I got the curse this week. I was - of course- relieved. Who wouldn't be? Anyone would naturally be relieved, under the circumstances. It stands to reason. You hear of women waiting for it, and worrying incessantly, and then when it comes, they're released and everything is all right and that anxiety is over for the moment and for a while one need not think What would I do? What would become of me? I was terribly relieved. It was a relief, reprieve.
That is a lie, Rachel. That is really a lie, in the deepest way possible for anyone to lie.
No. Yes. Both are true. Does one have to choose between two realities? If you think you love two men, the heart-throb column in the daily paper used to say when I was still consulting it daily, then neither one is for you. If you think you contain two realities, perhaps you contain none.
If I had to choose between feelings, I know which it would be. But that would be a disaster, from every point of view except the most inner one, and if you choose that side, you would really be on your own, now and for ever, and that couldn't, I think, be borne, not by me.
That is a lie, Rachel. That is really a lie, in the deepest way possible for anyone to lie.
No. Yes. Both are true. Does one have to choose between two realities? If you think you love two men, the heart-throb column in the daily paper used to say when I was still consulting it daily, then neither one is for you. If you think you contain two realities, perhaps you contain none.
If I had to choose between feelings, I know which it would be. But that would be a disaster, from every point of view except the most inner one, and if you choose that side, you would really be on your own, now and for ever, and that couldn't, I think, be borne, not by me.
Poor Rachel, always thinking and then backtracking and correcting her thinking, as though the expectations of Manawaka society in general and her mother in particular ought to have control even over her private thoughts. Ah, mothers and daughters. I have a mother and two daughters; I am a mother and a daughter. I don't have relationships as controlled or controlling as in A Jest of God, but do remember feeling the weight of unvoiced expectations when I was a teenager. I fantasized about moving out when I was in university but never brought it up-- I have no idea even now if it would have been considered the betrayal that I assumed at the time. I do know that when my parents moved across country and I chose not to go with them, when I was nearly 21, my younger brother referred to it as me "running away from home". Rachel never got this chance, this chance at starting her life, when her father died and her mother called her to come back and take care of her.
A few years ago, my mother bought me a copy of The Alchemist, saying that she had been searching for it everywhere, that it was a book she thought I had to read. I didn't get far into it before I had to start wondering if it was indeed the book she had been thinking of-- such mushy new age philosophy, not her thing at all, and more suited to a youth reader. What it did leave me with, however, was one important idea-- children should never be burdened with these unvoiced expectations, and to my older daughter anyway, I outlined the basic plot of the story and the lessons it endeavors to impart, especially: you have this one life and it's yours to live. I made that very clear: whatever my children decide to do with their lives (short of crack dealer or terrorist or basement-dwelling-too-scared-to-attempt-living-adult-child) will have my full support and they never need to worry if they're disappointing me. Unintended consequence of my efforts to stop the cycle of burdensome expectations: I have a bright and academically successful daughter graduating from high school soon who has no clear dreams at all, and although I have tried to explain the satisfaction of starting your life and going off to university (a projection of my own frustrated fantasies, I know), even when you don't have a clear idea of what you want to end up studying, the best I may hope for now is she accepts the offer of admission to the school that's closest to home. Sigh.
Originally titled A Jest of God, the edition I read had been renamed Rachel, Rachel. I can't find a reason for why it had been renamed (and I assume at some point the publishers reverted to the original title) but the original is much more fitting. The climax does indeed seem a jest of God Himself: After finally making a physical connection with a man for the first time at 35, Rachel fears she's pregnant. Knowing that she can never tell the father, who has skipped town anyway, or her mother, whose frail heart would never survive the humiliation, Rachel considers suicide and then, as a last resort, an appeal to the God she doesn't believe in. When it turns out she had a tumor, which required a hospital stay in the city to remove, Rachel got the resolve to finally start living her own life, deciding to uproot her mother and move them both out to Vancouver to be nearer to her sister. Before she moves, Rachel realises that the town assumed she had gone to the city for an abortion and that she and her mother were fleeing in shame. Who but God could conceive of such a punishment for answered prayers?
A Jest of God is a strong member of the Manawaka Sequence, not quite up to The Stone Angel or The Diviners, but since I can't bring myself to give it only 3 stars, the 4 will need to stand.
There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by. A life of good days lived in the senses is not enough. The life of sensation is the life of greed; it requires more and more. The life of the spirit requires less and less; time is ample and its passage sweet. Who would call a day spent reading a good day? But a life spent reading -- that is a good life.
As I understand it, Jack Benny had always dreamed of being a virtuoso violinist and could play reasonably well, but because he knew he had no genius for playing, and as a result was rather heartbroken, he would pretend to be terrible at playing and do so for laughs. Obliquely related, when our kids first started school full time and I, as a stay-at-home-mom, was floundering for something to do, my husband said, "You love to read and you have all this free time, why not write a book?" I was slightly aghast, and if I had had a copy of The Writing Life at the time, I could have jabbed my finger onto any page and said, "This is why not, and this, and this".
