Yarnsista

Don DeLillo’s book, White Noise, has been on the bottom bookshelf, collecting dust bunnies for ages. I’d pick it up, dust it off, and put it down. DeLillo re-entered my life as this past month’s book group selection: Falling Man. It’s a book that focuses on a family that is significantly dysfunctional before September 11 in NYC and massively sad and broken post 9/11. It was not a fun read and several times I thought about putting it back on the shelf with the dust bunnies.

Falling Man hit three of my emotionally fragile hot spots: 9/11, Alzheimer’s, and suicide. One of these would have been almost more than I could have handled, but all three of them really pushed buttons.  The primary characters were separated and emotionally disconnected before the planes hit the World Trade Towers. Afterwards, they spent time together, but it was painful as a reader to see them be so inadequate, loveless, and alienated to themselves, each other and their son, who is called “the kid” most of the novel. Empty and hurting and it doesn’t stop—that’s the pace of the novel.

The wife’s compassion is revealed only with her work at a local Alzheimer’s day care center, but it is likewise measured and hopeless. It is her effort to stave off the inevitable loss. The patients lose their memories, their love of life and gradually slip away. In contrast to this slow death, we see the shock of the traumatizing 9/11 deaths and her father’s suicide when he discovers he has Alzheimer’s and doesn’t want to live long enough to forget who his daughter is. It’s an alternative plan that seems selfish and selfless at the same time. His disease is, likewise, a random event… and he chooses to jump.

Amidst all of this gloom and doom is a performance artist, called “Falling Man” who dresses in street clothes and then rigs himself so that it looks like he is falling out of a window or off of a bridge. It’s a creepy reminder of tower victims who jumped from windows to their death in order to escape a fiery death. He performs by taunting death and raising fears—but does so for entertainment and art—much like DeLillio. Ironically, this is one character that I want to know more about. What makes him tick? Who is he? What’s his story? All we learn is that he dies young, and it is because of natural causes. He does toy with chaos and randomness instead of succumbing to it. It’s a scary game.

There is no relief from grief, guilt, lovelessness, and alienation in this book. The husband ends up playing poker professionally, sometimes cheats, and is living a shell of a life. He’s fighting randomness on the poker table. Everyone else is broken and doesn’t heal, and the droning beat goes on.

Why write this story? What’s the purpose? It can’t be just to make me sad. Perhaps this is the miserable underbelly of living through struggles. It shows what it’s like to survive short term and long term disappointments and failures. “Survive” is the canonical verb, not thrive. These are the folks that find a way to put one foot in front of the other when their lives suck. They survive their despondency and cope the best they can. Each does so by entering into one’s own cocoon, where the character has the opportunity to control what little can be controlled. It’s not optimal, but it’s safe, and they found a way to go on.

It’s starting to feel like that time of year… when classes are over and summer begins. When I was growing up, on the last day of school, before we left to summer in a little cabin on Lake Champlain, my parents would take me to a small, independent bookstore in Basking Ridge. It was there that I was permitted to pick out the number of books equal to my age plus one. As a ten year old, I filled a tote bag with eleven books of my own choosing. It was marvelous! There was no parental intervention, no pressure, no requirements; it truly was self-selected reading. So every summer started off with a big pile of wonderfully delicious books. It was money well spent by my parents.

This tradition left its watermark on my brain. My husband and I continued this routine with both of our daughters. Each daughter would roam through the book stacks in search of something interesting. I learned to keep my mouth shut and offer no suggestions. It was difficult. Once Molly picked out a book simply because she liked the cover. I was mortified until I learned that many customers do the same, and the book she selected by its cover ended up to be one of her all time favorites. It’s still on her bookshelf ten years later.

Once Kate chose an assortment of graphic novels; I was astounded… comic books????? She pushed me to read one before I passed judgment. That’s how I got hooked and ended up creating a college course on the canons of graphic novels. Maus, Persepolis, A Contract With God, Watchmen, City of Glass, Caricature Nine Stories became my new favorites—and those of many of my students as well. The combination of art and text allows the writer/artist to express imagination in an extra dimension: a step beyond tradition and conventions.

As our girls get older (now 20 and 27) I still make the offer to go to the bookstore with them… or have them scout out what they like on line. Yes, the 20 year old is entitled to 21 books and the 27 year old has rights to 28 books. They seldom take me up on my offer right away…but often times, a week or two later, we find ourselves in a bookstore together, and the tradition continues, although somewhat morphed and abbreviated.

I find that I, too, collect a pile of books for summer reading. Unwittingly, my lack of moderation accounts for the continued practice of my age plus one. There are at least 60 books stashed high and deep, waiting for me at the Cape. I try to arrange them in some kind of reading order, but that’s a useless adventure. I will read them all, and more… but the order remains uncertain and up to serendipity. I’m just starting  Falling Man by Dom DeLillo and, after a HUGE discussion at book group, Hunger Games is on my list. My rule of thumb is that I read up to page thirty, and if it doesn’t make my heart or my brain go pitter/patter, I drop it like a bad boyfriend. That’s the rule. So many good books, so little time.