White Oleander
Strange how fiction can save you.
Saturday morning, despair came to my door, came to breakfast, and tried to talk me out of believing in most of the good things in my life. Again, not an unusual conversation particularly, nothing really new in the arguments--in fact, the old coot didn't have much to say at all. Just sort of sat there looking at me, offering to massage my bones to sleep since the world wasn't going to be terribly real anyway blah, blah, blah.
I went to the bookshelf hunting for something to shut him up, and picked up two titles: Consilience by Edward Wilson, and White Oleander, by Janet Fitch. About the first, all I knew was that it was a book that I'd come across because of an Atlantic Monthly article years ago, that the notion of the "unity of knowledge" was important, and surely such unity grasped would be enough to send despair packing. But nope, the first page was over my head, and doing me no good.
So I turned to Ms. Fitch and her tale of a foster child's half dozen years of hell. A best-seller several years ago, I thought I'd launch in, and see if some well-turned phrases might clean out the cobwebs, give me a jump start back into meaning.
Sure enough.
What is it about an unwavering gaze that gives me hope? The gaze that will not turn away from either the burning glory or the sordid scandal? Glorious sentence level writing, evoking the strange culture known as Los Angeles, and the emotionally harrowing journey of poor Astrid, the child separated from her mother, surviving a slew of weird American dysfunctions to emerge as a human being, albeit damaged and morally ambiguous. The life of Astrid is shown with unflinching clarity, with little comment, and it inspires me to try and do the same with the life of my own character, little bumbling Cyrus Manning.
I finished the tale Sunday morning, and felt gloriously reborn. Why? I wasn't inspired particularly to go out and become a social activist on behalf of foster children, though my compassion for and awareness of the kids caught in the emotional crossfire of the crumbling American family was certainly heightened (and who knows quite where that will lead). I think the rebirth came from seeing. As Barbara Brown Taylor might put it, Janet Fitch had taken my weary head and placed her artist's hand underneath my chin, and held my face to something I'd not seen, not considered, not noticed. As my gaze held through much of Saturday morning, evening, and again Sunday morning, somehow scales fell from my eyes, and light came in.
For literature, and Ms. Fitch's hard years of work...
...I'm grateful.
9:30:47 AM