At one point in The Writing Life, Annie Dillard bemoans the commercialization of book writing and the trend to try and write books for people who don't like to read-- today I think this would be books like Fifty Shades Of Grey (which, although I haven't read it, I will unfairly state that anyone could have written it) and Twilight (which I read at the insistence of a teenage daughter, and will state that just about anyone could have written it). These are not works of genius, and were certainly not written for book lovers, but I suppose they got nonreaders reading. So is that such a bad thing? It doesn't affect me that these books exist, but it does sadden me a little that if I tried to write a book it would by necessity be such a crass attempt at a commercial venture, as I know I don't have the spark of genius in me. Just as I could dribble paint on a canvas and not be Jackson Pollack, I could churn out words on a page and never be Annie Dillard.
Why are we reading, if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mystery probed? Can the writer isolate and vivify all in experience that most deeply engages our intellects and our hearts? Can the writer renew our hope for literary forms? Why are we reading if not in hope that the writer will magnify and dramatize our days, will illuminate and inspire us with wisdom, courage, and the possibility of meaningfulness, and will press upon our minds the deepest mysteries, so that we may feel again their majesty and power? What do we ever know that is higher than that power which, from time to time, seizes our lives, and reveals us startlingly to ourselves as creatures set down here bewildered? Why does death so catch us by surprise, and why love? We still and always want waking.
This is why I read, and as sadly as Jack Benny with his violin, why I will never write. There are many beautiful passages and insightful observations in The Writing Life, and if nothing else, will prompt me to explore Annie Dillard's books (forewarned that they can be dense and difficult, and hopefully, written for one, like me, who loves to read).
I'll steal a couple of clean quotes to put up here:
What happened? Did somebody punch you in the face?!... The what? The air is dry? Do me a favor and tell people you got punched in the face.
You worry too much. Eat some bacon... What? No, I got no idea if it'll make you feel better, I just made too much bacon.
The baby will talk when he talks, relax. It ain't like he knows the cure for cancer and just ain't spitting it out.
The worst thing you can be is a liar. . . . Okay, fine, yes, the worst thing you can be is a Nazi, but then number two is liar. Nazi one, liar two.
I just want silence... Jesus, it doesn't mean I don't like you. It just means right now, I like silence more.
Okay, maybe the expletive rich quotations are funnier, but these give the gist: Justin Halpern's father is one of those rare people who will always tell the truth, who is not afraid to impart hard lessons, even when it's considered inappropriate (ie., explaining to a three year old that, no, it's not his birthday so it's not cute for him to go around saying, "It's my happy birthday! Oh yeeeaaah!") I listened to I Suck At Girls before this, and that book is lovely and thoughtful and sweet, full of stories that highlight how pertinent the author's father's advice could be beneath the constant f-bombs. Sh t My Dad Says, on the other hand, seems like it was rushed to print, which it likely was (I think by now everyone knows the trajectory of this book from Twitter to book deal to tv show).
The audio version is a fun listen, the narrator doing a good job at voicing both the often shocked and innocent Justin Halpern and the crusty (if somewhat Ralph Cramdenish) father, Sam. My complaint would be that each chapter contains lists of quotes like at the beginning of this review, and one after the other they have a Henny Youngman oneliners from the Catskills quality that dilutes their humour and poignancy. Sh*t My Dad Says, however, does end on a thoughtful and personal anecdote that Sam shares with his heartbroken son Justin, an anecdote that he specifically gives his son permission to conclude his book with. When Justin asks his father why he would permit such a private story to become public, Sam replies that what he wants everyone to come away from the book knowing is that he would do anything for his family; he might have a smart and foul mouth, but he's also got their backs. That message does come through.
As I did enjoy the book that came out after this one much more, I will be looking forward to whatever Justin Halpern comes out with next.
When your innocence is stripped from you, when your people are denigrated, when the family you came from is denounced and your tribal ways and rituals are pronounced backward, primitive, savage, you come to see yourself as less than human. That is hell on earth, that sense of unworthiness. That's what they inflicted on us.
In The Autobiography of Mark Twain, the author at one point explains the apparent contradiction of his kind hearted, Christian mother being a slave owner. He declares that his mother had heard a thousand sermons from the pulpit justifying slavery and never one against it — the justification being that by stealing the Africans from their heathen homelands and exposing them to the good and God-fearing people of America (and other countries), the slaves would be offered the mercy and salvation of that same God. Even before Emancipation, Mark Twain knew that slavery was vile and reprehensible, but felt his mother's religious motivations excused her uncharacteristically unjust behaviour. It is incredible to think that the same misguided motivations prompted the Residential Schools in Canada, at the same time that slavery was being abolished south of the border.
From Wikipedia:
The system had origins in pre-Confederation times, but was primarily active following the passage of the Indian Act in 1876, until the mid-twentieth century. An amendment to the Indian Act in 1920 made attendance at a day, industrial or residential school compulsory for First Nations children and, in some parts of the country, residential schools were the only option. The number of residential schools reached 80 in 1931 but decreased in the years that followed. The last federally-operated residential school was closed in 1996.
