Tinkers

Tinkers was full of tingles. The imagery of a man dying and reliving aspects of his life, while the reader learns about areas he never knew, was captivating. No sentimentality, no gore, just sweet endings to a sometimes bitter history. Renal failure, clocks, hallucinations, epilepsy, harsh winters, moonshine and excerpts from The Reasonable Horologist are all pretty new topics for the novels I’ve read. That Paul Harding intertwines them all so well that I look forward to each bit of the story, never knowing what will come next, is exceptional.

More about Harding’s writing style is that it was full of beautiful imagery. These were snippets of ideas and a day here or a day there in the lives of a father and son. Very little came in a straight line, allowing me to read as disjointedly as I did without feeling any loss of continuity. That I read this book for my new Montlake reading group (which is the biggest and oldest so far that I’ve attended in Seattle) means that I also got to be part of a great conversation about the book.

Overall, Tinkers received some extremely high praise in this circle. Those who’d attended the death of a parent were able to identify with the physical and mental changes described. Those who’d lived in cold weather or overcome adversity or experienced sufficient closure understood many of the novel’s themes. Only questions of all the unmentioned years still perplex. But this was not a memoir, and our principal character, George, was not interested, on his deathbed, in how his mother managed, and he did not dwell on how he got through school. No, George wanted to think about his father, and about all the money he’d stashed in his tool shed.

Each character of Harding’s novel has a particular set of impressions of life. Each is insightful. Each is limited. The novel felt true, and that is novel indeed.

Death Comes for the Archbishop

My parents’ library doesn’t carry Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop. This is at once tragic and fortuitous. The fine city of Anacortes is not offering its public “a very rare piece of literature” (The New York Times). The lucky break is that, when I checked it out for them at the Seattle Public Library, I became intrigued and read it before passing it along.

Published in 1927, the story covers the life and ministry of Father Jean Marie Latour, the Apostolic Vicar to New Mexico from 1851 to his death.

The language that Cather uses is absolutely gorgeous. Her ability to tell a story is splendid, and her descriptions inspiring. I never really appreciated the beauty and mystery of the Southwest until I saw it through Cather’s writing. The most touching aspect is how Cather describes the lifelong friendship between Father Latour and Father Joseph Valliant, whom Latour brings to New Mexico with him.

At Father Joseph’s funeral, Cather writes, Father Latour “could see Joseph as clearly as he could see Bernard (who accompanied Latour), but always as he was when they first came to New Mexico. It was not sentiment; that was the picture of Father Joseph his memory produced for him, and it did not produce any other.”

This is not the only description of the way Father Latour viewed his best friend and each time Cather treats their relationship is heart-warming and strikingly familiar. I, too, see a person I love even after years of life have wrought unasked for changes in a way that resonates with Latour’s statement, “I do not see you as you really are, Joseph; I see you through my affection for you.”

Like and Marriage

I picked up a book that I’m hot-potato-ing right away. The last time I had a dating book laying around the hottest date I ever had came over while it was on my coffee table. Mortification only fully set in once he’d left! Lori Gottlieb’s book “Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough” would probably end up mortifying a date, but I found it downright fascinating.

Gottlieb, nearing 40, finally discovers her main hang-ups as to why she hasn’t married. She hasn’t been dating marriageable men. She has impossible standards. She isn’t attracted to what in a man is most valuable in marriage. She’s been holding out for ‘better’ than the present. She’s looking for romance over friendship and partnership.

Truthfully, I think I understand. She doesn’t like men with bow ties and names like ‘Sheldon’; I don’t enjoy men with poor grammar who chew with their mouth open. These peripherals shouldn’t be non-negotiable, yet are highly distracting when trying to establish a relationship.

The real kicker is that there is a mathematics to relationships. I figured that my living abroad during the majority of my 20’s meant that I have an interesting resume, not that I’d come back to find all the men I ever knew married! Well, except the ones who don’t plan to marry. Still plenty of those.

But I have to admit it was the writing style, organization and story-telling of Gottlieb that mainly interested me. Her sentences were unsentimental (phew) and her examples true. I could read a book on bird-watching if it were so well-written.

