my own face back to me again and again: Wait, what? We keep asking each other, What?
Told as a series of short essays – from a few paragraphs to a few pages – Riggs quotes often from both Emerson and Michel de Montaigne (the man certainly had a lot to say about death), and she also makes mention of quite a few other books that I have enjoyed: When Breath Becomes Air, Being Mortal, H is for Hawk, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. The stories did both make me cry (Riggs' husband putting his hand on her back at four in the morning and whispering, “I'm so afraid I can't breathe”) and made me laugh (Riggs' husband insisting they can't call their new puppy “Montaigne” because, “We're not assholes”), and throughout, I simply loved Riggs' voice and craft.
At one point Riggs remembers someone telling her that living with a terminal diagnosis is like walking a tightrope over a crevice filled with craggy, pointed rocks. Not living under a terminal diagnosis is like walking that same tightrope, over the same dangers, but they're obscured by fog. The Bright Hour is a gift from a writer who saw the crevice, the craggy rocks, and had the skill to capture the experience.
(Wilson, B / Asher, T) Performed by The Beach Boys
I may not always love you But long as there are stars above you You never need to doubt it I'll make you so sure about it
God only knows what I'd be without you If you should ever leave me Though life would still go on believe me The world could show nothing to me So what good would living do me
God only knows what I'd be without you (God only knows what I'd be without you) If you should ever leave me well life would still go on believe me The world could show nothing to me So what good would living do me
God only knows what I'd be without you (God only knows what I'd be without you)
God only knows God only knows what I'd be without you God only knows what I'd be without you
God only knows God only knows what I'd be without you God only knows what I'd be without you
God only knows God only knows what I'd be without you
It was back in May that Mallory told us that Brian Wilson would be touring for the fiftieth anniversary of the Pet Sounds album, and as he would be coming to our local theatre, it was an easy sell for us to get tickets for the family to go. I remember The Beach Boys touring back in the 80s - their Kokomo years - and I had no desire at all to see them back then. So it's surreal to me that, thirty years later, I have a daughter who says that Pet Sounds is one of her favourite albums; that God Only Knows is her favourite song of all time. That she cried when they sang it at the concert last night. When I was deciding which song to use this week, I almost went cheeky with Brian Wilson by Barenaked Ladies: Not only is that one of our favourite songs to hear live by one of our favourite groups, but ex-band member Steven Page was part of a free concert in town last Saturday: Dave and Kennedy went to see him (yes, he did Brian Wilson), they had a great time, and I had a sense of the ironic - Page reduced to doing a free little concert, singing about "lying in bed, just like Brian Wilson did", while Brian Wilson himself is still selling out a biggish venue; singing to a fanatic crowd that included my own nineteen year old daughter. There's a nugget of something snarky there, though, so I won't belabour the comparison. In addition to doing all of the Pet Sounds album (which includes some great songs like Good Vibrations and Wouldn't It Be Nice [the latter of which would get my vote for most romantic Beach Boys song of all time], as well as the experimental clunkers), Brian Wilson and his impressive band did all the great hits - from California Girls to Help Me Rhonda. And in addition to the presence of Brian Wilson himself, Al Jardine, co-founder of The Beach Boys, was in the band (and while Wilson was obviously struggling to sing and play his piano, Jardine sounded and played like himself). Al Jardine's son, Matthew, is also a member of this group, and he sings all the high Carl Wilson parts exactly like Wilson did. (When Al was introducing Matthew as his son and bringing him forward to sing Don't Worry Baby, Al said, "He really sings the crap out of this song", and as Mallory has a physical revulsion to the word "crap", and as she hates it when her family teases her about this, we couldn't help staring at her meaningfully; she couldn't help glaring back impatiently. Matthew Jardine sang the crap out of that song.) As for Brian Wilson himself: He really seemed old; had to hold another man's hand to walk out onto the stage; couldn't quite hit any of the notes. I think that he sat behind his baby grand straight on to the audience so that we couldn't see that he wasn't actually playing. And the crowd didn't care. When he finished God Only Knows, the crowd erupted into a standing ovation that lasted for some minutes before he asked us to sit down again. From somewhere in the balcony a man shouted, "Thank you Brian." And Brian Wilson looked up, in what was probably the only spontaneous moment in the concert, and replied, "You're welcome". Mallory was grateful and effusive on the drive home; synced her phone's playlist into the car's radio so we could listen to The Beach Boys all the way. These girls of ours are adults now, and I am happy that they still want to do things like this with us. God only knows what I'd be without them.
