Only Connect (Part 1)

On Beauty - Zadie Smith (2005)

Synopsis: Howard Belsey is a mediocre British academic teaching at a standard-issue liberal arts college outside Boston, where he lives with his African-American wife and their three nearly-grown children. Through a series of events, based on those of Forster’s Howard’s End; the Belseys become entangled with the family of Montague Kipps, Howard’s academic an political nemesis. The complications of these relationships give each character the opportunity to search for – or reevaluate – his identity.

The search for identity is indeed the central focus of this book, the key motive for every major character. As Smith herself expressed it in her Bookworm interview with Michael Silverblatt, On Beauty is, "full of people terrified of becoming less of who they are by pursuing what's most meaningful to them." Each one is trying to reconcile what he is with what he has been, or what he wants to be.

Howard’s three children exemplify this strongly, as they seek the values around which they will form their lives. Jerome, the bright eldest son of this humanist household, is drawn to a life of faith. Daughter Zora is driven by her desire to join the intelligentsia, and asserts her intellectual credentials with insecure desperation. Levi, the youngest, is drawn to a culture he perceives as more authentic for a young black man, though in the process he rejects the authenticity of his own life experience and obsessively romanticizes life on the street as experienced by those with whom he imagines kinship. At the same time, Kiki, their mother, looks back from the other end of life and tries to figure out what her life has been about – a black woman married to a white world; a woman of passion thrown among intellectuals.

Meanwhile, Howard is consumed by his own identity crisis. Having escaped into academia from the physical and mental poverty of his Cockney youth, he still flees his past over thirty years later. He rejects the red-blooded, passionate values of his upbringing to such a degree that he withdraws into a totally cerebral way of life. He abandons the idea of relating to the world in terms of feeling, even pleasure, or aesthetic; everything must be either conceptual, or unforgivably banal. In trying to reconcile with his wife over a past infidelity, the best approach he can come up with is:

…the onus is on me, I know that. It’s for me to – to – explain my narrative in a way that’s comprehensible…and achieves an…I don’t know, explanation, I suppose, in terms of motivation… (p. 204)

Howard is threatened by the emotional demands of reality, and therefore removes himself from reality into a conceptual world. He withdraws from those who have engaged reality, even though it alienates him from his own wife and children. Kiki confronts him,

This is real. This is life. We’re really here. This is really happening. Suffering is real. When you hurt people, it’s real. When you **** one of our best friends, that’s a real thing and it hurts me. (394)

As more than one character points out to Howard, “Basically, you just need to deal with the fact that you’re not the only person in this world.” (390). And in this way, Howard struggles with what Smith calls “the big question of fiction”: Do other people exist in the same way I do?

Occasionally, Someone Gets It.

When it comes to weather, New Englanders are delusional. In his ten years on the East Coast Howard had lost count of the times some loon from Massachusetts had heard his accent, looked at him pitiably, and said something like: Cold over there, huh? Howard's feeling was: look, let's get a few things straight here. England is not warmer than New England in July or August, that's true. Probably not in June either. But it is warmer in October, November, December, January, February, March, April, and May - that is, in every month when warmth matters. In England letter-boxes do not jam with snow. Rarely does one see a squirrel tremble. It is not necessary to pick up a shovel in order to unearth your rubbish bins.

-On Beauty, Zadie Smith, p. 27

The List of Lists

Everyone's been writing about this year's meta-literature standout, The Top Ten, edited by J. Peder Zane, book review editor for the Raleigh News & Observer. It took me a while, but I finally managed to get my hands on a copy.

The book comprises 125 lists of “the ten greatest works of fiction of all time,” as provided by American and British authors, as well as several essays interpreting the possible significance of the selections. Naturally, we have to take a package like this in good humor, since we’re inundated by “Top Ten” and “Best Of”, of dubious importance, from all corners of the media. (Remember 1999?) Personally, I doubt that anyone is really deluded into thinking such things are important; he reason books like this are published, and the reason we pick them up, is that they're fun. They provide an abbreviated intimacy between all of us who love books so much that we love books about books.