1996! What a sickening notion, that while we in Canada take great pride in being the freedom end of the Underground Railroad, we were also rounding up all of the Native children, tearing them from their families, and placing them in institutions where they could have their culture, language and traditions literally beaten out of them. This was, of course, indefensible, but…I have to believe that, like the good mother of Mark Twain, there were people at the time who believed that the schools would be beneficial to the children; that they would be taught the language and the ways of the white man and therefore able to survive in the world that he was building; and that they would be offered the mercy and salvation of what they believed was the one true God. I'm not saying, of course, that this exonerates them in hindsight anymore than I would absolve the slave traders, but I don't believe that Residential Schools were conceived in evil.
When I read Sapphire's Push and Hanya Yanagihara's A Little Life, I was shocked and disturbed by the unrelenting abuse that characters suffered at the hands of various individuals and society at large, and had to keep reminding myself that these were works of fiction, and if the authors wanted to push my tolerance, that's their prerogative; yet it was also my prerogative to reject the storyline when it went too far. Reading Indian Horse, I was similarly shocked and disturbed, but had to accept that Richard Wagamese was trying to tell a story with truth at its core; that this horrendous experience could have happened to Saul Little Horse. How could I dismiss that? I do wish that there had been even one good and kind white person at St. Jerome's: when the priests and nuns alike all engaged in physical and sexual abuse of the children, I was slightly taken out of the story (as I had been by Sapphire and Yanagihara). Even the nuns rape the children? Even the supposedly good Father Leboutilier? Because the experience seemed so extreme, it seemed, perhaps, untrue. But, as much as I would have liked to have seen any compassion at all shown towards Saul, this is his story, and just as there may have been one Residential School somewhere with loving and charitable staff, there undoubtedly was, to Canada's everlasting shame, these schools with none.
Richard Wagamese is a poetic and powerful storyteller. Many passages had me pausing to reread:
Benjamin and I sat in the middle of one of the large canoes with our grandmother in the stern, directing us past shoals and through rapids and into magnificent stretches of water. One day the clouds hung low and light rain freckled the slate-grey water that peeled across our bow. The pellets of rain were warm and Benjamin and I caught them on our tongues as our grandmother laughed behind us. Our canoes skimmed along and as I watched the shoreline it seemed the land itself was in motion. The rocks lay lodged like hymns in the breast of it, and the trees bent upward in praise like crooked fingers. It was glorious. Ben felt it too. He looked at me with tears in his eyes, and I held his look a long time, drinking in the face of my brother.
We need mystery. Creator in her wisdom knew this. Mystery fills us with awe and wonder. They are the foundations of humility, and humility is the foundation of all learning. So we do not seek to unravel this. We honour it by letting it be that way forever.
You drink down to the place that only diehard drunkards know; the world at the bottom of the well where you huddle in darkness, haunted forever by the knowledge of light.
And the long passages about hockey are both lyrical and exciting. So why only three stars? Something about this book felt important yet superficial. Saul Indian Horse is fleshed out, but most other characters are not — just good Natives and bad whites, and the opportunity for a deeper understanding feels missed. The epigraph at the beginning is lovely and telling:
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
WENDELL BERRY, "The Peace of Wild Things"
So too does Saul Little Horse eventually return to the stillness of a wild place and become whole. Spiritually, that is beautiful. But if it's a political statement, what does it mean? I don't think the author is suggesting that Natives should return to a Pre-Columbian lifestyle in the wilds. And integration, especially through forced attendance at a Residential School, isn't a preferred solution. As we daily see images of Natives on reservations living in third world conditions, what is the solution? I'd hazard to say that the vast majority of Canadians want to see all Natives live fulfilling and autonomous lives and right now there are few solutions that will achieve it, not least because no one wants to make another disastrous decision like the one that led to the creation of the Residential Schools.
I see users here suggesting that Indian Horse should be required reading in Canadian high schools and that seems a good start to me: the subject matter is serious and important, and although I don't know if this is a perfect book, it adds value to the conversation.
Edited in 2021 to add:
In light of this week's horrific discovery of a mass grave of 215 children on the grounds of a former Kamloops Residential School, I came back here with a sense of dread at my own remembered insensitivity to the Residential School experience and the intergenerational trauma that is the legacy of that indefensible practise. Rereading this review, my initial thoughts still stand (that there is a moral equivalence between institutionalised slavery in the US and the Canadian Residential School system — both are vile, racist, paternalistic; the worst expressions of Christianity and Capitalism), and I still believe that there were good-hearted Canadians who were brainwashed by their own times into believing that the Residential Schools provided some benefit to these stolen children. Of course we know better now, and in no way am I denying now (or meant to imply that I was denying back in 2013) the horrific abuses suffered by these children, but I still see no benefit in judging people in the past by the standards of today. Indigenous authors like Richard Wagamese have led the way in educating Canadians about the truth of the First Nations' experience and my heart is open to that truth (even if I struggle to express the point I want to make here). If a reader comes upon this review and feels like I am still being insensitive to the realities of the First Nations' experience, know that I acknowledge the horrors of the past, the incomprehensible stalemate of the present, and sincerely support demands for an autonomous and dignified future.
