8 Reasons to Read 11/22/63

"The past is obdurate.  It doesn't want to be changed."  (p. 232)

ob-dur-ate [OB-duu-rit] adj. Stubborn; unyielding.

Alright, I know, I'm pandering to the 50th Anniversary of Kennedy's assassination, but first, I just HAD to read Stephen King's 11/22/63, and second, why NOT think and talk and write about it this week?

True confessions: I read it more than a year ago.  But it's one of those books I've wanted to let ferment.

There's a heap of reasons I liked 11/22/63, but here are my top 8 reasons:

Things Fall Apart

Published in 1958, Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart tells of the tragic undoing of Okonkwo, a proud man living in a village in the Niger River valley in the era of Europe's African colonization. 

Okonkwo was clearly cut out for great things.  He was still young but had won fame as the greatest wrestler in the nine villages.  He was a wealthy farmer and had barns full of yams,and had just married his third wife.  To crown it all... he had shown incredible prowess in two inter-tribal wars.  And so although Okonkwo was still young, he was already one of the greatest men of his time. (p. 8)

Pride goeth before a fall (Proverbs 16:18), but it is far more than Okonkwo's pride that unravels this world.

The Age of Miracles

I like post-apocalyptic fiction.  In theory.

Photo courtesy chudo.sveta, Flickr Creative Commons.

A few weeks ago I heard Karen Thompson Walker interviewed on NPR about her debut novel, The Age of Miracles, in which the Earth’s rotation progressively slows.  Little do we realize that all life is dependent on that consistent 24-hour day.  At 26 hours it’s disruptive but not awful; at 46 hours, it’s quite a lot worse.  When the day is 60 hours long… and longer… it is toxic to all life on Earth.  The light is toxic, and so is the darkness. 

In coastal California, Julia is 11.  She's a lonely, kind of unpopular, upper-middle-class sixth grader, complete with the fickle girlfriends, the boy you’re too shy to talk to, life on the bus, the soccer field, the school commons. Even as the world is ending, Julia frets about bras, makeup, kissing, parties.  Her parents' fraying marriage, her aging grandfather. 

I read Miracles in less than 24 hours, and when I finished it around midnight last night – I was rattled.  I was afraid of the dark.

Since reading Cormac McCarthy’s The Road several years ago, I can’t help comparing every other piece of post-apocalyptic fiction against it.  It is one of the best - and most terrifying - books I’ve ever read.  I chose not to see the movie. 

We live in a tenuous peace.  When society fractures, then crumbles, the most cruel and powerful men quickly gain the upper hand.  I believe McCarthy’s pessimistic scenario is the most likely one.

Conversely, Walker’s "Slow Earth" doesn’t seem nearly chaotic enough.  There are a handful of people who panic, others who high-tail it for the wilderness, but for the most part, life continues almost as usual.  As normal as possible, for as long as possible.

Julia's life is simply very safe; she is genuinely insulated from the chaos unfolding elsewhere because her family is "comfortable." Her parents (a doctor & a teacher) can stockpile nutritious food, buy a custom greenhouse complete with growlights, sheathe their home in steel to protect from solar radiation.  They are never threatened by crime. 

And then the narrative ends, before things get that bad.  Maybe mass human extinction was too gruesome for Walker (or maybe she's hoping NOT to freak out younger readers).

Would MY family be able to survive The Slowing? Wouldn't we all like to believe that we could? 

In the beginning we’d get along better than many others.  We’re frugal and creative.  But we're on the grid, and these systems are fragile.  Water, electricity, natural gas and communications would founder much sooner in reality than they do in The Age of Miracles.  Public safety, healthcare, and food would be scarce and costly.  A black market would develop.  There would be MUCH more violence and unrest than in Miracles.  People would become desperate very quickly - the television series The Colony illustrates this very well.  And didn't we see a glimpse of it during New York City Blackout of 1977 (massive looting and destruction)? Or during Katrina?

In a deteriorating economy, only the very rich, with liquid wealth or tradeable goods, would be able to transform their home into the necessary fortress.  The sad truth is that we would be vulnerable.  Not totally unprepared or helpless, but not rich enough to build a bunker.  A few assets that we wouldn't have enough firepower to protect.  How long could we really hope to stave off fearless, desperate marauders?

Post-apocalyptic fiction is a significant part of 20^th & 21^st century literature, and I’ve read a considerable number included on the GoodReads list.   The Age of Miracles, a much softer version of the end of the world, is enough to give me the willies.  But it doesn’t stop me from wanting to read more. 