Whenever I see “top” lists, I’m curious to know the criteria actually specified. As David Orr points out in his essay, “Reading the Lists” (p. 31), there may be several interpretations of “greatness”:

1. “Great” means “books that have been greatest for me.”
2. “Great” means “books that would be considered great by the most people over time.”
3. “Great” has nothing to do with you or me – or people at all. It involves transcendent concepts like God or the Sublime.
4. “Great”? I like Tom Clancey.

In this case, the authors were free to interpret “greatest” however they desired, and their responses populated the continuum from subjective to objective. In total, the contributors named 544 individual books, but the most popular weren’t surprising. Topping the list were Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary, and War and Peace.

The interpreters, in their essays, search for commonalities among the listed books, ideas crucial to their selection, and, perhaps most importantly, the possible meaning of the exercise. The recurring conclusion is that writers are compelled to see greatness in their influences, in those works which best represent the forerunners of their own craft. Norman Mailer provides himself as an example when, in a preface to his own list, he claims, “I find that the books I think of as great were read when I was still a young and unpublished writer." Sven Bikerts concludes in his introductory essay, “If [the list] didn’t tell us about greatness, it certainly said something about how writers read.”

Yet, the selected works dated from classical times to the present – twentieth century authors on the list included DeLillo, Garcia Marquez, Morrison, Ishiguro. (Though, indeed, some contributors excluded more recent works from consideration, because, as Mary Gaitskill put it, “I can’t see them clearly enough to judge their greatness.”)

One appealing feature of this book is that many of the contributing writers offered brief essays in appreciation of a book on their list – generally a little-known work. So if you’re looking for the secret gems of literature, this book offers many for consideration. I added a title or two to my own list.

So, is their any meaning or purpose to this “reader sport,” as Bikerts dubbed it? As banal as the “top ten” concept has become, why does it continue to appeal? George Saunders concluded in his list’s introduction: “We need a concept of greatness so we can know in what direction we should morally aspire.”

You can read more about the book, read some of the lists, or create your own list at http://www.toptenbooks.net/list.html.

Books and Cynicism - My Two Favorite Things

Always read stuff that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.

—P.J. O'Rourke

The Truth About Art

"Artists use frauds to make human beings seem more wonderful than they really are. Dancers show us human beings who move much more gracefully than human beings really move. Films and books and plays show us people talking much more entertainingly than people really talk, make paltry human enterprises seem important. Singers and musicians show us human beings making sounds far more lovely than human beings really make. Architects give us temples in which something marvelous is obviously going on. Actually, practically nothing is going on."

-Kurt Vonnegut Jr., 1922-2007

More Adventures in Selfimportantville, Part 3

Continued from yesterday

Eventually, I found a gas station on a street corner where I felt almost safe enough to get out of the car, so I stopped to ask for directions (like I said before, I hadn’t been around long enough to know better). I knew the area at least well enough to know that I needed to get back to Route II, a state highway which runs through CityF, past my residence, and all the way to Selfimportantville. The following dialogue ensued between myself and the dim-looking adolescent at the cash register.

Del P.: How do I get back to Route II?

Dumb kid, with tortured deliberation: Um…do you mean Route II the highway?

Del P.: (As opposed to what, Route II the theme park?) Er, yes. I need to get back to Route II, Route II eastbound, heading back toward Selfimportantville…?

Dumb kid, looking painfully perplexed, then suddenly enlightened: Oh! I thought you meant Route II the highway.

Del P.: (?????)

Dumb kid, confidently: This is Route II here (points out at city street).

Del P.: (um, no it’s not…) Hm, er, well, I haven’t seen any signs…

Dumb kid, miraculously self assured: Oh, yeah, if you go down that way you’ll see a sign in a couple of miles.

Del P.: (This isn’t Route II…Route II is a limited access divided highway…this is a city street…but it’s not like I have anything better to go on…). Um, ok, thanks.

I left and drove down Not Route II in the direction Dumb Kid had indicated. And sure enough, after a couple of miles, I saw a sign for…Route II(A). Which is not the same as Route II. Which is 1.5 lanes wide and completely lacking streetlamps. Which does eventually lead to Selfimportantville, but only after winding through approximately 50 miles of minimally inhabited Gravel Region countryside.

