kafkaespsps

Just finished Beloved by Toni Morrison. If I had read it ten years ago, on the precipice of a liberal arts education following eight years of the Obama administration, I might have thought "gee, how far we've come," with a shudder at the horror of the past. It speaks to how much hope has diminished, or how much older I've gotten, or both, that now, having finished it, I only think "how far we still have to go."

It was a difficult read, not only in terms of subject matter, which is a fairly obvious thing to expect from a book about a runaway slave who opts to kill her daughter rather than see her be taken back into the grip of slavery, only for her daughter to return years later, vengeful and longing. It was also just difficult in terms of prose. At times, I struggled figuring out the perspective of speakers, the sequencing of events, what was real and what was imagined-- but in a foreword to the edition I read, Toni Morrison writes, "I wanted the reader to be kidnapped, thrown ruthlessly into an alien environment as the first step into a shared experience with the book's population-- just as the characters were snatched from one place to another, from any place to any other, without preparation or defense."

She succeeded.

What Morrison describes as a kidnapping can equally be described as being transported, from the reader's perspective. Her rendering of Sethe, the mother who killed her daughter to protect her, reminds me of something T. Geronimo Johnson said to us during a workshop during my MFA: that as a writer, your task is to exhibit god-like empathy for all your characters. Sethe is as complex a character as her actions demand her to be, and she is simultaneously feared, treated with a morbid fascination bordering on respect, and shunned by her community.

Beloved, the murdered daughter, is rendered with equal care. Her name comes from the only word her mother could afford to have chiseled on her headstone: Beloved. Not Dearly Beloved, but Beloved.

I am grateful that Beloved, the novel, exists, despite the shame and terror we should all feel that history progressed as such to make its existence necessary. The reader enters it confused, but leaves with resolution, and another story that they would do well not to forget, despite its horror. That it is based on real historical events elevates its enduring power and makes the events of its plot all the more grotesque.

Remembering this, he began to cry. He sat on the edge of the bathtub and, putting his hands to his face, cried silently with profound exhaustion, like a spell of madness. At the pit of his stomach, but in a way which was more than that -- as though it moved on the surface of the little trembling core of his deepest being -- he was mortally, wholly afraid."

In following the successive inhabitants of a remote saltbox farmhouse in Northwestern Massachusetts built before the American Revolution, North Woods by Daniel Mason asks us what happens when historical objects lose connection from those who know their stories. The novel forces readers to confront the connections between space, history, and life, both human and non. And it happens to build a lush linguistic tapestry of the woods I grew up in, the woods I recently learned my family has lived in for centuries, if you count New England as a cohesive ecosystem.

There are lovers seeking their own Eden, stewards of the land whose work improves upon it without intruding on the surrounding grandeur of nature, jealous twins, great white hunters, amateur historians who seek to unveil the past with love. There is a sense of those who came before blessing those who come next as long as their intentions are just.

But there is also a sense of the cosmic, of the eternally returning, and of cycles. North Woods has an undercurrent of ecological anxiety, as the New England forest has changed not only due to human intervention, but also disease. Beetles, bugs, and blights have transformed the landscape by removing specific species, and all members of an ecosystem play their part. That anxiety is offset by the ambition of its perspective; in the end, we follow the house for centuries and project into a future ravished by climate change, where even maple trees can no longer inhabit the region. But a fire sweeps through and cleanses the land, priming it for a slow return to what came before.

All places undergo this process. In a way, all that live are in a process of changing, of returning. In that cycle, one can find hope, even if it's a non human-centric one.

History and narrative are inextricable from one another, and both are inextricable from space. The novel's progression teaches that curiosity about stories that come before is a form of love and a form of honoring space. It also reminds us that everywhere we tread is a graveyard, everywhere a marital bed, everywhere the seat of inexpressible joy and unimaginable grief, simultaneously and always.

It's a beautiful book. Its prose is fairly purple at times, which may explain the divergent tone of this entry compared to past ones. It speaks to how Daniel Mason's language got into my head.