I have a daughter who, when you ask her what a movie is about, can spend twenty minutes telling you every detail of everything that happens in the movie, utterly unable to edit herself, entirely oblivious to the notion of "just the highlights". After listening toSeabiscuit, it seems like Laura Hillenbrand suffers from the same inability to self edit.
Seabiscuit's story is full of interesting characters and they can (and have) warranted biographies of their own. Red Pollard, Tom Smith, Charles Howard, George Wolf, and many others, while interesting, had their entire life stories included in this book, and I found myself growing more and more impatient to just get on with the story. Honestly, this book is twice as long as it needs to be, and I didn't find the extra information to be enriching or in any way an enhancement to my enjoyment of Seabiscuit's story. I can appreciate the consequences of a jockey on a rival horse fouling Seabiscuit during a race without knowing that jockey's long history in the sport.
Here's an excerpt:
Charles Howard had the feel of a gigantic onrushing machine: You had to either climb on or leap out of the way. He would sweep into a room, working a cigarette in his fingers, and people would trail him like pilot fish. They couldn't help themselves. Fifty-eight years old in 1935, Howard was a tall, glowing man in a big suit and a very big Buick. But it wasn't his physical bearing that did it. He lived on a California ranch so huge that a man could take a wrong turn on it and be lost forever, but it wasn't his circumstances either. Nor was it that he spoke loud or long; the surprise of the man was his understatement, the quiet and kindly intimacy of his acquaintance. What drew people to him was something intangible, an air about him. There was a certain inevitability to Charles Howard, an urgency radiating from him that made people believe that the world was always going to bend to his wishes.
I think readers can be fairly divided between those who think this is interesting and exciting writing and those, like me, who find it unnecessarily florid and verbose. Listening to this book, I rolled my eyes more than once-- Pollard sequestered himself in the Canadian Wilderness, ahuntin' and afishin'-- and I felt sorry for my impatience because Hillenbrand obviously put much effort into the research and writing of Seabiscuit.
The parts I liked best were the horse races themselves, as exciting as watching them live, but even then there were some clunkers. In once race, after describing the deafening roar of the crowd and the thunderous crash of the pounding hooves, it's said that someone heard Wolf whisper into the Biscuit's ear, "just give me a bit more old pal". (Something like that, as I'm working from memory.) I don't mind authorial omniscience, but don't tell me a jockey's whisper is overheard during a race if you want me to accept that no other liberties were taken with the facts of the story-- a story that is unbelievably dramatic without liberties. You can't help but feel for "the People's Horse", a spirited Thoroughbred that was bought for a song and went on to smash the all time earnings records-- and all while suffering bad luck, fouls from other jockeys, injury, unprecedented handicapping weights, scratching races every time it rained, etc., etc. I can't imagine how much more impressive Seabiscuit's career would have been if he could have just run every time a race came along.
One thing that bothered me in the story was Red Pollard's blindness in his right eye, which he hid from everyone. Early on, Howard and Smith realised that they had a special horse that they felt a great responsibility to foster, and the selfishness of the jockey seemed criminal. Even if he was played by Tobey Maguire as a sympathetic character, I can't bring myself to forgive him. Or see the movie, and perhaps that's the crux of my quibbles: I have avoided seeing the film based on this book because I don't like movies with swelling orchestras and cliché cinematography that try to lead me by the nose, telling me when and how to feel. The language of this book was the equivalent of a full orchestra, all strings and tympanis and trilling flutes. And it was too long.
Overall a great story and a pretty good book.
Here's Russell Peters on being Indian:
All my life I've been identifying myself as an Indian man. I'm always like, I'm Indian. What are you? I'm Indian. Where you from? I'm Indian. What do you mean, where am I from? I'm Indian. And then I realised something. I was born and raised in Canada. There's nothing Indian about me! The only thing Indian about me are my parents and my skin tone. That's it! Culturally, I'm not Indian at all. And the only reason I know this is because last year I went to India to do some shows. And I thought I was Indian. And when we were flying over to India, I got this overwhelming Indian feeling. Inside of me I was like, I'm the most Indian man ever! I just thought I was so Indian, you know? We arrived in Bombay, I was like yelling at the flight attendant "Open the doors to this plane! Let me at my Indian people! Let me show those Indians what it's like to be Indian!" She opened up the doors to that plane, I turned Canadian so fast! I was like: "I am so... Did I step in shit just now?" When you arrive in India, the minute they open the doors to that plane, you get an overwhelming blast of shit smell right up your nose! It's almost like they hire someone to shit in front of every plane that lands! Quick, quick, here comes one. Shit, shit and go! Shit and go! Go! go! go! And if you're an Indian person out there, you're thinking to yourself, "That's not true, that's not true". Then screw you, you probably had a cold or landed in the wrong country! Because racially I'm an Indian man. Culturally, there are things that happen culturally, if you are not raised in that part of the world, you will find it unacceptable.