Fortunately, I did know how to get home via Route II(A) , and having been in Selfimportantville for less than a month at this point, I still had a large enough store of patience to do so. The whole ordeal lasted around four hours.

Epilogue: I did make it to the CityF church gathering on a later occasion, after taking the navigation into my own hands. When I arrived, I told the other people there about my previous difficulties, and they asked how I had found the place this time around. I told them, “Well, I found out the name of the person who lives here, then I looked him up in the phone book, and found the address on a map.” To which the CityF churchgoers responded, “Oh, wow! That was so smart! I never would have thought of that.”

More Adventures in Selfimportantville, Part 2

Continued from yesterday

Another church I visited is located in CityF, which was is named for early settler Mr. John F. (Besides bequeathing his name to CityF, Mr. F. is most renowned for having been abducted by Native Americans and removed to Canada, an event tenuously linked to the start of the French and Indian War, but that's another story.)

The inhabitants of CityF clearly admire Mr. F. a great deal - so much so that they decided it wasn't enough to name the city after him; they then proceeded to name everything in the city after him as well. So you cruise into town on John F. Boulevard, possibly to visit friends who live on John F. Drive, John F. Street, or John F. Road. (Not that any of them would be labeled.) From there you might choose to dine at the John F. Restaurant or shoot pool at the John F. Sports Bar. On the other hand, you might need to run some errands at John F. Plaza, perhaps stopping by the John F. Pharmacy, the John F. Barber Shop, and the John F. Gas-n-Go. Or if you're in the market for a big-ticket item, you could drop by the John F. Furniture Gallery or John F. Auto Sales. I'm still on the lookout for John F. Congregational Church.

CityF might also be the birthplace of the phrase "the wrong side of the tracks," because there is in fact a set of rails rather auspiciously located. These days, though, neither side of the tracks in CityF is particularly desirable. It's not the kind of place where you'd want to be driving around after dark with a crummy set of directions. Oh no. But we can't always get what we want, right? Right.

When I first visited the CityF church, I was invited to a gathering of young adults at a home in CityF scheduled a few weeks afterward. Not yet savvy to the ways of Selfimportantville, I accepted directions from a Selfimportantvillain. Well. Naturally the directions involved no street names, landmarks, or anything else remotely useful, and they were wrong anyhow. (The direction giving gene was bred out of Selfimportantvillains in the late 17th century.) Also, it was January, a time of year when the sun sets on Selfimportantville at around 4:00 in the afternoon.

So, it didn’t take long, driving uncertainly around CityF in the dark, to realize that I wasn’t going to get where I was going. Abort mission. Problem, though – how do I get out of CityF? I tried to retrace my path, but it had been too convoluted to follow. So I drove around for some time on the wrong side of the tracks discovering John F. namesakes.

To be continued...

More Adventures in Selfimportantville, Part 1

Recounting the story of the yeast purchase at Grocery Pit brought to mind other Selfimportantville adventures I've had over the years. The most vivid memories date from my first months here, when I was still learning my way around, and getting used to ideas like:

• The more heavily traveled a street is, and the more likely you are to need to get to it, the less likely it is to be labeled with any signs telling you what it's called.
• Just because there aren't any lines painted on the road doesn't mean it isn’t meant to legally accommodate four lanes of traffic.
• Just because a national chain drug store is located in a major metropolitan area, in the United States, in the 21st century, doesn’t mean it can’t close at 8 p.m., nor that it must stock such luxury items as Chap-Stick(tm).
• Moving house to a town two miles away is an atrocity second only to cannibalizing your own children.
• Right of way is for Philistines.

Etc. This is Selfimportantville. The learning curve is steep, and the roads are never salted (another cause for annoyance).

I met several of my early adventures during the process of looking for a church to join. I happen to adhere to a denomination that is much less common in the Gravel Region (of which Selfimportantville is the principal metropolis) than it is in other parts of the country, so getting settled in that respect took some research and effort, and I did a lot of visiting around before I was done.

