Have You Read Geraldine Brooks?

At least two reviewers I've read call Geraldine Brooks' writing "magic." Perhaps that’s why "historical fiction" seems too restrictive to describe the four novels of hers that I have read.

She applies her magic to historical truths with amazing characters who find their ways through real history, not some academic recitation of it, nor just a bow to something distant. Her success comes by letting the reader be as close to that history as possible. To me the real magic comes from her extensive research and clever use of words and even sentence structure as they probably were used in the times she is telling. Here’s an example:

…He could tell such tales: of Barbary seamen who wrapped their copper-colored faces in turbans of rich indigo; of a Musalman merchant who kept four wives all veiled so that each moved about with just one eye peeking from her shroud. He had gone to London at the end of his apprenticeship, for the return and restoration of King Charles II had created prosperity among all manner of trades… (Year of Wonders)

People of the Book was the first of Brooks’ books I read, and I was hooked. Next came her Pulitzer prize-winning March, an amazing work that overlays a Civil War-era tale with the denouement of Little Women, if you can imagine. 

Then I read Caleb’s Crossing with its vivid descriptives and beautiful story line set in the early days of Massachusetts Colony, and how a young Indian brave became the first of his people to graduate from Harvard College.

Now I've just completed Year of Wonders, a gripping, honest, and respectful work set in a 17th Century rural English village besieged by the plague. More than half the town's residents die in awful suffering. But it is a redemptive work because of Brooks' "magic," her wonderful development of Anna, a true heroine, and the amazing feeling of somehow being uplifted as a person for having taken the journey with her through and to the other side of a living hell. Year of Wonders gives a whole new dimension to the concept of "cinematic" writing. And I was there. 

PolitiSpeak

     George Orwell proclaimed “newspeak” in the totalitarian future foreseen in his classic 1984. Newspeak, of course, would reflect the transformation of language into words that sound great but which are really equivocations covering up the truth.

     Well, has anyone noticed?

     We seem to have blown right past 1984 into our own dystopia in American political speech today.

     Not so long ago, for example, we were told by the House majority leader at the time that “we must pass the bill so you can find out what’s in it.” She referred to the contentious Affordable Care Act. It eventually passed, and we are still being surprised at what is in it, not to mention how unaffordable it is for many.

     Politicians have always had singular ways of speaking. John F. Kennedy would say, “Let me be crystal clear.” Ronald Reagan had a knack for leavening even the most contentious political situation with good humor and a warm smile.

     And then there was Richard Nixon. “I was not lying,” he said. “I said things that later on seemed to be untrue.” Thus was born today’s PolitiSpeak, which is now giving “newspeak” a run for its money.

     Today we have shortened Nixonian rhetoric considerably. We approach Orwellian dystopia every day when we say a bald-faced lie was just a “lack of transparency.” Or when the Vice President admits that he “misspoke” about something, and the newsies write he “walked his statement back.” Really? Walked it back to where? The truth, per chance?

     And then we have “the gaffe.” It’s everywhere in today’s PolitiSpeak. So much so that some DC wags have said that a politician’s gaffe is really just too much like the truth.

     Was that the case when one Jonathan Gruber, an architect of Obamacare, and an MIT economist who should have known better, said that the health bill deliberately lacked “transparency” because of “the stupidity of the American voter”?

     And he went on to call us “stupid” more than once.

     The arrogance is appalling – all the more when you  consider that many in our midst understand language that “sounds good” to be good. Maybe that’s why we have a few million “undocumented” or “unauthorized” immigrants among us today, and we can’t figure out what to do with them … short of admitting that they are here illegally.

     Still, there is “lingering debate,” folks speak “on condition of anonymity” with “varying degrees of enthusiasm” while “drafting errors” are supposed to excuse sloppy legislative writing.

     And so it goes. Lies and innuendo covered over by clever rhetoric.

     But our clever rhetoric that sounds so good falls far short of Biblical truth:  “…let your ‘Yes’ be yes and your ‘No’ be no, so that you may not fall under condemnation.” (James 5:12b, NRSV)

Serenity

Do you see what I see these days?

I watch people. I'm a news hawk. I move about town on most days. I go to malls...all that stuff.
And I'm seeing more and more of what I call dysfunctional behavior. Aggressive driving on the rise. Bizarre stories in the news every day. Inability to just "talk politics" anymore. Many are yelling at each other. I was threatened by three thugs in a crappy old Civic recently...all that stuff adds up to scary.

Of course, there is respite. I have my church and am active there. My family seems closer each day. Friends are more valued. ... and then there are just some concepts, some thought patterns, some images I try to meld into. Images like this one. I call it "Serenity."

Remembering

Just about 50 years ago today, I sat on my bed in my family’s home and thought: “This job could kill me…or worse.”

Three days later I got on a bus bound for Fort Jackson, South Carolina and nine weeks of Basic Combat Training courtesy of the United States Army. “This job,” of course, was to fulfill my military obligation to my country.

That meant, either sign up and go, or sit around and wait to be drafted. I made my choice and rolled. I saw it as a patriotic duty – the same as that faced by most of the men in my family going back to the American Revolution.