Overall, Gottlieb expresses the need to be open-minded in dating, which, when paired with realism and a sense of what is necessary in a relationship, not merely dreamy, convinces me it’s probably possible to find Mr. Good Enough, even in Seattle.

Oh, and her section quotes are good. Three Germans and a Frenchman’s words are used to set the stage.

“It is not lack of love but lack of friendship that makes for unhappy marriages.” Friedrich Nietzche

“Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing; a confusion of the real with the ideal never goes unpunished.” Goethe

“Illusions commend themselves to us because they save us pain and allow us to enjoy pleasure instead. We must therefore accept it without complaint when they sometimes collide with a bit of reality against which they are dashed to pieces.” Sigmund Freud

“The perfect is the enemy of the good.” Voltaire

Prayer

I’ve often admitted that holding onto a book awhile before reading it only intensifies my curiosity. Checking books out of the library is easy. Getting them read within a couple weeks and returned is not. After renewing my hold on The Greatest Prayer: Rediscovering the Revolutionary Message of THE LORD’s PRAYER the maximum amount, I finally read it this week, past due.

Surely something that John Dominic Crossan writes was bound to be as revolutionary as the prayer itself. Having only really prayed the Lord’s Prayer in earnest in recent years, I knew there was more to it than I ever heard in Sunday school. To say that it was given as little credence as possible in my ‘the only rule is no rule’ childhood church is light. But, I knew it was important. I knew I didn’t know why.

Although I never opened the book, I carried it around enough for my brother-in-law to comment on the author, mentioning that he didn’t think I’d appreciate the theology. Of all the things I’ve discussed with my brother-in-law, it’s seldom theology, so I thought Crossan must be a process theologian. However, in just about his opening lines, he decisively rejects that theology. Hmm, my interest is more greatly piqued.

Crossan instead dives into the historical and biblical relevance of the poetic phrasing and wording of this universal, great prayer. Although some aspects of this prayer have always been more difficult than others to understand (a modern Americans’ understanding of kingdom, for example), I found that on every single level I had much to learn.

My primary question of God is will. I understand the elements: love, kindness, peace, humility. I never understood Jesus’ acceptance of ‘God’s will’ and praying for the same will, always having naturally combined the Lord’s Prayer and Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane. I never could align how Jesus dying could possibly be God’s will. (Jesus acting out righteousness causing him to be killed I get.) I can understand immediately how Jesus resurrecting is God’s will. In the discussion of this prayer, Crossan gave me a new viewpoint by which to consider God’s will.

Through the reading of the Lord’s Prayer in historical context and theological detail my future praying will be infused with greater enthusiasm, and hopefully inspiration for my part in this household of God’s.

Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is

You must lose things,

Feel the future dissolve in a moment

Like salt in a weakened broth

Naomi Shihah Nye “Kindness”

Chris Bohjalian has, in the preface to his book, Before You Know Kindness, this quote, as well as one from The Secret Garden. As much as the title and quote perplexed me the entirety of the novel, and through my reading discussion group, the story was quite straight-forward.

I enjoyed the writing style, I enjoyed the characters, and even enjoyed the treatment of their issues. And what a smorgasbord of issues! Sex, money, power, love, and jealousy spring immediately to my mind, followed by neglect, misguided loyalties, non-disclosure, self-harm, fear of death, and guilt.

You’d think from a list like that Bohjalian would have needed a few more characters! The matriarch, Nan Seton, as vigorous as she was, was very much the weak broth. I was disappointed not to discover more about her purpose, as she was set up so well. Her two children, John and Catherine, and their spouses, Sara and Spencer, rounded out the adults. Each couple had one daughter. John and Sara also had a newborn son. He had no speaking lines.

However, it is the use of gardens that will most likely be the keeper. Spencer is vegan. Spencer also grows a garden and gets his arm nearly shot off by Charlotte, his 12-year-old daughter. The idea of Eden continues to emerge, then reemerge. There are so many big ideas that continually point to Christian teaching that it was nearly surprising. How a garden can bring healing for one and destruction for another is a powerful contrast. One person in my reading group flat out asked, “What is kindness?” then, while we were there, threw in “And what is forgiveness?” Before long we’d gone over grace, Jesus, Adam and Eve, light on a hill, and salt, too.