On one occasion, I was searching for a church in TownC, and couldn’t find the street on which it was supposed to be located, naturally, for dearth of signage. I stopped at a gas station and asked the attendant for help finding Blubber Drive. He was apologetic. “I’m sorry, I don’t know – I’m not from this area myself.” Fine, obviously I sympathize with that. But he went on. “I grew up in VillageB.” Well, foreigner though I was, I did know that VillageB is located immediately adjacent to TownC, and that we were standing ten minutes' walk from the B/C border. I hadn’t yet encountered the widely accepted local notion that “this area” signifies “within half a city block of here.” So I was puzzled. And he continued, apparently still trying to excuse his ignorance, “I’ve only lived in TownC for eleven years.” Er…right. Let me see a map.

At the time, I wrote it off as a cultural experience in small town provinciality. After five years of hearing near-identical sentiments from most of the urbanite Selfimportantvillains I’ve encountered, the quaintness factor is pretty much gone.

To be continued...

Love's Redeeming Work is Done

Lives again our glorious King, Alleluia!
Where, O death, is now thy sting? Alleluia!
Died He once, us all to save, Alleluia!
Where thy victory, O grave? Alleluia!

Soar we now where Christ hath led, Alleluia!
Following our exalted Head, Alleluia!
Made like Him, like Him we rise, Alleluia!
Ours the cross, the grave, the skies, Alleluia!

-from "Christ the Lord is Risen Today," Charles Wesley, 1739

Reason number 1764 why the Quagmire Bibliophile needs to get out of Selfimportantville - An Anecdote

A few weeks ago, I decided I wanted to make some bread, and made a note to pick up some yeast. Shortly thereafter, I happened to be in Suburb W*, so I stopped at Grocery Pit*. I don't often shop there because of the dreadful produce, but I've always found them to be fine for anything nonperishable.

Anyhow, I went inside to look for yeast. Whenever I've bought yeast in the past, it's always been shelved with the other baking supplies, somewhere near the flour, and I always thought this to be reasonable, since the ordinary person has no purpose whatever for yeast except to use it for baking bread. So I went to the baking supplies aisle. I walked up and down several times, but couldn't find any yeast. No jars, no little paper packets, no nothing.

As I was searching, I noticed that I had some company. There was an elderly gentleman hovering around the cake decorations, and a middle aged woman scanning the upper shelves. We all noticed each other, and eventually the man asked, "Do you see any maraschino cherries?" (Note: Selfimortantvillains categorically don't talk to strangers in public except on point of death. So when something like this happens, you know the situation is truly desperate.) We looked around, and told him that no, we didn't. Then the woman said, "I'm looking for evaporated milk - that should be here, shouldn't it?" We agreed that yes, it probably should, and that no, it apparently wasn't. "Yeast," I said, "do you see any yeast?" "Like for bread? It should be with the flour." "That's what I thought."

We all continued to glance about abstractly, until an unsuspecting Grocery Pit employee wandered through. Woman asked, "Excuse me, where do you keep the evaporated milk?" "Oh, Aisle 6, this end, near the coffee creamer." Well, alright, it doesn't sound terribly appetizing to me, but I guess I can see it. It had to be either that or the canned pumpkin.

Man said, "I'm looking for maraschino cherries." "Oh, they're with the ethnic foods, near the canned tomatoes, top shelf." Two questions: (1) Are we shelving foods by color now? and (2) To what ethnicity do maraschino cherries belong, exactly?

Finally, I asked, "Where do you keep the baking yeast?" "The little packets? That's in the refrigerated section. It should be near the Boca Burgers."

Boca Burgers???

And, indeed, the little packets of yeast were neatly stashed in a box, mounted between the Boca Burgers and the disposable turkey roasting pans (?).

Thus ends another episode in the Kafka-emulating Adventures in Selfimportantville.
_____________________________
*Names changed to defend Del P.'s delicate nerves against chronic paranoia.

Seasonal Confusion

O wind, if winter comes, can spring be far behind? - Shelley

________________________________________________________________

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas in Selfimportantville. Winter's last hurrah, if two weeks late. I like winter, because it's not summer. I don't like summer, because it's hot. I would enjoy spring, if only it didn't make me so paranoid by constantly hinting at summer. Though not today.

My anti-summer sentiments are rather lonely. Everyone else seems to love summer. Summer is the greatest thing that happens all year. Being surrounded by the celebration of it just makes the whole thing more depressing for me. Its like having inverse SAD.

It's only April. And it's snowing. Small graces.