We had a yard sale once and the majority of people who came to check out our wares were Indian women, beautiful in their saris and gold bangles. They would pick up everything, inspecting and tutting and shaking their heads at the unfortunate quality, and then come and offer me half or less of the asking price, every one of them trying to look pathetic and saying, "Please understand, you understand." It was really getting on my nerves, because it felt so manipulative, and the worst was when a woman picked up a rather nice doll that was marked at 25 cents and she came and tried to put a dime in my hand, saying, "Please understand". I didn't understand and I didn't take her dime and we haven't had a yard sale since.
I have long been rather fascinated by Indian culture and enjoy picking up books set there. From novels like A Fine Balance, A Suitable Boy, The God Of Small Things, even Secret Daughter,Life Of Pi, The White Tiger and everything by Salman Rushdie, I've learned about the huge disparity between the very rich and the very poor, and it has been equally fascinating to see the recent rise of the middle class that's occurring in India. With this sketchy knowledge base, I can appreciate just what the Confidence Group's buyout offer meant to the residents of Vishram Society in Last Man In Tower. Everyone in the tower seemed to have enough to eat and they had the funds to send their children to good schools and most have servants and none of them needed to share their flats with multigenerational extended family members like in some of the other books I've read, but when they saw what they could potentially sell their homes for, the shot at a true middle class life style (scooters and eating at the mall and an apartment with a steady water supply) became more important to them than the friendships they had forged with their neighbours over many many years. In reaction to the holdouts, it all turns Lord Of The Flies. Aravind Adiga does an excellent job of altering the people ever so slightly over time so that you can understand how friends changed into enemies. I especially liked: when Mrs. Puri, while plotting to murder Masterji, notes what a bully he has become in holding up the sale.
Adiga wrote fully fleshed out characters and brought Mumbai to life; you could pretty much smell the shit. And he was masterful at demonstrating how impossible it must be to take a moral stand when everyone in authority, from the police to the courts to the government, are immoral and out to line their own pockets. And there were some lovely bits of writing that made me think:
Nothing can stop a living thing that wants to be free.
A man's past keeps growing, even when his future has come to a full stop.
When small people like us compromise, it is the same as when big people refuse to compromise. The world becomes a better place.
But despite the excellent writing and plot and pacing, there was something halting and stilted about Last Man In Tower that made it a slow read for me. This might be because the author is Indian and writing in a cadence that's foreign to me, like trying to translate the live tech support from "Kevin" when your computer is crashing, yet Salman Rushdie and Vikram Seth are also Indian and I have no issue with them. Perhaps, like Russell Peters, I think I understand India and Indians until confronted with the real thing. Perhaps, when the lovely Indian ladies at my garage sale urged, "Please understand, you understand", I should have replied, "I want to,but maybe I don't".
They spoke of the days of plenty with a wistful exaggeration, as if it was an ancient time they knew only through stories generations old. My Jesus, the cod, the cod, the cod, that Crusade army of the North Atlantic, that irresistible undersea current of flesh, there was fish in galore one time. Boats run aground on a school swarming so thick beneath them a man could walk upon the very water but for fear of losing his shoes to the indiscriminate appetite of the fish.
ga•lore
[guh-lawr, -lohr]
adverb
in abundance; in plentiful amounts: food and drink galore.
Origin:
1660–70; < Irish go leor enough, plenty>
If the wistful nostalgia for the days of plenty, of fish galore, speaks of a real time, it's no wonder that the poor fishermen and their families, as well as the shrewd and shifty businessmen who would build whole communities from their labour, would have been lured from Europe to settle the barren and inhospitable coasts of Newfoundland. The novel Galore follows the intertwining of two such families, the Sellers and the Devines, the one rich and the other barely surviving, over six generations and two hundred years. When Devine's Widow (her actual name seems to have been lost to history) rejected the marriage proposal of King-me Sellers, they went on to found the two families that would make up the majority of the characters in this book. Portentously, Devine's Widow left King-me with a curse: May the sea take you and all the issue of your loins.
If ashes to ashes and dust to dust is the biblical way of the world, it follows naturally that in Newfoundland that which comes from the water will be returned to the water. The Widow is accused of being a witch, a perfectly reasonable assumption to the people of Paradise Deep, and takes her place alongside other fantastical creatures, such as mermaids, the Little People of the woods, a mute albino delivered live from the belly of a whale, and more than one tangible ghost. A doctor who joins the community on a two year contract, and ends up staying forever, seems equally intrigued and repulsed by what he initially finds: He felt at times he'd been transported to a medieval world that was still half fairy tale. In many ways, the day to day lives of the locals wasmedieval, little changed from a subsistence life from centuries before.