(And as an interesting sidelight, I have since learned that many of my precursors, being Scots Highlanders in the New World, remained loyal to the British Crown, while others fought for American Independence.)

On this Veterans’ Day, I salute them all, however – each one of whom I have no doubt also sat once in a similar place knowing that they could sacrifice their lives as a part of doing their duty for something they believed in.

That is all.

 

Survival

I have been pondering suffering recently. Partly because I have experienced some. But I know  I am not alone. Some of my friends are fighting deadly illnesses. Others are more like me -- sharing in the economic miseries we seem to have fallen into.

 In a broader sense though, from what I read, hear, and see in the news these days, suffering is universal – a sort of licensure of life itself. If you’re alive, you either do or soon will experience some suffering.

I wondered why that is…and then thought it best to mount a hasty retreat for fear of impinging on theological or philosophical territory – no country for an old man, to borrow the title of Cormac McCarthy’s great novel.

A simpler, better answer seems to be what a child might say: “just ‘cause.”

Or the executive-suite jargon that it seems will never die: “it is what it is."

Thing is, though, many of us cannot abide suffering, either ours or in others. And good and bad co-exist in that.

Perhaps the biggest bad is avoidance. We deny suffering. And many – myself included – do so in many ways.

My most dramatic examples of avoidance and denial of suffering involved an alcohol problem – something I have now been free of for more than 40 years, You may read my story here.

Some may use other drugs, engage in risky, even threatening, or illegal behavior – all to the same effect: we seek to avoid and deny the suffering  -- our own and those who may be affected. We arrive at that avoidance through denial – not a river in Egypt, as a preacher I once knew was fond of saying.

But where it gets really spooky, some develop layers of strange behavior that honestly can be called escapist.

I’m reminded of a “convention” I just read about. It was a gathering of hundreds from across the fruited plain all sharing what looked like a Batman and Robin fetish.

Fun, up to a point, but for some few these theatrics can be escapism wrapped in denial and avoidance – avoidance of some underlying suffering.

Any kind of fantasy – or fetish – pursued diligently long enough and so exclusionary as to interfere with life’s “normal” pursuits, could be part of an escapist mechanism constructed subconsciously to deny the human affinity for suffering.

So whether we like it or not, many suffer, and many try to deny and avoid, but the “morning after” will always come.

That’s well-known to alcoholics. You feel like crap, and the thing you were covering up or sought to escape from has grown into a closet monster about to just flat get right in your not-so-hot-looking face.

And it does. So the cycle repeats. But fortunately the time comes for many when we get rid of the monster.

Sure, some will try just one more time and maybe run away to join the Flying Wallendas, or try to drag-race an unmarked state trooper.

Whatever. “We’re all here because we’re not all there,” they say.

Still, we found that avoidance, denial, and “just ‘cause” no longer worked. And – yes – there are spiritual implications in this.

That’s because reversals sometimes happen. And there’s that stupid Closet Monster again. The temptation to avoid and deny will raise its ugly head. That’s when our spiritual condition will be the sole answer.

We – and those who share my experience – have learned to look the 800-pound gorilla in the face, pray, and tough it out. I’ve always felt better afterwards. And things change.

An afterword:

“The more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt. The one who does most to avoid suffering is, in the end, the one who suffers most.”

-- Thomas Merton, the renowned Trappist monk, mystic, and Catholic priest, in The Seven Storey Mountain, his autobiography

 

 

Days of Wonder

Sometimes my muse takes me back to earlier days, growing-up times.

In the 40s and 50s things were so different, they appeared in our lives’ rear-view mirrors as days of wonder:

• Homes with one phone – wired to the wall!
• Days when radios were pieces of furniture.
• Summers when kids could roam dawn-to-dusk outdoors unsupervised and completely safe.
• Days when vehicles were driven with civility and not like Nascar contenders.

We spoke differently, too. Remembering the accent of my high school principal brings this to mind. He spoke with what I called a Middle Virginia accent. Yes, about was “abowt.” Great was “gret.”

And weren’t those the days?

Old ladies inserted a “y” after consonants in certain socially acceptable words. Garden became “Gyaden.” Car was “Cyah.” And most all A’s were broad.

Yes, indeed those were the days.

Eastwardly, accents became classic Tidewater – a lot like Middle but with their own personalities. If you were from Norfolk, for example, it was Náwfok. In fact, that’s how you can tell a native of Norfolk from the rest of us, even some of these days

I spent enough time in Tidewater to pick that up. I can still lay a credible “Nawfok” on you too. And will sometimes just to see if you get it.

Once, here in Richmond at the beginning of a class on nonfiction writing, we all participated in an “ice-breaker” to introduce ourselves to the other eleven in the class. We do things like that these days, we do.

It worked this way: each of us had to tell the class three things about ourselves, only one of which was true. The class then had to choose the one that was true.

Get a bunch of whacky writers together, and you had some interesting times together.

These were my three:

• I once had a date with Larry King’s first ex-wife.
• I was born in “Nawfok,” Virginia.
• I used to drive a Porsche 356C.

Of course, there was a woman there who was born and raised in Norfolk who grinned as she smugly chose Number Two. “I’d know that accent anywhere,” she said.

But I fooled them all – It was Number One!

And those were the days, too.