I am in the midst of rereading Colleen McCullough’s 1977 novel, The Thorn Birds. Which I read when it was first released in paperback. I figured it would be a good travel book, good for tired lonely nights, or airplanes and airports, and because it is the alternate novel selection for a group. In fact, I was not, at first, certain I wanted to reread the novel remembering nothing more than it was a saga of forbidden love, even though I remembered loving it at the time. I quickly realized that memory was playing tricks however, that my memories, and my doubts were based more on the mini-series based on the book than on the book itself, and I am finding it a very satisfactory read, a book I am not only happy to be reading again, but which I feel sustains the differences in perception I as reader bring to the novel after a 40 year absence, because there is more to this book than the story of Meggie and Ralph. In fact although they are the axle around which this story revolves, they become almost the least interesting characters in this drama of family, environment, love, and fate. In am thinking that hidden in this story is a rather complex meditation on the choices we as humans make and the consequences of said choices, both for ourselves and those around us.
I am reminded that the last time I took to the air, last November, I read Stephen King’s new novel Dr. Sleep, which I also thoroughly enjoyed. Dr. Sleep is a sequel to The Shining, which I read long long ago, and although this book picks up some years after the events of the first novel, and carries through on certain themes, it is very much its own book, its own story. King is a master of a genre that actually has a long history in American Literature, and I would not give him short-shrift. The story is very well told, but although The Shining is a great, terrifying, introspective horror, this novel is something else altogether. I do not think it is any less for that. We all evolve after all, even Danny, the little boy from The Shining. One of the things I enjoyed about this book is that Danny does evolve, he chooses to confront his demons, although the path that gets him to that choosing is not necessarily of his own making or his own desire. So it is for all of us. Although Danny seems to come very close to being sucked down by his past and never pulling out of his own internal morass, he manages to become something more than his hurts and terrors, more than his inner fears might allow. And this is the thing about King; yes, he writes horror stories, but it would be a mistake to dismiss him as merely a writer of genre fiction. He writes psychological novels about the stranger that lives deep inside all of us, taking us on romps through the human psyche, guided romps where we know we may be frightened but where we also know we will come out relatively unscathed. There is always something more going on, more than just the terror; although just as in life, one may choose to see or not to see.
Which reminds me that I am still behind as concerns reporting about my reading list, so let’s take another stab at rounding out November.
Dr. Sleep was not the only deeply psychological novel I read that month. I also reread A Christmas Carol, and there are many similarities between the two and their authors. A Christmas Carol was dashed off because Dickens needed money to pay his bills, and i don’t think Dickens, in his day, was considered any more literary than King is today. He was a writer of mostly serialized popular fiction, and in many ways he was a cultural icon of his time, much as King is today. In fact, that he is still so esteemed may have been considered by some to be surprising. And yet A Christmas Carol is a deeply philosophical and psychological story, and this does not even include all the Christmas trappings. It is a story of redemption, of gaining wisdom, of what we currently popularly think of as the journey of the second half of life. And the very contradictions of it, that it was written to make money, yet it sharply criticizes the life spent in pursuit of avarice, the combined darkness and the glowingly define Christmas sparkle, make it into something both simple (Christmas yes!) and complex. In fact, Christmas, as we think of it today, owes more to Charles Dickens than to any religious sentiment, and I think my youthful self sometimes read the story with visions of movies and musical interpretations dancing in my my head. Or do I experience Scrooge’s journey more poignantly today because I have made my own track through the forest?
And then there was the Dutch House. The house is as much a character in this family drama as the members of the family themselves. Two children are booted from their family home after their father’s death by a stepmother who is more interested in the house than in human relationships, and the house takes on an outsize role in their yearnings for the happy family they lost. Except that it was never happy, and the house, and what it symbolizes for the various members of the family proves to be a great foundation for this exploration of family dynamics.
Patchett, as usual brings a keen understanding of human complexity to the story. I particularly like that the story is told from the perspective of a boy, who becomes a man, who himself is neither particularly introspective or observant, which makes him a great foil for this deft exploration of interpersonal dynamics. I also like the way the story is written around the house, the way the house itself, although inanimate, stands in the midst of all of them, both through its presence and its absence, a symbol of yearning, loss, love, isolation. This is a novel about the way people make assumptions — about places, people, their lovers, family, coworkers — that are more about the self than about opening a relationship. Everyone in this story knows everyone else, but for the most part they go through life never seeing each other.
Interesting to me, is how all these stories relate, in one way or another, to the novel I am currently reading, and will finish today. It is of course one of the grand themes of human existence, one deserving of much exploration and always benefitting from new insight and further explorations,
And that seems to get me about two-thirds through November, and I feel I am at a stopping point, which means alas there is more catching up to do, four more books from November, eight from December, and whatever is happening this month. So be it. Slowing down, no so much physically or mentally, although that does happen as we age, but more in terms of a reflective slowing seems to be one of the current themes of my life. I do not at the moment feel the need to rush through things, to accumulate experiences as if I am crossing off items in a list. Bear with me.