Michael Crummey shows great affection for the inhabitants of this lost world, and if I have a complaint, it might be that he's a bit too gentle with them. Certainly there are unlikeable characters in this book, murderers and philanderers and misers and fools, but none of them really came off the page for me. A true story: I have a friend who married a Newfoundlander, whose own father was a fisherman in a coastal community of less than two hundred people, fifty and more years after Galore concludes. This man was away on the fishing boats most of the time but when he was home, he was a mean and abusive drunk who forced himself on his long-suffering wife, eventually siring fourteen children by her. The woman was so overwhelmed, barely able to care for and feed the ever growing brood, essentially all alone, and she went to the parish priest for advice. The priest called down all the wrath of God upon her head for daring to complain about her lot in life and impressed on her that her only duty as a wife was to submit to her husband. And this was in the mid to late twentieth century. Yet, in Galore, not one character seems as real to me as my friend's father-in-law, whom she never met, and about whom she has only broadly sketched. Even the clergy in Galore, while gently ridiculed, are presented as benign-- they may behave unclergylike, especially the Catholic priest, but all of them are ultimately interested in the salvation of their parishioners.
I did like this bit about the doctor's experiences, and what it says about the Newfies:
The patients he saw were virtually incapable of articulating their troubles, offering only the broadest, most childish descriptions of what ailed them. I finds me sides, they told him. I finds me legs. I got a pain up tru me, they said. Bad head, bad back. Bad stomach, which sometimes meant trouble breathing. Even under questioning they had difficulty presenting specific symptoms, which made them sound like a crowd of hypochondriacs, but it was rare to root out a malingerer. People on the shore were unable to distinguish illness or injury from the ordinary strain and torment of their days until they were crippled and it was only the desperate who braved the clinic, and only after they'd exhausted every quack potion and home remedy available.
After the bleakness and hard labour of generations of fishermen, Crummey offers rescue in the form of a union organizer:
He had the rhythm and demeanor of a preacher, the same bluff assurance. He began with an overview of the sad facts of a fisherman's life, the deplorable conditions they lived and worked in, the parasites in St. John's who bled them dry. A sycophantic tone to the presentation that made the men restless, the grievances so familiar they could have rhymed them off in their sleep. But Croaker paused at the end of the list, breeding anticipation with his silence, and they all leaned slightly forward in their pews. --You people, he said finally. He pointed with his sausage fingers. Grovellers, he called them. They were living the same miserable lives their fathers lived and their fathers' fathers before them. The wealth of the nation made on their backs and every one of them content to beg at Levi Sellers' door. They were backward and illiterate and happy to leave their children no hope of a better life.
What I found most illuminating about this speech is how it contrasts with the experience that Susanna Moodie describes inRoughing It In The Bush. To Moodie, emigrating and homesteading in Upper Canada was a very hard and rough life, but after years of work, one could survey the cleared land, the improved soil, the comfortable living one has eked out and then pass it all on to one's children, who would not have to labour as hard themselves. There seems a point to the sacrifices. But in coastal Newfoundland, the point for generations was to merely survive.
And the bit that seems to summarise the whole plot, when the doctor hints at euthanasia to his wife who lies dying of cancer:
Bride offering the slightest nod. --Now the once, she said.
It was the oddest expression he'd learned on the shore. Now the once. The present twined with the past to mean soon, a bit later, some unspecified point in the future. As if it was all the same finally, as if time was a single moment endlessly circling on itself. Bride forever absent and always with him.
And so the generations were come to an end: those descendants of Devine's Widow and King-me Sellers who are not dead by the end of the book are never heard from again after leaving for the States, taken by the sea as surely as if they had drowned in it.
I didn't love this book, and for a poet, Michael Crummey rarely wowed me with poetical language, so it's a solid three stars for me. I have a thing for Newfie stories, and a preference for those told by Newfies themselves (*cough* sorry Annie Proulx *cough*) and will happily continue to mine the genre.
We have become an army of multiply chemically sensitive, high-maintenance princesses trying to make our way through a world full of irksome peas.
All of the nice things I have to say about listening to David Rakoff narrating one of his audiobooks was said in my review of Half Empty and I would reiterate that it is a very enjoyable experience. The writing here in Don't Get Too Comfortable: The Indignities of Coach Class The Torments of Low Thread Count The Never-Ending Quest for Artisanal Olive Oil and Other First World Problems is just as smart and insightful and beautifully crafted. The biggest difference I would say there is between these two books, however, is that while in Half Empty I found Rakoff to be piercing but never cruel, I found many instances of over-the-line cruelty in Don't Get Too Comfortable.
I couldn't quite pinpoint what was turning me off about this book until I read someone else's review wherein he complained that the lack of connection Rakoff makes with his material is because he is sent off on adventures that are sure to bring out his snarky side-- I hadn't considered this and of course that's the problem, and also the reason why I can't quite classify him as a memoirist. Of course the gay Rakoff is going to have a dull time at a Playboy photoshoot. As the Director of the Log Cabin Republicans ( a gay Republican group) says to the incredulous Rakoff, "You had this story written before you even got here". It seems apparent that Rakoff exclusively sought experiences that would confirm his worldview, confirm that he's on the smart side of history. And in this book, about excess and avarice, he can be downright cruel about some easy targets:
At Paris Fashion Week
All of the designers I have met up to this point have been very nice, although upon being introduced to Karl Lagerfeld, he looks me up and down and dismisses me with the not super-kind, 'What can you write that hasn't been written already?'