This book is great, particularly for New Englanders or lovers of the forest. Its characters brim with life, ironically, even beyond their death. Don't let my pretentious descriptions turn you off-- this book is a genuine comfort and a great story.

"Timshel." Hebrew for "thou mayest." The last word spoken by Adam Trask at the end of East of Eden, after his devastating stroke upon learning of his son Aron's death in World War I.

Aron joined the army after his brother, Cal, revealed to him the truth about their mother, Cathy: that she is not dead in the east, but in fact living in their city, and runs its most notorious and vicious brothel under the name "Kate."

Cal feels he killed his brother. Lee, long time servant of the Trask family, desperately implores Adam to absolve his son Cal of the guilt that is set to destroy him. Adam, in his fugue, finds a moment of clarity to mutter "timshel," a Hebrew verb central to the understanding of the story of Cain and Abel.

Brief aside: while I haven't read all of Steinbeck's work, I think it's a safe assertion that East of Eden is his most ambitious work. It also appears to be his most sentimental one, and could be described as a novelization of two variations of the Cain and Abel story. The more literature one reads, especially in a digital age, and the more one tries to write literature, the bitterer one can become in his reading tastes. My instinct is to criticize East of Eden for being too "on the nose," but another part of me feels that the sprawling ambition and psychological depth of the novel are salves against such a critique.

When Cal and Aron are boys, their father Adam, his servant Lee, and family friend Sam Hamilton discuss the story of Cain and Abel. Initially, they were drawn to the Bible in pursuit of names for Adam's boys, who, at ten months old, remained unnamed-- their father, fully beset by grief at Cathy's betrayal and abandonment, withdraws from social living and relegates Lee to caring for the boys. As they search for names, they discuss the story, which is perhaps the most important conversation in all the book.

"Adam said, 'I can't get over feeling that Cain got the dirty end of the stick.'

'Maybe he did,' said Samuel. 'But Cain lived and had children, and Abel lives only in the story. We are Cain's children. And isn't it strange that three grown men, here in a century so many thousands of years away, discuss this crime as though it happened in King City yesterday and hadn't come up for trial?'" (354).

In discussing the lasting appeal of the Cain and Abel story, which Samuel believes to be seemingly hopeless, Lee says "'I think this is the best-known story in the world because it is everybody's story... The greatest terror a child can have is that he is not loved, and rejection is the hell he fears.'"

Ten years pass. The boys grow. Samuel, Lee, and Adam are discussing, again, the story, and reflecting on the night they first discussed it in their pursuit of naming Cal and Aron (as he comes to be known, shortening from "Aaron").

Lee discusses his disquiet at the differing translations of one set of lines of the story. One translation says "if thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him."

Another translation says "Do thou rule over him."

Lee, so troubled by the difference, connects with scholars at his family association in San Francisco, who learn Hebrew upon hearing about the issue. They conclude with a true translation of the verb timshel, "thou mayest."

It's not a command, and it's not a promise. It's a choice. You can rule over your desire, but there is no guarantee.

In the end, after Aron's death in war and Adam's stroke, Lee drags Cal before his father. "'Your son is marked with guilt out of himself--out of himself-- almost more than he can bear. Don't crush him with rejection. Don't crush him, Adam,'" he says. "'Help him, Adam-- help him. Give him his chance. Let him be free. That's all a man has over beasts. Free him! Bless him!,'" he continues.

And out of his fugue, Adam says only "'Timshel.'" Thou mayest. You can, Cal. You can conquer your desires and the innate badness you think inhabits you. And in so doing, he frees his son.

Cal lives on and has children. Aron lives only in the story. Just as Cain and Abel find themselves in their story.

And the best part? Supposedly, there's no verb Timshel in Hebrew, and the whole thing is a Steinbeck invention/mistranslation. And it doesn't matter, because Lee, Cal, and Adam believe it to be true. People make their own meaning.