Remember, the Mayan Apocalypse is coming!  Only 153 shopping days until December 20, 2012!

A New York state of mind

In the last couple of weeks I've read Martin Dressler: A Tale of an American Dreamer and Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close.  Loved them both.

Martin Dressler is like a turn-of-the-19th-century cross between Donald Trump, Walt Disney, and a Vegas resort owner.  It's the story of his rise to wealth as a highly-successful property developer in growing Manhattan.  The story starts as realism, but by the end it's drifted off into the realm of magical realism.  I love it.  He's created a hotel/resort so artificial that guests/residents never need to leave.  EVERYTHING they could possibly imagine is there, artificially, but there.  Like the "countries" around the lagoon at Epcot Center.  Like "Venice" or the pyramids in Las Vegas.  And with a lot of the puffed-up pretention of Trump.  The belief that Martin can't possibly fail.  He has the Midas touch.  But in the end, he is undone.  His castle is so artificial, he can create another wife, mother-in-law, and sister-in-law, even another self.  And once he has replaced himself, what is left? Nothing but to wander off to future prospects.  Maybe to do it all over again in Atlantic City?

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close: touching and difficult.  Lots of human pain.  Oskar, the protagonist, is tormented, a 10-yr-old who is searching for the lock that fits the key he finds after his father's death on 9/11.  He is haunted by grief, by all that was left undone between him and his father (Thomas).  Similarly, Thomas' father, who has been mute since surviving the WWII bombing of Dresden, had disappeared from his family more than 40 years before.  This tale explores the thin connections we have between one another.  What we say, and what we don't say.  What we think we know, and what we really know.  What parents hide from their children in the hope of protecting them, and how we feel that we've failed them when we reveal our true selves (but really, we haven't).  Oskar wants and needs to see his mother's grief.  I think his final discovery is that adult expressions of grief can "look" different than how they feel.  Adults may grieve terribly without crying.

I love the glimpse inside Oskar's inventive mind.  When he can't sleep, his mind races, and he invents things.  Like being able to fly by wearing a birdseed shirt.  He's smarter than most adults, but doesn't have the life experience to process all the knowledge or subtleties of language.  He's frightened and brave at the same time.  He expresses sorrow as having "heavy boots."  What a wonderful metaphor.  So many beautiful and creative details to ponder from this book.

Extremely Loud is on my mind, but I haven't had the opportunity to discuss it with anyone.  But the film comes out in a couple of weeks.  I think it's likely to be in the running for Academy Awards. 

Think - an Oscar for Oskar.

House of Sand and Fog

Finished last night.... late!  If you read my previous post, you've learned that it took me some time to warm up to House of Sand and Fog.  It didn't truly grip me until Part II.

What a sad tale.  Now I know why Dad said the film was so sad, and that I've sort of avoided this book. 

 Warning, spoiler alert. 

I don't typically cry while reading (although I OFTEN cry while watching films), but I had tears in my eyes for this ending....  the whole thing was a disaster for everyone involved. 

Shakespeare would have liked this.  It reminded me of Othello.  One small misunderstanding starts a chain of events that end in total tragedy. 

And even along the way, there are moments when the characters could have made different choices and had a different outcome.  Kathy and Lester doubt each other (and rightly so, it's a flash of passion, I don't think it would have lasted the "long haul).  Kathy gets blind drunk, Lester stews around and then invades the house.  Behrani could have gone for the gun when he had the opportunity instead of telling himself, "if I have to think about it, I'm too old." And on and on and on.

Reading Esmail's death really hurt.  I could feel the hurt, because I can't imagine how destroyed I would be if my only son were killed.

Despair over and over again.  Choices born from despair.
Kathy seems resigned to her fate in the end.  It's almost as though she's found a family that accepts her unconditionally - for the first time.

Soraya is the only survivor of the Behrani family.  This family of survivors - during the Iranian Revolution, of all things - is the victim of bureaucracy and rage and passion and impulsiveness in the end.  And her reaction is invisible to us.  We will never know.

So, no happy ending this time.

Or next time, it looks like.

Instead of sticking with the original plan of having DH pick the next book, I foolishly allowed 10-yr-old (sadistic?) DS to do so.  Next up: Tolstoy's Anna Karenina.  I think he wants to see me suffer - not because of a plot, but through 823 pages.  My reaction to my next assignment, well, he thought that was just a laugh riot.

See you in the spring.....