He's absolutely right, I have no idea. I can but try. The only thing I can come up with at that moment is that Lagerfeld's powdered white ponytail has dusted the shoulders of his suit with what looks like dandruff but isn't. Also, not yet having undergone his alarming weight loss, and seated on a tiny velvet chair, with his large doughy rump dominating the miniature piece of furniture like a loose, flabby, ass-flavored muffin overrisen from its pan, he resembles a Daumier caricature of some corpulent, inhumane oligarch drawn sitting on a commode, stuffing his greedy throat with the corpses of dead children, while from his other end he shits out huge, malodorous piles of tainted money. How's that for new and groundbreaking, Mr. L?
On post 9/11 distrust:
If for example, it came to light that the dangerously thin, affectless, value-deficient, higher aspiration-free, amateur porn auteuse Paris Hilton was actually a covert agent from some secret Taliban madrassa whose mission was to portray the ultimate capiltalist-whore puppet of a doomed society with nothing more on its mind than servitude to Mammon and celebrity at any cost, I wouldn't be surprised.
And he takes several potshots at Republicans in general and the Bush family in particular:
While we're on the subject of the horrors of war, and humanity's most poisonous and least charitable attributes, let me not forget to mention Barbara Bush (that would be former First Lady and presidential mother as opposed to W's liquor-swilling, Girl Gone Wild, human ashtray of a daughter. I'm sorry, that's not fair. I've no idea if she smokes.) When the administration censored images of the flag-draped coffins of the young men and women being killed in Iraq - purportedly to respect "the privacy of the families" and not to minimize and cover up the true nature and consequences of the war - the family matriarch expressed her support for what was ultimately her son's decision by saying on Good Morning America on March 18, 2003, "Why should we hear about body bags and deaths? I mean it's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?"
Mrs. Bush is not getting any younger. When she eventually ceases to walk among us we will undoubtedly see photographs of her flag-draped coffin. Whatever obituaries that run will admiringly mention those wizened, dynastic loins of hers and praise her staunch refusal to color her hair or glamorize her image. But will they remember this particular statement of hers, this "Let them eat cake" for the twenty-first century? Unlikely, since it received far too little play and definitely insufficient outrage when she said it. So let us promise herewith to never forget her callous disregard for other parents' children while her own son was sending them to make the ultimate sacrifice, while asking of the rest of us little more than to promise to go shopping. Commit the quote to memory and say it whenever her name comes up. Remind others how she lacked even the bare minimum of human integrity, the most basic requirement of decency that says if you support a war, you should be willing, if not to join those nineteen-year-olds yourself, then at least, at the very least, to acknowledge that said war was actually going on. Stupid f-ing cow.
I'd imagine a reader's enjoyment of this book would be related to how closely one's own worldview is confirmed by the smart and articulate David Rakoff's expression of it. Just as only a very rich person could recognise the ironically retro high value of rough handmade bars of soap, only a person with access to unlimited food could find it a spiritual quest to commit himself to a strict fast-- an experience so self-indulgent that Rakoff spent many hours every day preparing the broths and teas that sustained the fast, prompting the question,"Who outside of a person of high means could afford that kind of time to artificially keep himself above starvation level?"
I will stipulate to having both French sea salt and a big bottle of extra virgin in my kitchen. And while the presence of both might go some small distance in pigeonholing me demographically, neither one of them makes me a good person. They are mute and useless indicators of the content of my character.
I wonder if that notion is backwards? That perhaps the indicators aren't so mute?
On cryogenics, he says:
In my brief glimpse of what is to come I realize how little I care to witness it. I have seen the future and I'm fairly relieved to say, it looks nothing like me.
It is still poignant to hear Rakoff dismiss immortality from beyond the grave, and even if his politics seemed to enter this volume more than in the last one, he passed too soon.
I am venal and glib and too clever by half.