Finally, one of many difficult statements Jesus made is being given some serious and fascinating treatment. It is better for a man to cut off his hand than to keep it if it causes him to sin. Alright, I know that Spencer’s shoulder did not cause him to sin. Getting it blown apart did make him have to start listening, though. Spencer had to pause and look to those around him; his sudden insufficiency made him whole. Better to lose an arm than the wife and child you love more than anything.

Truth and Hijacking

Directly following my reading of Lucy Grealy’s Autobiography of a Face I read Ann Patchett’s non-fiction book Truth and Beauty: A Friendship where she writes about how she and Lucy were friends, writers, and as close as sisters. Directly following that, I read Suellen Grealy’s article Hijacked by Grief where she talks about her sister, Lucy, and Ann’s capitalizing on their friendship.

Two things. One, I believe Ann Patchett’s story. Two, I believe that Suellen Grealy hit it on the nose by saying that Ann is nothing like the writer Lucy was. If I had read Suellen Grealy’s article before I read Patchett’s book, I might have felt too guilty to read the book. However, I had an insatiable curiosity about Lucy Grealy after reading her book and was all too happy to read more about her.

Patchett describes the women’s lives on the road to ‘writer-dom’ with steadiness. It’s the same story I’ve heard from many authors. Somehow, although Patchett is being so true to her story, describing herself as the dull ant doing her work, and Grealy as the vibrant grasshopper bringing life to every situation, I found her patronizing, and even at a couple points, defensive. I know people who can be entirely loving and still rub me the wrong way. So, although I got to read what it meant for Grealy to survive the cancer and the subsequent reconstructive surgeries through the eyes of a friend, I had to acknowledge that their relationship was not my ideal. (However, I have spent more time valuing the friendships I hold dear since reading this.) When Grealy revealed her life’s struggles I felt her to be very much ‘like’ me, when Patchett took over Lucy became entirely ‘other.’

I understand that Ann and Lucy loved one another. I believe they used one another as much as they could stand, which for both of them would not be too much. And I am genuinely convinced that their need for one another was entirely deep and inscrutable. However, I feel very much for Suellen Grealy who has come away from the untimely death of her sister to discover this growth, this off-shoot on Lucy’s life. Tragedy is the world’s, and Lucy was in it. And, although they may at times be complimentary, as often Truth and Beauty are at odds.

Lucy's Face

Lucy Grealy’s Autobiography of a Face was not a story about cancer. It was a story about a girl eventually becoming a woman who wanted love yet wasn’t being fulfilled to her satisfaction. Her disfigured face seemed to her the culprit. However, like many people, Lucy’s loneliness and initial understanding of the world left her with the wrong answer.

Lucy was loved and Lucy was learning to love. The simple love of an animal or toy was her easy love. Her childhood friendships were a second love. Mature adult love became elusive. But Lucy found substitutes. She discovered “being good” love and “bravery” love and “medical” love and “sex” love and finally “knowledge” love. Ultimately Lucy is convincingly lovable and unlovable. It’s easy to believe that her face was an obstacle to romantic love, and perhaps a venue towards gracious love.

But Lucy did have cancer at the age of nine. She lived. She had life-long pain. She went home after surgery and then back to school with a large part of her lower jaw missing. Growing up in hospitals almost as much as at home certainly lends itself to another entire realm of development of self view, and world view. The amount that Lucy scrutinizes her own ideas and then the ways she copes with them is formidable.

The ability Lucy had to express herself was a wonderful gift. Her decision to write a story about her story was bold. It’s Lucy’s perception of luck and relativity and hypocrisy that seals her life’s most extraordinary work. The only justice that I can do is to refer back to her own writing. I am thankful to have read what she extracted from her life experiences and although the creation is hers, somehow I feel that Lucy and I might understand one another just a little. But, even if we wouldn’t, I appreciate my own needs in a new light and will consider others’ differently, as well.