Madness Personified

At age 28, Ronnie is going back to school, to finish the degree she never earned and make a new start. As the lead character in Rebecca Cook’s novel Click, she does not undertake this journey alone. A large black crow flutters about the room or leaves to fly around the neighborhood and across the corn fields of Nebraska, a distant geography from Ronnie’s native Chicago. The bird always returns to perch on furniture, or on the shoulder of Ronnie’s husband Boyd (bird?).

The image is perfect and neat, but for one inconvenient fact. Boyd has been dead for three years. Despite their incorporeal nature, both Boyd and the crow are constants in Ronnie’s life. Boyd follows her around, whispers in her ear, briefly leaves on business trips, and appears in the apartment, even the bedroom, of her new boyfriend. When not flying about aimlessly, the bird flutters its wings inside her rib cage, or flies feet first at persons with whom she has unpleasant exchanges. Sometimes it carries her off to other places, and sometimes she flies with the bird. More than a symbol of her affliction, the bird is its personification.

The reader may hope against hope that Ronnie will pull through this crises, but she seems to unravel, even as the plot tightens and wraps itself up. As the story progresses toward an ending which appears to be inevitable, Ronnie is clearly loosing ground. The final scene manages to be both surprising and yet expected, which makes for a rewarding finish.

Some readers may find the strong language and frankly sexual encounters off putting, but these elements give the characters a three dimensional quality which is refreshing in comparison to the flatness of some modern fiction. The book is both compelling and unforgettable.  

The Old Man and the Sea

Just reread this story

The Old Man and the Sea

The line went out and out and out but it was slowing now and he was making the fish earn every inch of it.

The pundits of instruction manuals, workshops, classrooms, and critique circles tell us that repetition is unacceptable in both prose and poetry. Nevertheless, this line stands out as a summary of the battle between a great marlin and the old fisherman, Santiago. Ernest Hemingway received a Pulitzer Prize for his novella, The Old Man and the Sea, repetition and all. Hemingway had other works in progress when he died, but this was the last long work of fiction published during his lifetime.

The story itself holds a form of conflict that barely exists in recent literature, the conflict of man against nature. One can substitute the word person for the word man, in the name of gender equality, but I use the terms as I learned them.

The three forms of conflict in literature, as I learned them, were man against God (or the gods), man against nature, and man against man. The first is exemplified by The Odyssey and the Book of Job. Examples of the second include Moby Dick and the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner. Examples of the third include such classics as Hamlet and modern classics such as The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Other suggested conflicts such as man against himself (i.e. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde), man against society (i.e. Fahrenheit 451), and man against machine (i.e. The Terminator) are all special cases of man against man.

The disappearance of man against nature as a recognized form of conflict came home to me in a recent writing workshop where the facilitator listed man against God, man against man, and man against himself. Nature was left out entirely, perhaps symbolic of a society which no longer considers nature significant or powerful. In a contemporary world we forecast the weather, hold back the sea with levees, channel the course of rivers and generally regard nature as vanquished. This is well described in John McPhee’s nonfiction book, The Control of Nature. Bill McKibben described it in another way in The End of Nature.

Our belief that we have conquered nature has theological roots in the word dominion, but I believe this is magnified beyond all measure in the contemporary world. Despite the evidence of earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, and volcanic eruptions, our belief in our omnipotence continues. Given this belief, it may not be possible for a living author to write a book such as Moby Dick, a novella such as The Old Man and the Sea, or a short story such as “The Bear.”

Despite our current trend of ignoring nature, it has a strong presence in Hemingway’s story. 

In a frequently quoted line, Santiago is alone in the boat, but speaks aloud. “But man is not made for defeat,” he said. “A man can be destroyed, but not defeated.” Hemingway is speaking through the character, of course, but he makes more of the story than a simple battle. Santiago loves the fish and calls him brother, despite his intent to kill the fish. He is sorry for the fish being spoiled when sharks come. He feels sadness for another fish he had killed, perhaps years ago, and remembers her mate who leaped high for one last look before he dove into the depths, just escaping the fisherman’s harpoon.

Most of all, Santiago regards the sea as a feminine entity. She gives or withholds great favors such as a favorable day’s fishing. She sometimes gives storms and high seas, just as a lover is sometimes tender and at other times moody and impetuous. He makes much of how the sea is subject to the influence of the moon.

Santiago, the Cuban fisherman, exemplifies a much more complex relationship with nature than 21^st century humans can generally envision. This is true as well for Hemmingway: hunter, fisherman, world traveler and author.  The themes of The Old Man and the Sea also appear in his earlier nonfiction work, The Green Hills of Africa.

The greatness of this novella is preserved for all time. Aside from winning the Pulitzer Prize, it was cited prominently in the judges’ remarks when Hemingway received the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Abbey’s Road

Edward Abbey

I usually skip the introduction to a book, even a nonfiction book, but as I thumbed through the opening pages of Abbey’s Road, looking for the start of chapter one, I noticed correspondence embedded in the text. Specifically, it was Abbey’s letter to the editors of Ms Magazine (which Abbey spelled Mizz Magazine), followed by an equally witty and cutting response from Gloria Steinem herself. Neither letter saw print in the magazine, but Abbey preserved them for posterity in the pages of his book.

His introduction includes correspondence to and from a number of persons, both famous and unknown. One such correspondent apparently confused him with the notable playwright Edward Albee and chastised him for his recent departure from his usual style.

Further comments in the introduction mark Abbey as a defender and promoter of western literature and nature writing in general. He specifically mentions Joseph Wood Krutch, great granddaddy of western conservationists, and other nature writers, but he reserves the heir to Thoreau honor for Virginia (and Puget Sound) resident Annie Dilliard. He then takes exception to Dillard’s constant invocation of the Deity, stating that use of the simple word mystery (without capitalization) would suffice.

Beyond the introduction, the book is divided into three unequal parts, with part one, a travelogue, being the longest. Here we see Abbey in his element, the untamed wilderness and cattle ranches of the American Southwest, with trips further afield to the Great Barrier Reef, Aboriginal Australia, and an uninhabited island off the coast of Mexico. He also recounts a rafting trip on the Rio Grande River. Aside from the uninhabited island, he encounters a variety of interesting people along the way, including a barmaid whom he is not quite successful in convincing to travel with him across the Outback. That story though, is pure Abbey.

Part two is devoted to polemics, essay style writing which takes a specific view and gives no credence to any opposing argument. Despite his years supporting himself as a park ranger, cowboy, fire tower lookout and teacher, Abbey shows no respect for the Park Service bureaucracy nor its sister agency in the Department of Agriculture, the U.S Forest Service. His comments are equally likely to infuriate cattle ranchers, university administrators, feminists, and gun control advocates. Abbey loved the American West, and was equally at home bird watching or hunting deer. He took the construction of Glen Canyon Dam as a personal affront. In this section Abbey confronts the powers that be in the spirit of his better known fictional work The Monkey Wrench Gang. 

The third and shortest part is devoted to personal history. It lacks the lyric passages of his nonfiction book, Dessert Solitaire, my personal favorite of his works, but perhaps gives more insight into the man, his life’s work, and his motivations. It includes a story of a hiking trip with his young daughter, child of the wife who died of leukemia. This particular story shows a tender side to a man normally regarded as a grizzled old curmudgeon. 

Abbey’s Road provides a retrospective of his life up to that point in time. His best known books were already written, but more were yet to appear. I recommend it highly to anyone who loves the outdoors, and is at least willing to suspend judgment about his anarchist politics.