My daughter was just involved in the Sears Festival, an adjudicated presentation of youth plays from area high schools, and we showed up on the night that the awards were to be presented. When my husband and I entered, we saw her with some friends and asked how the plays went that evening. Her boyfriend told us that the first play of the night was really strange: A person would come out and start telling a monologue about how he was feeling and then a dancer would appear and start interpreting what he was saying. The lights would go down and then up again, and then there would be another monologue, and another dance, and so on and so on. Zach and the other kids were trying to be respectful and not laugh, but the whole thing was overly serious and melodramatic, and they were especially put off by the fact that it was written by the performers-- it seemed manipulative and self-important. When the last monologue started, the music became even more ethereal and bordering on the satirical, and just when Zach could hardly stop himself from laughing, something happened that made him "feel like a total douchebag": a girl in a wheelchair came out to do the final dance, spinning and turning, and the entire audience was on their feet by the end, a mix of tears and smiles. When the awards were then presented, the Adjudicator announced a special award of merit for the brave young lady who inspired such a moving work, and when she rolled onto the stage to accept the award we could see she was not some pretty teen who had been in a tragic accident as I had been imagining: this was a small and twisted girl, obviously someone who has spent her entire life in the high tech wheelchair in which she now proudly received her certificate. I understood what Zach meant by feeling like a douchebag…and yet, if the play wasn't all that good, does the presence of tragedy mean you're a bad person if you didn't like it? Was that award even appropriate, or was it a bit condescending? Was that certificate the highlight of the young lady's high school career, or is she bombarded with a constant stream of people acknowledging her bravery for dealing with the crappy hand she had been dealt? I really do hope that the play and her participation in it and her dance and its recognition were pure and meaningful experiences for her, just like I hope my own daughter benefitted from her experience with the Sears Festival.
And that brings me to David Rakoff: Does it make me a bad person that I didn't love Half Empty, even though I know that he died last summer? I appreciated that it was read by the author-- he was obviously a wonderful storyteller and I am not surprised to learn that he had a presence on public radio. And that's the thing about his voice-- it sounded more like a performance than a friend confiding in me. Rakoff is funny and intelligent, urbane I guess, exactly like a gay Jewish New Yorker who was born an Anglo-Montrealer might sound; measured and slightly bored, his voice cracking on cue at the wriest bits. As for the writing, it's wonderful, really; not quite memoir, but first person essays nonetheless.
In “Isn’t it Romantic”, Rakoff explains why he didn't like the musical Rent: For a bunch of would-be artists, the characters in the musical are never shown making art. Unlike Rakoff himself, and even the playwright who created Rent, they are also never shown paying their dues or working at crummy minimum wage jobs in order to support their dreams, and indeed, they decide to stick it to the suits by refusing to pay their rent from then on. As Rakoff notes:
". ..hanging out does not make one an artist. A secondhand wardrobe does not make one an artist. Neither do a hair-trigger temper, melancholic nature, propensity for tears, hating your parents, nor even HIV - I hate to say it - none of these make one an artist. They can help, but just as being gay does not make one witty… the only thing that makes one an artist is making art. And that requires the precise opposite of hanging out; a deeply lonely and unglamorous task of tolerating oneself long enough to push something out.”
I believe that Rakoff paid his dues and suffered for his craft and in the end pushed out art-- and Half Empty is so well-crafted that I admired the words and the sentences and each essay, but I didn't love them. In another essay, Rakoff is introduced to a socialite-type at a party and the hostess mentions that the two guests could have a lively conversation at some point. Looking him up and down, the socialite purrs, "Oh yes, I'm sure we could have all sorts of bitchy fun." Rakoff smiled at the time, a polite Canadian at heart after all, but in his essay explains that he is never intentionally bitchy or catty or gossipy-- and was that what I was expecting, just like the shallow socialite? Was I disappointed that his observations were piercing and smart but never cruel?
I heard the quote I started this with while walking along, and it struck me as my chief complaint-- Rakoff comes off as venal and glib and too clever by half-- and I hurried home to type it so I wouldn't forget it. It wasn't until I was looking at the impressions of others here that I saw someone had the entire quote:
“I am the furthest thing from a do-gooder. I am venal and glib and too clever by half, I know, but the thrill of the most brilliantly quicksilver aperÒ«u is no match for the self-interested high I get from having done someone a good turn. You'd think I'd do more good turns as a result, but there you go.”
It seems uncharitable of me to have remembered that quote out of context. I'm sure that if I had met Rakoff while he was alive, I would have liked him, and the world is certainly diminished by his absence.
The final essay, “Another Shoe”, is an account of Rakoff's second cancer scare and its treatment, and of course that was a poignant experience, listening as I was to him tell the tale from beyond the grave. The title, Half Empty, refers to his philosophy of the positive power of negative thinking : one should hope for the best but prepare for the worst; don't be afraid to leave the house but know where the fire escapes are in the movie theater; expect nothing and you'll never be disappointed. After serving him well in the variety of experiences described in this book, it proves no match for a recurrence of cancer:
“The best-laid plans, one's most fastidious contingency strategies have revealed themselves in the cold light of day to be laughably inadequate, no match for the happenstance that seems of late only to promise death, mayhem, poverty, flood. And here you are, having spent all that time protecting your home from the oncoming elements only to find that it has been shored up with crackers."
Poignancy aside, I'm going to take a chance and assume that David Rakoff is not perched in the heaven that he didn't believe in, hoping that I'm going to award him a special certificate of merit just because his personal tragedy is attendant to my experience of his art. I hope that doesn't make me a douchebag…
This is a very good book in my opinion, although a 3 star experience, and I am looking forward to listening to another collection of his essays that I have cued up next.
